Month: March 2011

Tea Party Totalitarianism in Maine: Governor Has Labor History Mural Removed

Jon Ponder
First section of mural, others posted below the fold
First section of mural, others posted below the fold

This is how authoritarians behave:

A mural depicting vignettes of state and national labor history was removed over the weekend from Maine’s Labor Department headquarters in Augusta, Gov. Paul LePage’s office said Monday morning.

The 11-panel mural that includes images of worker strikes and “Rosie the Riveter” was moved into a storage facility over the weekend, said Dan Demeritt, the governor’s director of communications and legislative affairs. It will be kept in storage until it can be “transfer[red] to a more appropriate venue,” he confirmed to POLITICO.

Here’s how their spokespeople sound when they try to justify Dear Leader’s censorship:

[…]

Gingrich Favorability Drops 23 Points

Jon Ponder

-31

Drop in percentage points of voters’ favorable opinion of Newt Gingrich over the past two years. According to Public Policy Polling, Gingrich’s favorability in April 2009 was -8 or 36/44. Today it’s 26/57, representing a 23 point drop. “His net drop has been 20 points with Democrats, 25 points with Republicans, and 33 points with independents,” according to PPP.

Further Proof There Is No Logical Reason to Keep Guantanamo Open

Buck Banks

As I was reading the Miami Herald yesterday, my attention was arrested by this headline: Seminole leader demands Obama apology. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the Prez had done to piss off the Seminoles, so I read on. Indeed, I had to read the article twice before I fully understood it.

Seems the Seminoles are upset that some military lawyers were using them as an example of “enemy combatants” to defend a military commission’s conviction of Osama bin Laden’s media secretary. These hot-shot lawyers went all the way back to 1817 to find a precedent, and man, it’s a doozy:

The court document submitted by three senior military attorneys described the Seminoles in 1817 and 1818 as unlawfully resisting Gen. Andrew Jackson’s invasion of then-Spanish Florida, a cross-border incursion designed in part to stop Georgia’s slaves from escaping to freedom.

Jackson ordered two British merchants who were in Florida at the time to face military trials for helping the Seminoles and slaves — the source of the legal precedent for the authority of the Guantánamo war court to capture and put on trial foreign men accused of aiding the enemy in another country.

The two British men were executed.

I can see why the Indians are angry.

[…]

Trump Stakes Out Birther Niche

Buck Banks

They give you a certificate of live birth which anybody can get. Just walk into the hospital. This guy either has a birth certificate or he doesn’t. I didn’t think it was such a big deal, but I will tell you, it is turning out to be a very big deal. People are calling me from all over saying please don’t give up on this issue. If you weren’t born in this country, you cannot be President. You have no doctors that remember, you have no nurses — this is the President of the United States — that remember. Why can’t he produce a birth certificate? I brought it up just routinely, and all of a sudden, a lot of facts are emerging and I’m starting to wonder myself whether he was born in this country.

— Donald Trump, laying out his position as THE birther candidate for president.

‘Styrofoam Dan’ Lungren Could Pay a Price for Killing Capitol Compostable Program

Jon Ponder
photo-styrofoam-dan-landfill
Garbage dump in metro D.C. area; inset: Rep. "Styrofoam Dan" Lungren, R-Calif

It has only been about three months since Republicans took control of the House and there are already signs that voter remorse is setting in.

“This is a case of the Republicans being spiteful and stupid,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.)

The reason for this is clear. Republicans won the House by promising to focus on fixing the economy and produce “jobs, jobs, jobs.” Not only have they broken those promises — they haven’t even bothered to schedule a hearing on employment — they passed $61 billion in budget cuts that conservative economic experts predict would kill about 1 million jobs and stall or reverse recovery from the Bush recession.

Otherwise, all the GOP has done is waste time on the taxpayers’ dime with a series of gimmicks. They read the Constitution out loud (and bungled even that). They voted to repeal of health-care reform even though they knew it had no chance of becoming law and have yet to utter a peep about the replacement bill they promised. And they passed a resolution to encourage placing “In God We Trust” signs on all 9,000 federal buildings.

Add to that list of gimmicks their cynical decision to reverse part of the Democrats’ program to make the Capitol Building more energy efficient:

[…]

Traveling Doesn’t Boost Palin

Trish

12%

Portion of likely Republican primary voters who support Sarah Palin, as of March. In January, 19% said they would vote for Palin. Meanwhile, 5% support Michele Bachmann and 1% wrote in Donald Trump as their preferred candidate. The poll indicates that Palin’s Israel trip, wherein she claimed to fly the Israeli flag in both her home and her office, failed to make her look more presidential.