Bill O'Reilly Displays His Intense Hatred for Gay People

Watch the Radicalized Right have a meltdown over the Rainbow White House:



Charlie Cook: "Republicans need to do some soul-searching about their future and their relationships with voters of generations to come. Vibrant parties change with the times, adapt themselves to changing conditions and circumstances. Maybe this past week will help the GOP do this."

Or maybe it won't.

Quote of the Week

"[Y]ou might wonder why a law that works so well and does so much good is the object of so much political venom — venom that is, by the way, on full display in Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion, with its rants against “interpretive jiggery-pokery.” But what conservatives have always feared about health reform is the possibility that it might succeed, and in so doing remind voters that sometimes government action can improve ordinary Americans’ lives.

"That’s why the right went all out to destroy the Clinton health plan in 1993, and tried to do the same to the Affordable Care Act. But Obamacare has survived, it’s here, and it’s working. The great conservative nightmare has come true. And it’s a beautiful thing."

- Paul Krugman.

If you think Krugman's "great conservative nightmare" language is a bit over the top, just look at what conservative Bill Kristol wrote back in 1993 when he argued in a memo that health care reform would be a political disaster for the GOP.

Kristol wrote over two decades ago that a successful Clinton health care bill would "relegitimize middle-class dependence for 'security' on government spending and regulation" and would "revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests."

Paul Krugman and Bill Kristol actually agree on something. Who'da thunk it?

If You Are a Republican And Are Looking To Move To Another Country . . .

. . . well, I guess I couldn't blame you.

As I recently wrote, what a horrible week for the GOP. Yesterday, the one person Republicans hate the most -- President Obama -- won a huge victory on his health care reform law, cementing his legacy and handing the GOP a demoralizing defeat.  Radical right-wingers are watching in horror this week as confederate flags come down across the country.  And as if to add insult to injury, the Supreme Court upheld gay marriage this morning.

Well, all is not lost, Republicans. As I posted last year, there is a place for folks like you who no longer feel comfortable here in the United States. It's a place where they hate gay people, a place where government refuses to lift a finger to help its citizens acquire health care, a place without abortion, and yes, a place where the free market reigns supreme without any pesky regulations to hold it down.

That place is Ghana, and it sounds like a Republican paradise:

Conservative gun lobbyist Larry Pratt recommended during a recent radio broadcast that U.S. blacks could get a better “attitude” if they paid attention to “Africans from Africa” who he said were more “happy.”

On the Gun Owner’s News Hour show last month, American Thinker writer Selwyn Duke told Pratt, who is the executive director of Gun Owners of America, in a shocked tone that he had discovered that the best Catholic priests were from Africa.

“Africa! Intelligent Men with PhDs,” Duke noted. “And generally the African from Africa is a very pro-American person, a very happy person,” Pratt opined. “I know several. And they always just happy with a joke, pleasant smile on their face. And they clearly don’t identify with the surliness that’s all too frequently the attitude of their fellow African-Americans here.”

“And they’re very conservative politically,” he continued. “The country of Ghana, it’s still illegal to commit an abortion, it’s illegal to be a homosexual. Very conservative social laws and very free market oriented as well.”  Duke agreed and pointed out that the types of Africans that could afford to come to the U.S. were of “a better stripe.”

Republicans who now hate America more than ever should relocate to Ghana immediately.  As I wrote last year:

The only drawback for the Radical Right is that Ghana is full of black people.  But, according to Pratt, they are happier, more intelligent, less surly black people, so that should be okay, right?

Have a nice trip, folks. Please forget to write.

CORRECTION:  Well, you better stop packing your bags, Republicans.  I wrote above that the government of Ghana "refuses to lift a finger to help its citizens acquire health care."  That statement was not factual.  Ghana, it turns out, has a universal health care system in place.  I apologize for the error.

Needless To Say, I'm Watching Fox News Right Now

What a horrible week for Republicans.  Confederate flags are coming down all over the country, and the GOP just lost its bullshit Obamacare lawsuit. The America-hating pieces of shit at Fox News are beside themselves in anger.  I love it.

Although I predicted this exact result in the Supreme Court, I also held out hope that I would be wrong and that the Court would strike down the Obamacare subsidies for the folks living in states relying on the federal marketplace.  The resulting shit-storm within the GOP would have been a glorious thing to behold. Oh well.  Republicans can act out as much as they want right now over this decision, but the bottom line is that they really dodged a political bullet here.

The one thing that is undoubtedly enraging Republicans the most is that Obama won big today.  I think this whole lawsuit was more about the GOP's intense hatred for America's first Black president than anything else.

The Push-Back Begins . . . (Updated)

Here we go:

Some Spartanburg County lawmakers support removing the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds, but state Sen. Lee Bright, R-Spartanburg, characterized the movement to remove it and other Confederate monuments as a “Stalinist Purge.”

Shortly before Gov. Nikki Haley called on lawmakers to work together to have the flag removed, Bright said the flag doesn't symbolize hate to him but instead recognizes those who had fought with honor during the Civil War. People throughout history have misused symbols, and the Confederate battle flag is not an exception, Bright said. Just because a symbol may be abused doesn't mean it should be banned, he said.

Other radical right wingers are starting to come out of the woodwork to criticize Gov. Haley's call to take down the flag.  One conservative tweeted yesterday: "I hope the voters remember this and send her ass packing." Republican Alabama Rep. Gary Palmer stated yesterday that calls to remove the flag came from "people that have an agenda seeking to exploit a tragedy," and he concluded: "to me, that’s beyond contempt."

Even some Republicans who now support the effort to remove the flag are saying that the flag's symbolism was co-opted by a bunch of radical racists.  Of course, such an attempt to re-write history is complete bullshit.

John Oliver said it best the other night when he responded to Sen. Lindsey Graham's statement that the confederate flag has been used by some folks "in a racist way"  Oliver's response:

"Yeah, it has -- in fact, I believe the first time the confederate flag was used in a racist way was the exact second they finish sewing the very first one -- it was right around that time."

Anyway, I stand by my statement that South Carolina will not take that flag down. The racists in South Carolina who designed the original "compromise" to take the flag off the capitol dome -- and move it to an even more prominent place in front of the statehouse -- anticipated that future attempts would be made to take the flag down entirely.  And that is why they made it very hard to do so: it would require a two-thirds vote from both houses of the General Assembly.

Good luck with that.

UPDATE:  Go here to read more on why the flag will not be coming down.  Read this as well.

Why All The Talk Of Taking Down The Treason Flag Is Complete Horse-Shit

After I posted on Friday that there is no way South Carolina would take down the confederate flag currently flying in front of its statehouse, I noticed a lot of movement on the issue.  One Republican assemblyman even stated that he would introduce a bill in December to take the flag down.

Well, it's easy to engage in such talk when last week's massacre is still fresh in everyone's memory.  But I guarantee you that once the shock of the neo-confederate terrorist act starts to wear off, so will the fervor surrounding the flag.  Why do I say this?  Because it's South Carolina we are talking about.

One need look no further than a few feet away from where that flag currently waves. Right next to that fucking flag pole is a monument honoring terrorist Ben Tillman.  As Nancy LeTourneau at Washington Monthly recently noted, an inscription on that monument honors Tillman's “life of service and achievement … In the home loving and loyal, to the state steadfast and true for the nation.” But as Will Moredock notes here, Tillman was an evil, hate-filled asshole:

Ben Tillman’s long and bloody public career began in 1876 at what would ultimately be called the Hamburg Massacre.

The then 29-year-old Tillman led the members of the Sweetwater Sabre Club, a.k.a. the Edgefield Redshits, against a local militia group, all black. Several African-American militia men were killed in a pitched battle with red-shirt-wearing white terrorists. After the militia surrendered, five of them were called out by name and executed. A few weeks later, when vigilantes captured a black state senator named Simon Coker, Tillman was present when two of his men executed the prisoner while he was on his knees praying.

Later, the terrorist leader Tillman explained his intentions on that fateful July 8 day: “It had been the settled purpose of the leading white men of Edgefield to seize the first opportunity that the Negroes might offer them to provoke a riot and teach the negroes a lesson; as it was generally believed that nothing but bloodshed and a good deal of it could answer the purpose of redeeming the state from Negro and carpetbag rule.” In a 1909 speech at a Red Shirt reunion in Anderson, Tillman reiterated this point, noting that he believed in “terrorizing the Negroes at the first opportunity by letting them provoke trouble and then having the whites demonstrate their superiority by killing as many of them as was justifiable.”

He added, “That we have good government now is due entirely to the fact that Red Shirt men of 1876 did all and dared all that was necessary to rescue South Carolina from the rule of the alien, the traitor, and the semi-barbarous negroes.”

If this guy is so beloved in South Carolina that they gave him a monument in front of the state house, does anyone think the state will make any legitimate effort to remove the confederate flag from the premises? Not bloody likely, particularly given that President Obama said the other day that the flag should be taken down and put in a museum.  I suspect most Republicans in the South Carolina General Assembly will opposed the flag's removal on that basis alone -- they are sure the hell not going to let a some uppity Black man tell them what to do.

Indeed, I expect to soon see at least one bill in front of the General Assembly requiring that the height of the flag pole be increased and the monument honoring Terrorist Tillman be made larger. And why do I think that will happen? Because it's South Carolina!

South Carolina's Confederate Flag Quandary

Jon Stewart, in last night's excellent Daily Show monologue, told his audience that he had no jokes for them in the wake of the recent terrorist attack on the Black Church in South Carolina. I agree that it's pretty hard to find anything funny about nine people being gunned down in a place of worship by a white supremacist.

But I have to admit that there is one thing I find somewhat hilarious about all this, and that is the Catch-22 South Carolina currently finds itself in due to its long love affair with the fucking confederate flag:

After Dylann Storm Roof allegedly shot up an AME church in Charleston, S.C., killing nine people, two flags were lowered more than 100 miles away in Columbia, the state’s capital. Atop the South Carolina State House, the U.S. flag and South Carolina’s palmetto flag flew at half-staff as the manhunt for Roof ended with his capture in North Carolina and prayer vigils were planned. The show of respect would have been appropriate even if one of the state legislature’s own — state senator Clementa C. Pinckney — had not died in the attack.

But a third flag within view of the State House — the Confederate stars and bars — flew as high and as proud as ever, flapping in the breeze on a sunny day.  This looked bad.

Fucking-A it looks bad, particularly given that the shooter in question displays a confederate flag license plate on his vehicle.  But there is not a goddam thing South Carolina can do about it. The flag will have to stay right where it it, flying proudly in the racist breeze, no matter how bad it looks.  And that's what I find hilarious.

They certainly can't take it down because that would be an admission that the flag is in fact racist, something that its advocates strongly deny. Even if the governor thought it was a good idea to take it down, she couldn't do it because "only the General Assembly can do that," and it would require a 2/3rd vote by the Assembly to do so. But I doubt Gov. Haley would want to remove the flag, My understanding is that any politician who openly advocates removal pays a heavy political price.

Yes, that flag is there to stay, particularly given that there are no doubt a lot of people in South Carolina who think that now -- i.e., immediately after nine Negroes have been gunned down in cold blood -- is the best time to have that rag flying because they do indeed view the confederate flag as a symbol of white supremacy.  We know that the gunman undoubtedly feels that way, and does anyone out there really think he's the only person in that state who does?

No doubt there are a good number of South Carolinians who want the flag to remain right where it is in order to show their support for what Dylan Storm Roof did the other day. After all, the flag "was first raised over the Capitol in 1962, largely to express defiance of the civil rights movement." Killing Black Folk is certainly one way to express such defiance.

Why not compromise and fly the flag at half-mast you ask? Well, they can't do that  because it is not on a pulley system, but is "held in place by a padlock."  I have no doubt that a chain also helps secure the flag. After all, a padlock isn't much good without a chain. Perhaps it is a chain that was actually used on slaves back in "the good old days."

That wouldn't surprise me one bit.

The Real Reason Republicans Hate Obamacare . . .

From Egberto Willies at Daily Kos:

Republicans have had over five years to come up with something different that could reduce the deficit, provide health care, and remain completely private. The reason they cannot is that Obamacare used Republican tenets to build Obamacare, a private-based system. Had the president implemented Medicare for all (single payer) by getting rid of insurance companies that continue to skim up to 20 percent of premiums for false overhead and profits, they could demagogue and attempt to change it to a more inefficient system. That was the genius of Obamacare. It was built on the Conservative Heritage Foundation principles that most Republicans once supported along with a dose of progressive middle-class protections.

Willies' post also contains a video of Democratic Congressman Sander Levin's excellent response to Paul Ryan's bullshit attack on the ACA. Levin summed it all up with this line explaining the real reason the GOP is mad at Obamacare: "Your frustration is millions and millions and millions of people are benefiting, and have health care when they did not before."

I admittedly do not pray all that much, but I am praying that the Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court side with the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell and strike down the Obamacare subsidies for the folks living in states relying on the federal marketplace. Such a ruling would put the turd squarely in the pocket of the Republican-controlled Congress because it would force the GOP to make an effort to preserve health coverage for the millions who stand to lose it, most of whom reside in Red States.  I would really enjoy watching something like that unfold.

But I don't think that will happen.  Chief Justice Roberts had the chance to kill Obamacare while it was still in the crib, and he didn't pull the trigger.  I doubt he'll do it now, given how many millions of people would be hurt by such a ruling.  And I doubt Justice Kennedy would vote to strike down the subsidies, so I am predicting a 6-3 decision with Roberts and Kennedy siding with the liberals.

But I could be wrong, and I hope that I am.  If the Court does pull the trigger, then the resulting shit-storm within the GOP ranks would be a thing of beauty.

We're Gonna Miss You, Jon . . .

Yet another Iraq War Criminal is trying to re-write history, and Stewart is having none of it:

This Is The Kind Of Shit That Happens When You Listen To An America-Hating Idiot

Via Steve Benen:

As regular readers may recall, [Grover] Norquist is an anti-tax crusader who's convinced all kinds of GOP policymakers to sign something known as "the pledge" - in order to get ahead in their party, Republicans agree in writing never to support raising any tax on anyone by any amount for any reason.

But occasionally, far-right policymakers discover that the mindless, knee-jerk commitment stands in the way of actual governance in the real world. Louisiana's Republican-dominated state government, for example, is facing an enormous budget crisis, caused in part by Gov. Bobby Jindal's (R) tax breaks. Now the state can't get its fiscal house in order, and as TPM reported, it's asking Norquist to give Louisiana a break.

I can't help but laugh when I read stuff like this.  Of course, Norquist told the Louisiana Republicans to go fuck themselves, and some pretty hilarious blow-back has ensued.  As Benen notes, The Times-Picayune -- in slamming Jindal -- called Norquist "Louisiana's unelected governor," and one observer quipped:  “With all due respect to Grover Norquist, this is like begging your dealer for permission to go clean.”

Louisiana isn't the only state suffering from the effects of Republican fiscal malfeasance.  Radical right winger Sam Brownback is currently running Kansas into the ground with all his gubmint-hating fuckery.

But cheer up, Louisiana and Kansas -- I know things are tough now, but your suffering will help show the rest of the country once and for all that Republicans and their policies are bad for America.