Tag: Tea Baggers
Take a Break, Republicans
Tonight the Republican candidates had their second presidential debate in less than a week, and I was excited as a kid in a candy store who spent three hours in that same candy store last Wednesday.
Stephen Colbert, commenting on yet another Republican debate during his show, The Colbert Report
$300 That Will Never Be Claimed
Rumor: #CNNteaparty cameramen who find non-white or under 30 debate audience members get $300 bonus per shot.
Tweet posted by @ProgressFlorida during Sept. 12 Republican debate in Tampa
Saving America From Itself
A lot of hypotheticals made the rounds after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. “What would you do if” questions were a way to process all the horror, as were scenarios of how to go forward.
My boss back then was a young Jewish woman, raised by her Orthodox rabbi grandfather. She had spent time in Israel, where she said the kind of invasive security procedures that eventually became codified as the Patriot Act were necessary to protect the country. “But if it isn’t America after you’re done protecting it,” I asked, “what’s the point?”
At its core, our country changed. The Tea Party of the Flies and its, “There’s not enough for everyone so I’m gonna get mine” scarcity mind-set with racist, homophobic, fundamentalist undertones took hold.
Ten years later, I still wonder about the answer to that question. When Bush suggested that average Americans could best defeat terrorism by going shopping, we responded. We flooded sport utility vehicle show rooms, and gawked as Hummers and Lincoln Navigators attempted to squeeze into parking spots like paunchy football coaches trying to wear their high school uniforms. We distracted ourselves with the antics of second-rate celebrities as they bounced from sex tapes to drug binges to rehab and back. We went along with invasions, with shock and awe, with rigged videos of statues falling and blond female service members being rescued. We were at war but we were never quite sure with whom: Insurgents? Dead-enders? Enemy combatants?
Sorry, Rick, Galileo Was Not ‘Outvoted’ by Other Scientists
[Although] Perry’s bold (reckless?) commitment to attacking Social Security and Romney’s counter-parry were the most important political dynamics of the encounter, what really set our heads spinning was the Texan’s invocation of Galileo, or, as they refer to him in Austin, “that sumbitch heliocentrist.”
As every school kid knows, Galileo’s insistence that the earth revolves around the sun enraged the big brains of the Catholic Church and, in 1615, the Roman Inquisition started to hound him. After he published his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems — seen as an attack on Pope Urban VIII — he was tried and found “vehemently suspect of heresy,” being finally forced to recant, spending the rest of his life under house arrest.
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Beginning to Wonder If Republicans Are Right About the Economy?
We’re taking the name of this post at Truth-Out.org, “Three Charts to Email to Your Right-Wing Brother-In-Law,” as encouragement to share. And since these graphs appeal to our love of accuracy, we will do just that.
For starters, we have the amount that federal spending has increased under Pres. Obama (a barely cost-of-living equivalent 7.2 percent) compared to how much it increased under the two off-the-books wars and one unfunded prescription drug mandate man, Pres. Bush (a whopping 88 percent). Truth-Out noted that the figures do not include recent budget cuts.
But wait, there’s more reality-based number crunching ahead.
Who’s Worse, Rick Perry or Rick Scott? You Decide
Vote early and often.
What Was in Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s Conveniently Deleted Emails?
From the moment Floridians heard that the penalties for Gov. Rick Scott (Tea/GOP) “losing” emails sent to and from his transition team ranged from a $500 fine to IMPEACHMENT (yeah, baby!), the story grabbed our attention in the way a big, juicy, limping mouse claims the attention of a cat on a diet.
Now Florida Democrats are starting to have fun with that mouse, launching the Rick Scott Email Recovery Fund to help track down the missing missives.
Here’s what happened. Scott, as is his wont, privatized communication handling during the two months after he bought the election and before he was inaugurated. During this time, he was assembling his cabinet and staff, and determining his administration’s agenda. Almost of these emails concerning the public’s business were deleted in mid-January, immediately after Scott took office.
That’s the short version. The long version has us smelling a rat.
FOX Begrudges the Poor Their Refrigerators
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| World of Class Warfare – The Poor’s Free Ride Is Over | ||||
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Here is another brilliant summation from Jon Stewart, this one on Republican attempts to shift more of the taxation burden to the middle and poor classes, and keep the rich fat and happy. Hopefully more people will begin to understand that we are being played like violins by the ultra-rich, who know that as long as we buy into the fiction that it’s us (the struggling middle class) versus them (the struggling poor), the rich win.
