Tag Archives: Republicans

Restrictions Could Keep Five Million Traditionally Democratic Voters From The Polls In 2012

This is why the GOP is pushing all these new “voter” initiatives in so many states.

It’s a coordinated effort  to deny people the right to vote.

Republicans know they only win as long as turnout is low.  They also know the demographic trends are against them.  Therefore, their goal is to drive down turnout and find ways to disenfranchise groups of people who traditionally vote Democratic.

I’m afraid we’ll only see more of these efforts to steal elections.  The GOP is the real driver of voter fraud– defrauding people of the right to vote….

 

Restrictive voting laws in states across the country could affect up to five million voters from traditionally Democratic demographics in 2012, according to a new report by the Brennan Center. That’s a number larger than the margin of victory in two of the last three presidential elections.

The new restrictions, the study found, “fall most heavily on young, minority, and low-income voters, as well as on voters with disabilities. This wave of changes may sharply tilt the political terrain for the 2012 election.”

The study found that:

These new laws could make it significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012.

The states that have already cut back on voting rights will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012 – 63 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency.

Of the 12 likely battleground states, as assessed by an August Los Angeles Times analysis of Gallup polling, five have already cut back on voting rights (and may pass additional restrictive legislation), and two more are currently considering new restrictions.

The total number, according to the Brennan Center, is the sum of the 3.2 million voters they estimate will be affected by new photo ID laws, “the 240,000 citizens and potential voters who could be affected by new proof of citizenship laws, 202,000 voters registered in 2008 through voter registration drives that have now been made extremely difficult or impossible under new laws, 60,000 voters registered in 2008 through Election Day voter registration where it has now been repealed, one to two million voters who voted in 2008 on days eliminated under new laws rolling back early voting and at least 100,000 disenfranchised citizens who might have regained voting rights by 2012.”

“These voting law changes are radical and completely unnecessary,” Wendy. R. Weiser, a co-author of the report, said in a statement. “They especially hurt those who have been historically locked out of our electoral system, like minorities, poor people, and students. Often they seem precisely targeted to exclude certain voters.”

via Restrictions Could Keep Five Million Traditionally Democratic Voters From The Polls In 2012 | TPMMuckraker.

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Art Pope, Citizens United, and North Carolina Politics : The New Yorker

Very scary article in this weeks “New Yorker” about Art Pope and how he’s used his money to effect North Carolina politics….

The “Citizens United” decision by the Supreme Court last year is really hurting Democracy in America.  We are only just now starting to see how much….

Here is a brief excerpt from a very long article.  I encourage you to click the link and read it in it’s entirety.

For years, Pope, like several other farsighted conservative corporate activists, has been spending millions in an attempt to change the direction of American politics. According to an analysis of tax records by Democracy NC, a progressive government watchdog group, in the past decade Pope, his family, his family foundation, and his business have spent more than forty million dollars in this effort. Sizable as Pope’s contributions have been, they are negligible in comparison with his fortune. The Pope family foundation—of which Art Pope is the chairman and president, and one of four directors—reportedly has assets of nearly a hundred and fifty million dollars.

This wealth has enabled Pope to participate in the public arena on a scale that few individuals can match. Some have compared him to Charles and David Koch, the conservative oil-and-chemical magnates, whom Pope regards as friends; Pope has at times joined forces with them, attending some of their semi-annual secret planning summits and, through the family foundation, contributing millions to many of the same causes. Pope, in addition to being on the board of Americans for Prosperity—which David Koch founded, in 2004—served on the board of its predecessor, Citizens for a Sound Economy, which Koch co-founded, in 1984. Charles Koch recently praised the Popes, along with other donors, for providing financial support for the 2012 election effort, and tax records show that Pope has given money to at least twenty-seven groups supported by the Kochs, including organizations opposing environmental regulations, tax increases, unions, and campaign-spending limits. Pope, in fact, helped fund the legal center run by James Bopp, the lawyer who made the initial filing in the Citizens United case

More:   Art Pope, Citizens United, and North Carolina Politics : The New Yorker.

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Top Tea Party Organizer Arrested for Soliciting Prostitute

When are the “Family Values” crowd going to wake up and realize they are being used?

It seems like almost all their leaders are hypocrites.  And I’m thinking the Family Value crowd needs to ask themselves if they aren’t hypocrites, too, for still  following these guys after all their sins become public….

I mean, come on!  Picking up hookers, multiple marriages, gay affairs by closeted leaders, not paying child support…..but, still good “Family Values” Republicans.

Give me a break…

The whole thing is just ludicrous….

From The Wisconsin Gazette:

Steve Stevlic, one of the top organizers of TeaCon 2011, describes himself as an ordinary family-values man. But, as Gawker reported today, he’s not ordinary in at least one sense: He was arrested last summer for soliciting a prostitute.

Last September, Stevlic mocked and condemned U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., via Twitter over revelations that the congressman had a two-year extra-marital affair. The tweets were sent out two months after Stevlic’s arrest.

Stevlic is one of the primary sponsors behind one of the largest-ever gatherings of tea partiers. About Some 600 supporters turned out today for the opening of the event in Schaumburg, Ill., a northwest suburb of Chicago. Some of the right-wing movement’s highest-profile representatives were on hand.

But after news of Stevlic’s year-old arrest grabbed attention, he apparently decided to steer clear of the proceedings, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Keynoters at TeaCon today included Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck, and U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., a party favorite and an afternoon highlight.

Walsh has image problems of his own. A Chicago judge ordered him last month to explain why he appears to be $100,000 behind in child-support payments to his ex-wife.

Laura Walsh has hauled her ex-husband to court on numerous occasions since 2002 to seek orders to make him pay his court-ordered child-support obligations. She says he started making half-payments years ago and then completely stopped sending any money.

Although Walsh claimed he was broke, last year he made a $35,000 contribution to his own congressional campaign.

Despite the evangelical-Christian bent of Tea Party supporters, including a growing anti-gay fervor, Walsh’s failure to support his kids has not dampened their enthusiasm for him.

via Top Tea Party organizer arrested for soliciting prostitute | Breaking News | Wisconsin Gazette – Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) News.

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Bill Maher: “Promiscuous” Republicans Wouldn’t Even Support Jesus for President

Great video from Bill Maher’s “Real Time” last night….

He talks about the “promiscuous” Republican electorate that falls in love with a new Candidate every month- until they get to know them.

Then, he closes with how even Jesus of Nazareth wouldn’t be able to please these people….

Which should give the GOP voters something to think about.

But if Republicans really thought-and felt- well, would they be Republicans?

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Theme Song for the GOP Presidential Primary: Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves….

Every time I read or see the Republican Primary Candidates….this is all I can think of…..

I just hope Cher doesn’t give them the rights to use it for their campaigns….

 

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Tea Party More Than a Temper Tantrum

Another brilliant – and frightening – column from Leonard Pitts, Jr in the Miami Herald.

Here is a brief excerpt and a link to the full column:

 

Then you realize it was not so long ago that a man blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City out of anti-government sentiment not so different from that espoused by the tea party. And you remember how that tragedy exposed an entire network of armed anti-government zealots gathering in the woods. And you read where the Southern Poverty Law Center says the number of radical anti-government groups spiked to 824 in 2010, a 61 percent increase over just the previous year.

And you wonder.

This is not a prediction, only a speculation — and a suggestion that those of us who have regarded the craziness of recent years as an aberration, a temporary temper tantrum from people who feel threatened and dislocated, may have been entirely too sanguine. In less than 20 years, the locus of radical anti-government extremism has moved from remote woods to Capitol Hill.

How should the rest of us respond? That’s a question we urgently need to answer. They say they’ve come to take “their” country back.

Maybe it’s time we took them at their word.

Full Column:   Tea party more than a temper tantrum – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com.

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Obama’s Preaching Doesn’t Reach

Interesting article from Anthea Butler at Religion Dispatches.

For the record, she is an Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Pennsylvania and an African-American woman.

While I continue to support President Obama, I have my concerns as well.

He’s been much friendlier to Wall Street than Main Street…

He doesn’t seem to “dance with the ones who brought him” too well.  Sometimes, it’s almost like he’s ashamed to be seen with us.  He had to be pushed and pushed to take action on Gay issues, but he did take action.

Now he’s pushing some buttons with another core constituency.

I hope he’s had a true realization- on the Road to Damascus, so to speak- and this isn’t just fear driven based on recent polls.

If he had pushed the agenda he was elected to pursue, instead of tilting at the windmills of compromise with the GOP, we wouldn’t be having this dialogue…

Here is an excerpt from Dr Butler’s column and a link to the full version:

Obama’s performance of black preaching may play well to church folks who love him no matter what, but to those critical of his policies that have placed African Americans at the highest unemployment rates, the president’s fake whooping rings hollow. Why is it that every time the president speaks to a predominately black audience, he goes into a preacher’s cadence, and starts to speak as though he were at a pulpit? Why is it that he never gets “righteously angry” with the white folks as often as he does at the black folks?

If you think I am harsh, consider a segment of the president’s 2010 CBC speech: “I need everybody here to go back to your neighborhoods to go back to your workplaces, to go to churches and go to the barbershops and go to the beauty shops, and tell them we’ve got more work to do.”

Damn. I think most black people I know do more than just work, go to church, and get their hair done.

Let me say it more bluntly. The president said at the end of his CBC speech: “[I] expect all of you to march with me and press on. Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on.”

That was the moment that the president turned into a jackleg preacher. A jackleg preacher is an untrained preacher who relies on tried and true tropes to get his audience to respond to preaching. If a jackleg is really good, he or she can get the money or whatever else they want by hitting the sweet spot, that emotional place where the congregation always responds well, because they recognize the feelings and emotions the jackleg preacher wants to evoke. Referring to taking off the slippers and putting on marching shoes is a tired racist trope, and besides, isn’t Snooki the person who wears her slippers in public? I don’t think she’s African American.

There is a history with Obama’s speeches to predominantly black audiences that either try to use respectability or shame to change steroetypical behavior. Obama’s 2008 speech excoriating absent black fathers at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago, and his comments on the campaign trail in 2008 in Beaumont, Texas urging black parents “not to feed their kids cold Popeye’s chicken for breakfast,” are just two examples of how Obama deploys this racially-coded rhetorical strategy. The president’s behavior since taking office towards the African American community has been either to tell black folks to get in line and get to work, or gee, I love ya’ll, but I need your vote. If only he would speak to Republicans and Tea Partiers in the same harsh manner.

MORE:   Obama’s Preaching Doesn’t Reach | Religion Dispatches.

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Rick Perry Eviscerated By Fox News Sunday Panel: He ‘Really Did Throw Up All Over Himself In The Debate’

I hate to tell you “I told you so….”

But not really…..

I warned folks a few weeks ago the GOP Establishment and the Bushies would not tolerate Governor GoodHair.  He made it really easy for them to take him down and down he’s going…..

When you are a Republican and you’ve got Fox News turning on you like this, your days are numbered…..

 

WASHINGTON — After a weak debate performance and a loss in the Florida straw poll, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) is having his fitness as the GOP presidential frontrunner seriously questioned.

These doubts were on display during the roundtable on “Fox News Sunday.”

“Perry really did throw up all over himself in the debate, at a time when he needed to raise his game. He did worse, it seems to me, than in previous debates. … Perry is one-half a step away from almost total collapse as a candidate,” said Fox News commentator Brit Hume.

Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol wrote an editorial titled “Yikes” on Friday, writing of Thursday’s debate, “[N]one of the candidates really seemed up to the moment, either politically or substantively. In the midst of a crisis, we’re getting politics as usual — and a somewhat subpar version of politics as usual at that.”

The alternative, he wrote, is for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) to jump into the race.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Kristol said his editorial reflected what many Republicans are thinking, as evinced in Saturday’s straw poll in Florida, where Herman Cain won with 37 percent of the vote. The results were considered especially embarrassing for Perry, who came in second, since former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney did not officially compete. (He ended up coming in third.)

But Kristol said it was a repudiation of both the frontrunners.

via Rick Perry Eviscerated By Fox News Sunday Panel: He ‘Really Did Throw Up All Over Himself In The Debate’.

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John Fleming, GOP Congressman, Blasts Obama Over Buffett Rule: I Can’t Afford A Tax Hike

Poor baby….

Just scraping by on $400k a year….

After deductions, I’m sure….

 

Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) appeared on MSNBC Monday morning to express opposition to President Barack Obama’s deficit reduction plan, which includes a proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy.

Fleming charged that the plan is a terrible idea which kills jobs provided by wealthy “job creators” who pay personal income taxes. When asked about his business ventures — including his role in a number of Subway restaurants and UPS stores — from which he earned $6.3 million last year, Fleming told MSNBC host Chris Jansing that his business expenses left him with little to tax “by the time I feed my family.”

Fleming told Jansing that the $6.3 million is “before you pay 500 employees, you pay rent, you pay equipment and food.”

“The actual net income of that was a mere fraction of that amount.”

“By the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over,” Fleming said.

via John Fleming, GOP Congressman, Blasts Obama Over Buffett Rule: I Can’t Afford A Tax Hike.

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Tea Party: Talking About a Revolution

Just in case anyone doesn’t know it yet, these Tea Party Conservatives are scary people….

They don’t really care about representative Democracy.  They want to use force and intimidation to get their way.  They don’t respect anyone who disagrees with them and are willing to use any method to get their way and drive their agenda.

Their goal is to suppress votes and, if that doesn’t work, they keep talking about driving their agenda by force.

And remember, they are not the majority, no matter how many times they claim to be so….

That’s not exactly the American Way….

That is unless you believe D.H. Lawrence when he said: “”The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer.”

That’s not the open and generous American Soul I know, but it sure seems to be an accurate statement about the soul of the Tea Party and these hard right conservatives.

 

From Raw Story.com.  Emphasis is mine….

 

Speaking to a Massachusetts tea party group recently, conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart made some comments that are raising eyebrows online this week, telling the small gathering of Republicans that he sometimes wants to “fire the first shot.”

“I’m under attack all the time,” he said. “The call me gay. There are death threats… There are times when I’m not thinking as clearly as I should, and in those unclear moments, I always think to myself, ‘Fire the first shot. Bring it on.’ Because I know who’s on our side.

“They can only win a rhetorical and propaganda war. They cannot win. We outnumber them in this country and we have the guns… I’m not kidding. They talk a mean game, but they will not cross that line because they know what they’re dealing with. ”

Breitbart added that “major named people in the military” will sometimes “grab” him and say, “Thank you for what you’re doing, we’ve got your back.”

via Breitbart: Conservatives ‘outnumber’ liberals, ‘and we have the guns’ | Raw Replay.

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