Verbatim
“Obama’s kids-speech starts w a Stalin quote. Just kiddin’. Reading it now. A good pep talk: references to Harry Potter and Michael Jordan”
— Tweet from David Corn, Washington editor of Mother Jones magazine and Politics Daily
Month: September 2009
Separated at Birth: Florida Republican Party Chair Jim Greer and Springfield Chief of Police Clancy Wiggum
We noticed the resemblance between The Simpsons’ Mr. Burns and former Vice President Dick Cheney a long time ago. But it wasn’t until Jim Greer, the chair of the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF), started the interview circuit that we figured out where we’d seen him before. The porcine Mr. Greer used a ridiculous — and now largely disavowed by other Republicans — claim that the president is trying to indoctrinate school children into a socialist regime by urging them to study and stay in school as a way of deflecting criticism of his use of donor money here in Florida.
The porcine Mr. Greer reminds us of someone
In using the “I know I am but what about you” defense, Greer reminded us of Springfield’s chief of police, Clancy Wiggum, who never seems to be responsible for any of the town’s egregious law enforcement debacles. Wiggum once broadcast this warning, which was about as helpful as most of the things Jim Greer says: “This is Papa Bear. Put out an APB for a male suspect, driving a…car of some sort, heading in the direction of, uh, you know, that place that sells chili. Suspect is hatless. Repeat, hatless.”
- Oh, sure. We’d all love some real friends, Marge. But what are the odds of that happening?
- I hope this has taught you kids a lesson: kids never learn.
- Can’t you people take the law into your own hands? I mean, we can’t be policing the entire city!
Greer’s tortured missives are as logically challenged as Wiggum’s. This is the actual first tenet of “GOP Principles” on the RPOF’s web site:
I Believe… The proper function of government is to do for the people those things that have to be done but cannot be done, or cannot be done as well, by individuals, and that the most effective government is government closest to the people.
The Wiggumisms continue in the same document:
I Believe… In equal right, equal justice and equal opportunity for all, regardless of race, creed, age, sex or national origin.
After all, who needs more than one right anyway? I mean you can only use one at a time. But the best Republican/Wiggumian belief, in 2009, has to be this one:
I Believe… The free enterprise and the encouragement of individual initiative and incentive have given this nation an economic system second to none.
Case closed.
Which of These Stories Will Get the Most Play? We’re Betting on the Third One
Three huge news stories greeted Floridians this morning.
First we found out what Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) was doing up in Washington all this time. We knew he wasn’t involved with efforts to benefit Florida but we weren’t sure how he was filling the time, other than chairing the Republican National Committee. Now, thanks to Scott Hiaasen at the Miami Herald, we know.
Both the current and future occupants of Florida’s junior Senate seat are corrupt, partisan double-dealers who have made personal fortunes helping themselves to public money
Sen. Mel Martinez’s office repeatedly intervened in a 2007 legal dispute between the Defense Department and a company owned by a top Republican fundraiser who is now at the center of a campaign-finance investigation…
In a series of phone calls and e-mails, a Martinez aide urged Pentagon contract officers to seek a “fair resolution” to $14 million in contract claims sought by the International Oil Trading Co., a fuel-supply company co-owned by Harry Sargeant III of Boca Raton.
[IOTC is one of the top fuel suppliers to American forces in Iraq, earning more than $1.4 billion, records show. Following a congressional inquiry last year, U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., accused Sargeant’s company of “war profiteering” and asked the Pentagon to investigate IOTC’s contracts.]
At one point, Pentagon officials told the senator’s office it was “not appropriate” to discuss any settlements while the company’s lawsuit was pending in court, records show.
As Martinez’s staffer was lobbying the Pentagon, Sargeant and his wife donated $50,000 to the Republican National Committee — then headed by Martinez. At the time, Sargeant was the finance chairman of the Republican Party of Florida…
Sargeant’s company ultimately received $3.2 million from the Defense Department — settling claims the Pentagon had initially denied entirely.
Sargeant’s name might ring a bell.
Tea-Bagger Spam: Agree or Delete – Do You Believe in God?
An occasional series in which we post the contents of propaganda email being circulated by our friends in the conservative minority.
Interestingly, the nationwide murder rate has been falling since 2005, around the time that this email went into circulation.
Our right-wing circulating email for today is a bit of agitprop themed around the victimization of Christians by the predominant secular culture.
The writer bemoans the success, limited as it has been, of strict constitutionalists and non-religious people in removing God from the national symbology. At one point, the writer even posits that the murder rate would go down if only Americans returned to saying “so help me, God” before giving sworn testimony.
A vintage piece from 2005, here is “Agree or Delete”:
I don’t care how many times this comes to my e-mail…..I will continue to pass it on…..I am tired of the minority getting their way………………………
May all your days be happy……
AGREE OR DELETE
If You Choose To Delete You Are Part Of The Problem
Me? I’m Passing It On.
It seems to get worse daily.
This is by a daughter of a murdered couple in Raytown, MO, who had a Bible and Bookstore on 63rd street.
Wait! Wasn’t Raytown the setting for the Vicky Lawrence sitcom, “Mama’s Family?” Clever. Know your audience.
GOP Pusher of Obama School Indoctrination Lie Also Pushes Republican Views at School Kids
It’s one thing to lie but quite another when the man who falsely accuses the president of the United States of seeking to indoctrinate school kids into liberal politics is known back home as a indoctrinator of school kids into the GOP.
Conservative talk-show host Joe Scarborough labeled Greer’s comments “insane talk.”
That’s exactly the situation we have with Jim Greer, the chairman of the Florida GOP, according to Scott Maxwell, a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel:
There once was a political operative who loved to tell crowds he had a simple way of explaining to children the difference between Republicans and Democrats.
“Republicans get up and go to work,” he would tell his son. “Democrats get up and go down to the mailbox to get their checks.”
This man not only talked to his son about Republican values, he went into public-school classrooms and talked about them as well.
That man is Jim Greer — the same Jim Greer who, as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, just threw a nationwide hissy fit, claiming that the classroom is no place for politics and Barack Obama’s “indoctrination.”
Maxwell called Greer to discuss this apparent hypocrisy, but as is typical of the Republican hypocrites of our era, Greer sees a big difference in his screwing around with the minds of children and what — without even having read the president’s speech, of course — he called Pres. Obama’s attempts to spread “liberal lies”:
Candidate Tweets the Republican View on Obama School Speech: ‘Hell Yes, We’re Using a Double Standard’
The other Republican running for the same Senate seat as Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is as rightwing as they come. But don’t take my word for it, take his. Former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio tweeted the following message: “I have no problem with President giving political speech to kids……..if his name is REAGAN!”
In a personality contest with Crist, I would vote for Rubio hands-down. There’s just something about being what you are that Crist will never understand or approach. And even if Rubio is to the right of the gipper himself, at least he’s got a sense of humor. At least, I think he’s being ironic here…
Franken Goes All Stuart Smalley on Tea Baggers
The title of the video, “Franken Talks Down Angry Mob,” might be a bit of an exaggeration, since, as someone on facebook said, it’s more of a “cranky crowd.” But Al does show that if you just hang in and refuse to get off-message (and maybe bore your listeners a bit), you can prevail. At least you can in Minnesota. In Florida, where the Republicans have all lost their minds, maybe not so much.
Quote du Jour
Now, Sergey (Brin, Google co-founder) argues that the correct thing to do is to just connect it straight to your brain. In other words, you know, wire it into your head. And so we joke about this and said we have not quite figured out what that problem looks like. .… But that would solve the problem. In other words, if we just — if you had the thought and we knew what you meant, we could run it and we could run it in parallel. …. But we don’t exactly have all the medical clinics necessary to test brain insertion.
— Google CEO Eric Schmidt, on the future of search.
— Google CEO Eric Schmidt, on the future of search.
Quote du Jour
Everyone deserves a second chance.
— Ashely Dupre, writing on her blog about her former client, Eliot Spitzer.
The State of the Health Care “Debate”
You can only admire the courage and determination of this woman to get through her statement despite the disgusting, goonish bullying of the mindless idiots in the crowd. I hope her representative got the message.
