Tag: Conservative Values

Huckabee Signals GOP Will Repeal Ban Revoking Insurance Because of Pre-Existing Conditions

Jon Ponder

Here we have it, ladies and gentlemen, the GOP’s longstanding “compassionate conservatism” is over. Keep in mind, this cruel, heartless man is an ordained Southern Baptist preacher — and he said this at supposed conservative values convention:

According to Republican Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, that’s exactly right. People with pre-existing conditions, he explains are like houses that have already burned down.

“It sounds so good, and it’s such a warm message to say we’re not gonna deny anyone from a preexisting condition,” Huckabee explained at the Value Voters Summit today. “Look, I think that sounds terrific, but I want to ask you something from a common sense perspective. Suppose we applied that principle [to] our property insurance. And you can call your insurance agent and say, “I’d like to buy some insurance for my house.” He’d say, “Tell me about your house.” “Well sir, it burned down yesterday, but I’d like to insure it today.” And he’ll say “I’m sorry, but we can’t insure it after it’s already burned.” Well, no preexisting conditions.”

TeaPartyTracker Reflects the Crazy Back at Cha

Trish

Proclaiming, “A Watched Tea Party Never Boils,” teapartytracker.org has launched. Rumored to be backed by progressive hero George Soros, the site features instances of tea baggers doing what they do best: taking stands that don’t fit with reality and making weird, disjointed statements that make no sense, or as the site says, “Monitoring racism and other forms of extremism within the Tea Party movement.” Check out this video produced at the recent Million Moron March in Washington.

Rick Scott Is Running Against Barack Obama for Governor of Florida

Buck Banks

The Republican Party of Florida has tipped its hand and revealed its campaign strategy that will catapult Rick Scott into the governor’s mansion — simply recast the election from a choice between Scott and Democrat Alex Sink, and instead position Scott as running against President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

I know, it sounds unbelievable, but here it is in a press release sent Wednesday by RPOF Vice Chairman Debbie Cox-Roush, chair of the Hillsborough County (Tampa) Republican Party:

I am pleased to congratulate our Republican gubernatorial nominee Rick Scott. The stakes are high this election cycle and electing a Republican to the Governor’s Mansion is an important part of our mission to keep taxes low and fight for less government and more personal freedom.

I’m energized by Rick’s commitment to conservative values and am looking forward to working with him and contrasting his new ideas with Alex Sink’s record of support for Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

[…]

Separated at Birth: Florida Republican Party Chair Jim Greer and Springfield Chief of Police Clancy Wiggum

Trish
Wiggum and Greer: the resemblance is more than skin deep.
Wiggum and Greer: the resemblance is more than skin deep.

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.”

Other gems from Wiggum:

  • 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.

Star Mag: Palins Are Divorcing, Has Photos of 15 Year Old Daughter Boozing, Smoking Pot

Jon Ponder

The rumor that Facebook blogger Sarah Palin and her husband Todd were divorcing cropped around the first of August. As is typical of Palin — who unlike her conservative brethren appears to love paying fees to trial lawyers — she threatened to sue an Alaska blogger who first reported the story (by sending a process server to the kindergarten where the blogger worked, no less).

Now Star magazine is confirming that there is trouble in the marriage. The tabloid’s sources are a bit less than impeccable, however. They include Mercede Johnston, the sister of Levi Johnston, Bristol Palin’s baby-daddy, and an unnamed “Alaska insider.”

One interesting nugget: The Star claims that in its print edition, which is in supermarkets now, it has photos of Willow Palin, 15, drinking vodka and smoking pot at a party. In June, Palin turned a joke by David Letterman about Bristol Palin, 18 and, as noted, an unwed mother, getting knocked up by Alex Rodriguez into a five-day scandal by claiming Letterman was actually referring to Willow.

RPOF’s Greer Distorts Health Care, Abortion Facts

Buck Banks

jim_greer4

Besides being unrelentingly partisan and awfully casual with written English, Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer usually is pretty careful about what he says, even if he’s careless about how he says it. But yesterday he sent out a fund-raising e-mail that, to use the polite term, distorts the current debate over health care and its nasty little sub-issue, abortion.

Here’s what Greer wrote:

Friends,

We have all seen and heard countless news stories, television interviews and advertisements regarding President Obama’s plan for a government-run health care system. It’s hard to keep track of what the bill actually does, especially since most lawmakers, like President Obama, haven’t read the massive piece of legislation, and other leading Democrats, including Florida Gubernatorial Candidate Alex Sink, won’t take a position on it. But I read something today that is worth sharing.

Today the Associated Press reported that the health care plan currently supported by President Obama and the Democrats would allow for taxpayer funded abortions. As the father of four children, I can’t imagine living in a nation where citizens willfully allow their tax dollars to fund abortion. The fact that liberal lawmakers and media pundits have ignored this portion of the legislation is deeply disturbing and has reaffirmed my belief that we must join together to put a stop to it.

He then proceeds to solicit contributions to protect “our tax dollars from funding abortion.”

[…]

Republican Phone Prank Denies Citizens’ Voices

Buck Banks

As Jon so eloquently pointed out in the preceding post, the Republican Party is all about not allowing citizens to enter into a reasoned, informed conversation about health care reform. They prefer to shout reasonable people down, and that’s the point the Democratic National Committee was making with its “Enough of the Mob” video, released this morning.

Unfortunately, the RNC remains determined not to allow conversation on the issue. When callers dialed the RNC phone number given in the video, they were prompted to press 1 to speak to an RNC representative, but instead the RNC redirected those calls to the DNC’s telephone number.

DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse described the RNC’s redirection to CNN as a “neat trick”:

“The RNC is inciting angry mobs to shout out legitimate discussion at public events across the country and now they want to ignore people who deplore their tactics,” Woodhouse said. “Republicans don’t want to have a discussion about the future of health care reform — they want to shout out — and now completely ignore — anyone who disagrees with them.”

According to the Washington Independent, RNC Chair Michael Steele took full credit for the prank:

[This was in] response, said Steele, to the White House arrogantly blaming regular Americans “like my mother, like my sister” for the health care impasse.

“I thought it was a good idea,” Steele said. “Don’t sit there and think you’re going to direct a bunch of angry liberals to call the RNC when I know full well what that’s all about. I get the joke. My response was, talk to your own party, because they’re the ones ginning this up.”

Typically, the Republican Party remains unaccountable for its obstructionism and unaccounted for in the essential debate over health care.

Florida Republicans’ Grievance Committee Smells Like a Purge

Buck Banks
RPOF Chair Jim Greer maintains length, not girth, counts.
RPOF Chair Jim Greer maintains length, not girth, counts.

Not satisfied with losing a bunch of elections last November as well as a whole bunch of formerly loyal members from every level, the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) appears to be trying to finish the job through what looks from the outside like a purge of, gasp! — Libertarians. At least that’s what one of Trish’s correspondents alleged was happening last Friday.

That day the RPOF’s Grievance Committee met in Orlando to do something — it’s not clear exactly what, even after they explained it in another one of their famous press releases where every paragraph is quote-marked — that was so heinous that Chairman Jim Greer stayed far away from the meeting, geographically distancing himself from something that morally he couldn’t actually wipe off.

It’s worthwhile to note here that Greer was handpicked by Gov. Charlie “One Term Wonder” Crist to lead the state Republican Party. Both men are coming under fire for what seems to be a party that is rapidly becoming as irrelevant as Sarah Palin.

Let’s let the RPOF tell us what the Grievance Committee does, according to its chairman, Tony DiMatteo (superfluous quote marks retained):

“The Grievance Committee is comprised (sic) of members of the RPOF State Executive Committee. Our involvement with the RPOF is in a volunteer capacity. Grievances are a formal complaint from one member of the Republican Party of Florida’s county leadership structure to another member of the county leadership structure. All grievances originate at the county level and are filed with the State Party and then referred to the Grievance Committee.

[…]

Grading the RPOF’s Obama Report Card

Pensito Editors

As its lead-up to President Obama’s prime-time press conference Wednesday, the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) issued a report card on Obama’s performance to date. It’s reproduced below just as it was sent out in another of the RPOF’s press releases, or as we like to think of them, failed attempts at snark.

Read the report card, then see how we graded the graders below.

obama_report_card

Here’s how we graded the RPOF’s performance:

SUBJECT: Statistics. COMMENTS: RPOF assessed Mr. Obama’s math skills by using unattributed statistics to make its point, and for extra credit, threw in the technique of using truncated statistics by starting the clock on job loss (and economic troubles in general) on Jan. 20, 2009. In its health assessment the RPOF attributes its statistics to bolster its illogical argument. In assessing his finance performance, the RPOF eschews statistics completely — a masterful use of the dismal science. There are lies, damned lies and statistics, and nobody lies as well as the Republican Party. GRADE: A+.

SUBJECT: Rhetoric. COMMENTS: While assessing Mr. Obama’s history performance, the RPOF deftly moved the focus from his domestic cabinet-level “czar” appointments to connect them to the spread of communism across Europe in the 20th century. In dwelling on the easily ridiculed word, “czar” and ignoring the fact that Obama is not the first president to appoint them, they employ a cheap shot. Such skillful use of what appears on the surface to be logic deserves the highest marks. GRADE: A+

SUBJECT: Civics. COMMENTS: By portraying Mr. Obama as never missing a basket when playing basketball while being totally uninformed about North Korea, the RPOF uses two tried and true racist assumptions about African Americans — they are intellectually inferior, yet physically superior, to whites. For the added underlying message that Obama’s race and inexperience pose a threat to national security by invoking the specter of North Korea, they get extra credit. GRADE: A++.

SUBJECT: English. COMMENTS: The RPOF, FOX News and most talk radio hosts fail to understand usage, and don’t know when to employ “Democrat” versus “Democratic.” We suspect they’re misusing “Democrat” on purpose, a practice that began recently under President Bush, but as Jon noted, goes back at least to Sen. Joseph McCarthy. For pushing the envelope of the English language by delving deeply into reverse semiotics and the power of thematic repetition, as well as for their robust explorations into the tenuous relationship between truth and meaning, the RPOF deserved an A, but turned in a term paper late. GRADE: B.