Wayne LaPierre Is An Idiot

More Hilarity From the Radical Right

So she commits voter fraud in order to prove voter fraud exists?  Well, Mission Accomplished (sort of -- I guess she's proved that attempted voter fraud exists):

A Nevada Republican arrested for voter fraud in the 2012 election, after claiming she was trying to test the system's integrity, pled guilty and accepted a plea deal Thursday, forcing her to pay almost $2,500 and promise to stay out of trouble.

Roxanne Rubin, 56, a casino worker on the Las Vegas Strip, was arrested on Nov. 3, 2012 after trying to vote twice, once at her poling site in Henderson and then at a second site in Las Vegas. The poll workers at the second site said that she had already voted, but Rubin said that she hadn't and insisted on casting a ballot, which the poll workers refused to allow her to do.

Rubin said that she was trying to show how easy it would be to commit voter fraud with just a signature. "This has always been an issue with me. I just feel the system is flawed," she told the AP Thursday. "If we’re showing ID for everything else, why wouldn’t we show our ID in order to vote?”

Rubin, like many Republicans, claim that the threat from voter fraud -- which is close to non-existent -- is why voter ID laws need to be in place. But Nevada has no voter ID law -- other than for first-time voters who didn't show ID when they registered to vote -- and she was caught anyway.

What's next for Rubin? Is she going to now claim that her $2500 fine was some sort of illegal poll tax? By the way, I guess we're still waiting to see what happens to the Republican poll worker from Clackamas County who was indicted a couple months ago for felony vote tampering.

Anyone else see a trend developing here?

Quote Of The Week

"One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates. If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you'll see more of them doing it."

- Barack Obama, in an interview with the New Republic published yesterday.

Republicans Starting to Change Their Tune on Immigration Reform

Via The New York Times:

A bipartisan group of senators has agreed on a set of principles for a sweeping overhaul of the immigration system, including a pathway to American citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants that would hinge on progress in securing the borders and ensuring that foreigners leave the country when their visas expire.  ***

“Look at the last election,” Mr. McCain said Sunday morning on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.” “We are losing dramatically the Hispanic vote, which we think should be ours.” The senator also said he had seen “significant improvements” in border enforcement, although “we’ve still got a ways to go.”
      

He added, “We can’t go on forever with 11 million people living in this country in the shadows in an illegal status.”

Wow -- I remember the time when Republican talking points on this issue included ideas such as anchor babies, self-deportation, and an electrified border fence topped with razor wire and coupled with a moat full of either acid or alligators.  Indeed, I have no doubt we'll be hearing those phrases and ideas again very soon from the Tea-Bagging Wing of the GOP.

 

But I don't think the Baggers are going to be able to stop this one in the House.  No doubt a lot of GOP House members will vote against this bipartisan effort -- perhaps even a majority of them -- but the Democrat votes will put it over the top.

Right-Winger Tom Tancredo Lost A Bet And Must Now Smoke Pot (With Update)

This is hilarious:

Anti-immigrant firebrand and former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) says he will make good on a past bet he made to smoke marijuana if Colorado legalized it by referendum. Tancredo, who supported the marijuana reform proposal but said he did not partake in drugs himself, made a bet in a promotional film advocating its passage that he would nonetheless smoke pot if it ended up becoming law. Since it passed, he told Fox News he will uphold his end of the bargain.

As Bill Maher said last night about Tancredo :  "I just hope in the next few years he loses a bet on gay marriage."

UPDATE: Tancredo decides to do the dishonorable thing:

Ex-Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) on Friday backed out of his bet to smoke pot if Colorado legalized the drug for recreational use, saying that going through with it would have set a bad example for his grandchildren. ***

Yeah -- way to set an example.

Is This Guy The Next Todd Akin?

I certainly hope so:

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun isn't saying he's running for Senate, but he's not saying he's NOT running for Senate.

Broun continued to play coy about challenging [current GOP Georgia Senator] Saxby Chambliss in the 2014 Republican primary when WUAG 1340 AM's Tim Bryant pressed him on it this morning.***

Another guest, David Johnson of the polling firm Strategic Vision, said Chambliss is vulnerable because the very ideological, active Republicans who tend to vote in primaries see him as being too open to compromise.

The above-quoted article is a few days old, and the situation has changed.  Today we learned that Sen. Chambliss will not run for reelection in 2014. This leaves a clear opening for Paul Broun to run for that seat, and I couldn't be happier about that prospect.  This video explains why I feel that way:



If you can't watch the video where you are, Broun said, among other things: "All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell." The most hilarious part of all this is that Broun actually sits on the House Committee on Science and Technology (no, I am not making that up).

Anyway, I'm crossing my fingers that this idiot will run for Chambliss' seat.  If he does, then the Democrats should do exactly what they did with Todd Akin, namely, give money to Broun's campaign to ensure that he gets the nomination.  The Democrats actually contributed $1.5 million to Akin's campaign because they thought he'd be the perfect candidate for Claire McCaskill to run against, and it was money well spent:  Akin got the nomination, then made his now-famous "legitimate rape" comment, and the rest is history.

My point is this:  If the GOP is still stupid enough to run kooks for the U.S. Senate, then the Dems should do everything they can to make sure these kooks win their primaries.

Not to change the subject -- because I am not changing the subject -- John Boehner said this in response to Obama's Inauguration address:

"Given what we heard yesterday about the president's vision for his second term, it's pretty clear to me that he knows he can't do any of that as long as the House is controlled by Republicans. So we're expecting over the next 22 months to be the focus of this administration as they attempt to annihilate the Republican Party.  And let me just tell you, I do believe that is their goal – to just shove us into the dustbin of history."

My response to Boehner? If it isn't the goal of Obama and the Dems to annihilate the GOP, then it should be. In fact, it would be political malpractice for Obama not to have such a goal.

The irony of all this, of course, is that the GOP spent the last four years openly trying to destroy Obama's presidency, doing so even when it threatened to bring down the U.S. economy. Threats to our country's security and stability must be neutralized.  If I were Obama, I'd feel it was my patriotic duty to do everything I could right to shove the Republican Party into the dustbin of history, because that's where it belongs.

Some Thoughts On Yesterday (With Update)

I socialized yesterday with a group of people of various political persuasions, and I was amused by how pissed off the more conservative folks in the group were.  Three people I spent some time with last night were so angry over Obama that I thought their heads were going to explode. The day's inauguration events had clearly gotten on their nerves, and their unmitigated hatred for the President was out there for all to see.

And I loved every minute of it.

I even got into a discussion with one guy who insisted that five people really didn't get shot at guns shows in North Carolina, Indiana, and Ohio last Saturday -- he claimed the press just made the whole fucking thing up, doing so at Obama's bidding.  I, of course, think the fact that five gun nuts were shot while celebrating "National Gun Appreciation Day" might be the funniest thing I've ever heard and I've been laughing about it for several days now -- but I digress. 

This gentleman then went on and on about how Obama is trying to take everyone's guns away and has been doing so since Day One of his presidency.  I politely responded that Obama had no interest in doing anything with regard to guns until 20 six-and-seven-year old kids were riddled with bullets last month at Sandy Hook -- one six-year-old victim even had eleven bullet holes in him by the time the shooting had ended.  I expected my Obama-hating friend to respond that Sandy Hook was also something that didn't happen and that the Media just pulled it out of their collective asses, but he didn't go there.

Anyway, I realized last night that there is nothing Obama can say or do that would convince these people to stop hating him.  I thought perhaps that his winning a second term by an Electoral College landslide might take some of the edge off their hatred, but all the President's reelection did was piss these folks off even more.  They've despised him from the first day of his presidency -- mostly because he is a Black man -- and that won't change. 

So what Obama needs to do now is stop trying to make nice with these motherfuckers.  He spent his first four years attempting to compromise with Republicans and trying not to come off as The Angry Black Man. Well, I think he should become the Angry Black Man during his second term.  He doesn't need to run for reelection, so why not become that guy. 

I heard bits of his speech yesterday, and I was struck -- and encouraged -- by his partisan tone.  Not surprisingly, Republicans were unhappy with it.  John McCain, for example, said, "I didn't hear any conciliatory remarks."

Conciliatory remarks?  Really?  Were you living in a cave for the last four years, Senator McCain?  Steve Benen got it right when he wrote this today:

As for the notion that Obama should have been more "post-partisan" and made his address more Republican-friendly, I sincerely hope we're not going to let the last four years slip down the memory hole too quickly. As we discussed yesterday, Republicans spent Obama's first term on a scorched-earth campaign, hoping to destroy his presidency and nearly everything he proposed. GOP leaders met privately exactly four years ago yesterday to plot their comeback by obstructing the president wherever possible, and refusing to compromise with Obama on literally anything, even when he embraced Republican ideas -- and then they executed that plot without hesitation or shame.

That the president has learned lessons from those experiences isn't a shame; it's a relief.

Fucking-A.

UPDATE:  Here's some more fun stuff on how Obama's inauguration didn't sit well with certain folks yesterday:

The head of the Mon Valley Republican party hung a flag upside down on Monday -- the day of President Barack Obama's second-term inauguration.

Hanging for all to see outside of the party's meeting spot on Washington Boulevard, it caught the attention of many people. A lot of them told Channel 11 News that they don't believe the signal of distress was appropriate.

Channel 11's Julie Fine talked to the man behind the flag. He said that he doesn't "regret it at all" because "our nation is in a horrible place." ***

Christ, if he really hates America that much, then he should get the fuck out. Haiti sounds like it is right up this guy's alley. He should move there.

More Bullshit From The Mainstream

Anyone even slightly familiar with this blog knows how I feel about the notion that both sides are to blame for the current state of DC politics.  If you are not familiar with my position on this, then look here, here, and here and you'll get the idea. 

Bottom line for me:  How can you seriously blame both sides for this when one side -- namely, the GOP -- has not only admitted it is the cause of Washington gridlock, but openly brags about being the cause of it?

Well, Dana Milbank from the Washington Post is pushing another version of the "it's both side's fault" horseshit, and he uses yesterday's presidential press conference as the backdrop:

[T]he performance was *** a reminder of why Obama isn’t noted for his interpersonal warmth — a topic Jackie Calmes of the New York Times asked him to address when she mentioned the criticism that he and his staff are insular and that he doesn’t socialize.

It’s tempting to wonder whether Obama could achieve more if he could establish personal connections with Republicans on Capitol Hill. But Obama disparaged the notion behind Calmes’s question — that a better bedside manner could help his agenda.

“I like a good party,” the president informed her after attesting to his “friendly guy” status. “Really what’s gone on in terms of some of the paralysis here in Washington, or difficulties in negotiations, just have to do with some very stark differences in terms of policy.”

That may be true, but until recent years, sharp disagreements were smoothed by personal ties. On Monday, by contrast, Obama showed unrelenting hostility toward the opposition, accompanying his remarks with dismissive shrugs and skeptical frowns.

What do I say about Mr. Obama's "unrelenting hostility," "dismissive shrugs" and "skeptical frowns"? I say it's about fucking time.  That's exactly how you deal with an opposition party that has become so radicalized that it now routinely opposes ideas it once supported and purges from its ranks any member who states that he or she would be willing to merely negotiate with Obama.  Richard Lugar comes to mind.

The problem isn't that Obama acts too coldly toward his opposition.  The problem is that the Mainstream Press has no interest in reporting what may be the most underreported story in recent political history, namely, the radicalization of the Republican Party over the last few years.  Ronald Reagan would be considered a liberal traitor to the newly-radicalized GOP.  Members of the Mainstream Press are simply too scared to report on this huge story, mainly because they fear repercussions from the GOP if they do. 

And that is why we have gridlock in Washington -- the Press is too scared to do its job.  Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein said it best last year when they wrote:

We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.

Amen -- but needless to say, Mann and Ornstein were, right on cue, crucified by the Radical Right for taking this position.  And that is why we get stuff like the aforementioned Milbank crap.

The Same Old Shitty Brand Of Tea

I guess this was bound to happen:

The South Florida Tea Party — the group that helped Marco Rubio launch his Senate bid and that hosted Donald Trump during his last flirtation with a presidential run — is shedding the words “tea party” as it undergoes a name change.

“We felt for branding reasons that we wanted to differentiate ourselves from certain organizations that have the name ‘tea party’ and we can’t control,” said Everett Wilkinson, leader of the organization that will now be called the National Liberty Federation.

None of this affects me, of course.  In fact, I don't think I've ever used the phrase "Tea Party," because any group stupid enough to initially call themselves "Tea-Baggers" deserves to keep such a name for all eternity.

Quote Of The Week

“There’s also a dark — a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the [Republican] Party. What I do mean by that? I mean by that is they still sort of look down on minorities.

"How can I evidence that? When I see a former governor say that the president is shuckin’ and jivin’, that’s a racial era slave term. When I see another former governor after the president’s first debate where he didn’t do very well, says that the president was lazy. He didn’t say he was slow, he was tired, he didn’t do well, he said he was lazy. Now, it may not mean anything to most Americans but to those of us who are African-Americans, the second word is shiftless and then there’s a third word that goes along with it.

"Birther, the whole Birther Movement. Why do senior Republican leaders tolerate this kind of discussion within the Party?”

- Colin Powell.

Hagel Controversy In A Nutshell

Hunter at Daily Kos pretty much sums it up:

The Democratic president needs a new secretary of defense. The president picks a Republican for the spot. The president then faces a "national security uproar" because the Republican he picked for that spot is not seen as Republican enough, with Republicans demanding the president pick someone who is more Republican.

I love it that Obama nominated a Republican who was critical of BushCo's Iraq Debacle.

Oh, and by the way, this is fucking hilarious:

On Monday’s “Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” political satirist Bill Maher mocked Trump’s offer to President Barack Obama and offered to donate $5 million to the charity of Trump’s choice if he would release his own birth certificate to prove The Donald was not the “spawn of his mother having sex with an orangutan.”

Trump’s lawyer accepted Maher’s offer and provided the proof. Now Trump is ready to collect. The real estate mogul told Calloway, “He made the offer… I accepted his offer and he owes me $ 5 million, which I am going to give to charity. If doesn’t pay the money we will probably sue him.”

OK, now repeat after me: Please God let this lawsuit happen -- Please God let this lawsuit happen -- Please God . . .