Year: 2012

Paul Supporters Reach New Low in Anti-Huntsman Ad

Trish

Words can’t adequately describe the hot mess of racism and xenophobia that is this anti Jon Huntsman ad, so we provided it here so you could see for yourself. It is, in fact, so bad that some Paulestinians claim it was actually made as part of a conspiracy on Huntsman’s part to make Paul and his nutty devotees look bad. Yes, there’s nothing that makes serial conspiracy buffs look more legitimate than allegations of a new conspiracy. Except there is no evidence in this case that anyone but Ronulans are to blame.

Huntsman has one adopted daughter from China and another from India, both of whom were abandoned as babies.

Ron Paul is zealously in favor of outlawing abortion in all cases, despite his assertion that outside of women’s reproductive decisions, government should stay out of people’s lives.

The ad questions Huntsman’s values but it looks like those of Paul and his believers are the ones in need of clarification. If women are forced to take unwanted and accidental pregnancies to term, shouldn’t adopting the resulting abandoned children be considered a virtue — if not an obligation?

How closely Paul is linked to NHLiberty4Paul, the group that produced the ad, is not known. The candidate himself claims, as with the newsletter he published that printed racist ravings, to know nothing about the matter. Paul finds himself at the mercy of unhinged folks more often than the starlet in a horror film.

Obama Thwarts GOP Political Hostage-Taking with Recess Appointment of Richard Cordray to Head Consumer Watchdog Agency

Jon Ponder
Pres. Obama announces nomination of Richard Cordray, right, with Elizabeth Warren, left, looking on
Pres. Obama announces nomination of Richard Cordray, right, with Elizabeth Warren, left, looking on

If you’re just checking in on Washington politics after the holidays and the Iowa caucuses, you’re likely hearing that Republicans in Congress and their throught-masters at Fox are in a spittle-spewing rage over Pres. Obama’s recess appointment of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Board, or CFPB, watchdog agency.

After successfully blocking the nomination of Elizabeth Warren, the consumer advocate and Harvard professor who had been appointed to set up the CFPB — and who is now running for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts — last year, Senate Republicans tried to stop Cordray’s appointment during the current recess by briefly gaveling the Senate in and out of pro forma sessions every day. Obama went around this and appointed Cordray by using a precedent set by Republican Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, who, in 1903, filled more than 160 administration positions while the Senate was on break for less than a day.

Republicans were holding the Cordray nomination hostage in order to extort a major overhaul of the laws that would, in essence, defang the watchdog agency. The Republicans’ objective was to ensure that their corporate sponsors in the financial industry would be able to continue to rip off consumers, including the constituents of these hostage-taking Republicans senators, legally, as they had been when Republicans controlled Congress, the Judiciary and Executive branches during the Bush administration.

Under the sway of their minority tea-bagger base, Republicans used political extortion multiple times last year to push the national and world economy to the brink of collapse. Their motives then were simply to create havoc. The extortion over the Warren and Cordray nominations has a different goal, says Jonathan Chait:

[…]