Tag Archives: GOP

October 2, 2012 · 2:34 pm

Mitt Romney for President???

Emma and Elizabeth model their t-shirt.

A bright young friend of ours, Elizabeth Weinstein, has come up with a fun way to call GOP candidate Mitt Romney on his bull@#%* and raise some money for President Obama’s campaign.

Elizabeth and her friend Emma Joshi have designed and produced t-shirts declaring, “Romney for President of The Cayman Islands”.

It’s a fun way to highlight multi-millionaire Mitt’s tax-avoidance schemes, make fellow Obama supporters smile, and put a frown on the face of Romney-Ryan voters – all at the same time.

The shirts cost $20 (or $24.99 with free 1-5 day shipping). $10 from the sale of each t-shirt goes to the Obama campaign.

Shirts come in small, medium, large, extra large and 2X.

You can order your “Romney for President of The Cayman Islands” shirts at their eBay store:

You can see and order men’s shirts at this link.

You can see and order women’s shirts at this link.

So get a “Romney for President of The Cayman Islands” t- shirt and wear it loudly and proudly this election season. And if Romney can’t win in The Cayman Islands – maybe he can try a run in Switzerland?

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September 25, 2012 · 10:54 pm

Visions of Election Night…

Sometimes it helps to have a vision.

If you can see in your mind’s eye a picture of the future as you want it to be – then you’re steering the universe in that direction. Or something like that. It’s called “creative visualization”.

Athletes and salesmen have been using creative visualization for decades. Wikipedia defines creative visualization as “the practice of seeking to affect the outer world by changing one’s thoughts and expectations.”

So, let’s practice a little creative visualization by conjuring up a wonderful, satisfying vision for Election Night, Tuesday November 6, 2012.

Picture in your mind and heart the moment the television networks announce the shocking news – early in the evening — that President Obama has carried South Carolina. Not just North Carolina, but also the Cradle of the Confederacy. (The most recent poll gives Romney only a 6-point lead in South Carolina, down from double digits not long ago.) Visualize people, visualize!

Now, picture yourself on the couch with your loved one, Chardonnay in hand, as Barack Obama sweeps the swing states of Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin – and MSNBC (who else would you be watching?) projects that Obama has been re-elected as President of the United States.

But it gets even better, if that’s possible – because now comes the wailing and gnashing of teeth among the soundly defeated and thoroughly demoralized GOP/Tea Party. With their House majority lost, their Senate minority reduced – and the White House back in Democratic hands – Karl Rove is the first to appear on Fox News and stick a knife in Romney’s back. All the tens of millions that Rove raised from all those undisclosed Super-Pac donors couldn’t sell the Romney-Ryan ticket to the American people. And “Bush’s Brain” isn’t blaming himself.

Next in the pathetic parade of Republican ruin comes GOP Chairman Reince Priebus. With an angry Tea Party mob preparing the tar and feathers outside his barricaded doors, Priebus announces his resignation as GOP chair – and his immediate departure for the Cayman Islands, where he will go into hiding along with Mitt’s money.

Then, just before we hear from Mitt Romney, the nation’s TV cameras turn to Janesville, Wisconsin, where we double our fun – because not only has Paul Ryan lost the Vice Presidency – he’s also lost his Congressional seat! Pop some more popcorn! Uncork another bottle of Chardonnay! Sales of “Atlas Shrugged” are plummeting even as he speaks…

And now, it’s Romney’s turn to concede defeat. Socially, Mitt tried to drag us back into the 1950’s while economically trying to return us to the fiscal glory (make that “gory”) days of George W. Bush. America sent him packing – just like Mitt and the Bain Gang packed up so many American factories and sent those jobs overseas. Mitt announces that his wife Ann is turning him out to pasture along with her dressage horse, Refalca – both losers this year. (Ironically, Mitt didn’t even get 47 percent of the vote.)

And now, goodnight and sweet dreams.

And visions.

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September 12, 2012 · 2:20 pm

Mitt Romney. Worst. Candidate. Ever.

GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s premature knee-jerk response to yesterday’s attacks on American embassies in Libya and Egypt reveal the low character of the man – and make it clear he is not fit for the Presidency.

Before Romney could possibly know the facts, before the State Department had identified our dead, before President Obama could publically address this national tragedy, Mitt sought the television cameras to score cheap political points with an unfounded, uneducated and vastly unhelpful attack on the President and, by extension, the heroic members of our foreign service stationed in harm’s way. Romney’s behavior in this moment of crisis was entirely selfish and profoundly un-American. (He even smirked as he walked away from the podium after launching his patently unserious salvo.)

American Ambassador Chris Stevens and the three other embassy workers killed in the rocket attack in Benghazi, Libya deserved far better than to serve as props for Mitt Romney’s cheap political stunt.

There was a time when partisanship in American politics stopped at the water’s edge.

Romney’s ham-handed diplomatic buffoonery and lack of foreign policy wisdom should disqualify him as a candidate for President of the United States. The fact that Mitt’s rash, false and incendiary accusations against President Obama have been met with approval by right wing tools like disgraced former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Senator Jim DeMint (Tea Party-SC) and Senator John Kyl (R-AZ) only add to the argument against Romney’s judgment, his character, and his candidacy.

Sorry, my Republican friends, this is your guy for 2012: perhaps the worst Presidential candidate in the modern era. One wonders how — with that huge silver spoon in his mouth — he still manages to find room to stick his foot in it, too.

Shame on you, Mitt Romney.

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September 10, 2012 · 5:41 pm

The Bounce!

Now that both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions are over – there are two things have become increasingly clear as the national tracking polls roll out day after day.

Mitt got no significant bounce out of his convention.

President Obama got a very healthy bounce. As of today – Obama’s bounce is anywhere from 5 to 7 points depending upon the poll. Now, the polls all show Obama leading Romney by anywhere from 4 to 6 points – and Gallup has the President at 52%

It’s possible that Obama’s numbers will continue to rise as the weekly tracking polls no longer include any days after the RNC and include more days during and immediately after the Democrats’ very successful convention.

But while progressives like me celebrate Obama’s bounce, there are a couple of things we liberals should begin to focus on.

1. It’s all about GOTV – Get Out The Vote.

Obama’s leads in the Gallup, Ipsos, Rasmussen and CNN polls mean nothing if Obama voters don’t – or can’t — vote. We must avoid the kind of liberal apathy that allowed the Tea Party to win so many Congressional seats in the 2010 mid-term elections – and we must overcome voter suppression efforts in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania, among others.

2. The down-ballot elections are vitally important. Democrats must keep their Senate majority — and we’ve got to reduce the GOP lead in the House.

Dear home state Ohioans! Re-elect Senator Sherrod Brown!

Hopefully, we can take over the House and make John Boehner a minority leader. Wouldn’t that be a joy?

Watch those Senate races in Massachusetts, Ohio, Missouri and Virginia!

But, for the moment, you have my permission to pause a moment and enjoy The Obama Bounce.

Boing!

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July 29, 2012 · 1:46 pm

Give ‘Em Hell, Obama!

During the 1948 Presidential campaign, President Harry S. Truman delivered a speech in Illinois  attacking the Republicans in blunt terms. During his speech a supporter called out, “Give ’em Hell, Harry!”. Truman shot back — “I don’t give them Hell. I just tell the truth about them and they think it’s Hell.”

Here’s a snippet of the kind of hell “Give ‘Em Hell Harry” was giving the GOP in those days. (You can read the whole speech here.) I’d like to hear President Obama channel a little more Harry Truman from now until election day.

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April 11, 2012 · 4:26 pm

Thank You, Rick Santorum!

Rick Santorum has left the building.

And I’m bummed about it.

Because liberal progressives like me have good reason to shower Rick Santorum with our gratitude.

The best thing about having a truly reactionary ideologue and religious zealot like Santorum in the race for the GOP Presidential nomination has been the fact that the Republican Party’s very unattractive underbelly has been exposed.

Mr. Inevitable, Mitt Romney, has not been able to speak in sweet, uplifting platitudes about shining cities on the hill while devising plans to bleed the working class and further enrich the obscenely wealthy. Not with a sanctimonious culture warrior like Rick forcing him to take hard line “severely conservative” positions on hot button social issues like contraception, gay marriage and a woman’s right to make her own reproductive decisions.

Despite the fact that the majority of Americans favor contraception, gay marriage and a woman’s right to choose, Santorum’s uber-conservative candidacy forced Mitt Romney to state his opposition to all three early and often — and usually in a stumbling, uncomfortable manner.

Without a true believer like Santorum in the race, Romney could have done what many Republican politicians have done: court the religious right in private, promise them school prayer, an anti-abortion amendment, and whatever else their intolerant hearts desire – while speaking in more inclusive terms to the wider voting populace. Then, when elected, he could feel free to ignore the bible bangers’ agenda (which GOP Presidents have been doing since the Nixon years).

But having to compete with Santorum for the fundamentalist base, Romney was forced to shed the middle-of-the-road image that got him elected in liberal Massachusetts – and steer his candidacy far to the religious right.

And yet, many of these conservative Christian voters will reject Romney anyway because he’s a Mormon.

The surprising surge in Rick Santorum’s candidacy after he won the Colorado, Missouri, and Minnesota primaries on the same day in early February meant that Mitt Romney and his millionaires had to spend a lot more money than he would have liked to bombard the airwaves with negative commercials – not targeting Barak Obama, but that pesky upstart, Rick Santorum.

All while President Obama spent his money on putting together a massive ground game in critical states all across the electoral map.

Santorum’s personal brand as an earnest, uncompromising zealot presented a sharp contrast with Romney’s image as an opportunistic political shapeshifter, willing to do or say whatever is necessary to appeal to a Republican base that is far more conservative than he’s been in the past.

Santorum spoke his mind. He had no qualms about saying he’s against birth control. Catholic candidate Santorum had no problem saying that Catholic candidate John F. Kennedy’s historic speech upholding the separation of church and state made him want to throw up. Sometimes, Santorum even let slip the darkest dogs of his intolerant mind, saying he would not “make black people’s (or was it “blah people’s) lives better by giving them other people’s money” and calling President Obama a “government nig…” before catching himself in front of a friendly audience in rural Janesville, Wisconsin. That’s not just a dog whistle: it’s a dog loudspeaker.

Not only did Santorum’s shoot-from-the-lip certainty put Romney’s serial waffling in stark relief – it also revealed the darker, puritanical, homophobic, misogynistic and racist angels of the rabid right wing. For these two reasons alone, Santorum’s candidacy was a daily blessing for progressive Americans. It was a light shed on the darkness. And it kept Romney from running in the sunshine, teeth gleaming, every hair in place and looking like something he’s not: a good guy.

So, now Rick is gone. Google will get fewer hits and we’ll get fewer news cycles about birth control and “blah people”.

But with Santorum gone, Newt Gingrich is free to pander to the religious right and all those “true conservatives” that Santorum had successfully courted. That Santorum has given Newt new life in this race is, perhaps, his last gift to those of us Democrats and Independents who support President Obama’s re-election and fervently hope to take back the House and keep the Senate.

And yet, Rick Santorum will likely have one more card to play – one more way to stick it to the man that he pointedly did NOT endorse in his speech last night suspending his campaign. I’m sure that Rick – a resurgent star of the GOP with a big chunk of devoted delegates — will have to be given a nice big speech at the Republican Convention. Maybe even a keynote address. Remember how well the “culture war” speeches by those two bombastic right wing patriarch Pats, Buchanan and Robertson, went down with the larger viewing and voting public? It’s not likely that Santorum’s speech will be a uniting Kumbaya embrace that helps to draw independents and working class people of all races, creeds and color into the GOP fold.

That speech may be Santorum’s last campaign 2012 gift to progressive America.

Thank you, Rick Santorum, for being exactly who you are.

Something Mitt Romney is not.

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March 20, 2012 · 10:24 pm

Victory in the Land of Lincoln?

So, Mitt Romney won the GOP Primary in the great Midwest state of Illinois. He clobbered the prudish religious zealot Rick Santorum and probably assured his nomination as the Republican candidate for the Presidency. But what does Mitt’s victory in the Land of Lincoln really mean?

Not much.

First of all, let’s look at Illinois Republican Primary voter enthusiasm in 2012. Were this year’s GOP voters in Illinois more psyched up to vote than they were when they lost the Presidency to the state’s favorite son Barack Obama in 2008?

Not really.

About 902,214 Republicans cast their votes in this year’s GOP primary. That’s less than a million votes in a state with more than 7 million registered voters: so much for enthusiasm.

A total of 899,422 Illinois Republicans voted in 2008. So, four years after living through President Obama’s first term, less than 3,000 more Republicans statewide went to the polls to help kick Obama out of office. Not exactly a groundswell of opposition.

This year’s Illinois Republican Primary saw an even greater level of indifference than four years ago – when McCain wound up losing Illinois in a landslide.

In 2008, John McCain won 426,777 GOP votes in my wife’s beloved home state. In 2012, Romney won 427,911. So, Mitt won just 1,200 votes more than McCain did – in a year with 80,000 more registered voters in play statewide.  That’s some victory, huh?

So, how do you think President Obama is reacting to Romney’s “victory” in Illinois? Probably something like this…

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March 5, 2012 · 3:37 pm

A Heavenly Two Minute Brain Cleanse

Looking to take a brief break from the GOP war against modern civilization and women’s rights? Do you envision a government that has better things to do than to poke its head into your bedroom to see whether or not you’re using — egad! — contraception? Then, here’s a little more than two minutes of glorious, awe-inspiring brain food, courtesy of your Federal tax dollars, well spent!

Thanks to our good friend and fellow NU alum, Jim McCutchen, for making me aware of this stunning video.

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February 17, 2012 · 1:18 am

Trapped in Their Echo Chamber

Fox News, AM Talk Radio — and the Narrowing of the Conservative Mind.

How living in its own echo chamber could doom the GOP at the ballot box this November – and beyond.

For the past two weeks, social conservatives and the Republican Party they dominate appear convinced that they can score electoral points on President Obama by rallying against birth control.

We’ve all heard the breathless back and forth on Fox News and AM radio over “Obama’s War on Religion” as the GOP joined with Catholic bishops to oppose a Federal policy on insurance payments for contraceptives that 28 states already require.

Why are Republican Party leaders picking a fight with President Obama over birth control — when the latest New York Times/CBS News poll shows that 65% of Americans support his position that insurance plans of religiously affiliated employers should cover the cost of birth control – including 64% of independents, 72% of women, and 67% of Catholics?

Why have Republican bigwigs signed on so loudly and stridently to such an unpopular position?

Ironically, the cause of this self-inflicted wound has been the right wing’s greatest success: the institutional and media infrastructure that helped to bring so many conservatives to power since the Reagan era — a vast echo chamber built over the past four decades.

According to Wikipedia, “An echo chamber is a hollow enclosure used to produce echoing sounds, usually for recording purposes.”

But the “echo chamber” I’m talking about is “any situation in which information, ideas or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission inside an ‘enclosed’ space.”

 That “enclosed space” is Fox News, AM talk radio and all those conservative think tanks.

The extreme right wing takeover of the GOP can be traced to the founding of The Heritage Foundation in 1973. Paul Weyrich and Joseph Coors established The Heritage Foundation because they considered President Nixon too liberal. (Imagine that!) The Heritage Foundation was followed in 1977 by The Cato Institute, founded by Edward Crane and Charles Koch, CEO of the second largest private company in America. Together, these two conservative think tanks helped elect Ronald Reagan to the Presidency.

In the 1990’s Fox News Channel became another brick in the conservative echo chamber wall. To run Fox News, Rupert Murdoch hired Roger Ailes, a media consultant for GOP presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Fox News was launched in 1996 – and has become the dominant cable news network in the United States. This year, Fox News Channel is celebrating 10 years as the top cable news channel – its viewership topping that of MSNBC and CNN combined.

And then there’s conservative talk radio, which rules 90 percent of the political airwaves today.

Right wing gasbag Rush Limbaugh signed an 8-year, $400 million contract extension with Clear Channel in 2008. Twenty years earlier, his national radio career began on WABC in New York. Spouting – and often creating – a litany of right wing talking points, Limbaugh’s fame and influence grew throughout the 1990’s.

Today, Republican leaders fear Rush’s wrath – and fashion their policy positions accordingly.

If you listen to Fox News, AM talk radio and the pundits from conservative think tanks that populate the network and cable news shows and newspaper Op Ed pages, you’d have to believe that opposition to higher taxes on the very wealthy, denial of global warming, and opposition to same sex marriage, contraceptives and labor unions are supported by the majority of Americans.

In the huge echo chamber they’ve created, right wing pundits and politicos, armed with talking points supplied by facile propagandists like Frank Luntz (who for too many years managed to pass himself off as an impartial pollster, quizzing post-debate focus groups on CNN) have beaten the drum for extreme conservative positions while the American electorate has wised up, sized up – and moved to the left.

Trapped in their echo chamber, the GOP fights any tax increase on the wealthiest among us — while according to a January 2012 poll, a whopping 76 percent of Americans support “The Buffett Rule” which would require folks who make more than a million dollars a year to pay the same 30% tax rate that most middle class people pay.

Slaves to their echo chamber, GOP Presidential candidates must deny global warming — despite a recent poll that says the percentage of Americans who believe in global warming has risen to 83%.

In fact, a Yale/George Mason survey way back in May of 2011 found that 71% of Americans think global warming should be a priority for the President and Congress.

Of course, if you pay attention to the right wing echo chamber, there’s nothing more reprehensible than same sex marriage. If gay people are allowed to marry, than all heterosexual marriages are threatened – even Newt Gingrich’s three marriages. Yet a Washington Post-ABC News poll released this February 10th showed that 53% of Americans support gay marriage. That’s a clear majority in favor of Jack marrying Jack and Jill wedding Jill. And those numbers are only going to grow more in favor of same sex marriage, as intolerant dinosaurs die off and today’s far more open-minded youth come of age.

Buoyed by the conservative echo chamber, Republican Governors and legislatures in the Midwest have launched an attack on the labor unions that, for the past eight decades, have fought for worker’s rights and built the American middle class. Yet, despite continuous right wing attacks since Reagan busted PATCO (the air traffic controllers union) in 1980, a majority of Americans are still sticking with the unions. Even though public approval of labor unions is near its low, it’s still at 52%. (And that’s the national number. Don’t mess with the unions in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio.)

While the GOP echo chamber savages President Obama every damn day for indulging in “class warfare” – an increasing majority of Americans are waking up to the reality that the average Big Business CEO is raking in 350 times what the average worker in their company earns. In the right wing echo chamber such obscene income disparity makes sense. But according to an increasing majority of Americans, that’s unfair.

Romney. Santorum. Gingrich.

These three fatally flawed candidates are the gifts of the conservative echo chamber. Their flat-footed feet are nailed to a radical right wing floor.

I have a message for the GOP echo chamber.

In 2012…

You lose…

You lose…

You lose.

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February 14, 2012 · 1:41 am

Top Ten Political Bumper Stickers of 2012

I can’t remember who sent them to me*, but not long ago I was sent a link to dozens of new political bumper stickers. These are the ten best.

This first one says it all. “He Won, Get Over It”. Now, I don’t want to say that all the Right Wing resistance to President Obama is based on race – but it’s hard to ignore the virulence that has characterized the GOP response to Obama’s three years of bipartisan outreach. Obama has taken a lot of heat from the left for trying to work with Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell – but it’s hard to escape the notion that the Old Boys simply won’t (or can’t) play ball with the Jackie Robinson of the American Presidency.

George W. Bush took Democratic President Bill Clinton’s big budget surplus and turned it into a multi-trillion dollar deficit. Remember how George W and his evil henchman, Dick Cheney, mislead (lied) us into the war in Iraq? Now you’ll never hear a GOP candidate mention his name. But we must not forget. George W and his GOP Congress dug us into the impossibly deep hole that President Obama has been trying to dig us out of.

The more you know – the more you’re liberal. That’s why conservatives are dead set against public education. Ignorance is a winner for the GOP. Is it any wonder that Republicans are always attacking public schools? Liberals don’t burn books. Liberals don’t home school. Liberals don’t adopt an anti-intellectual, anti-science pose. Progressives believe the vast majority of scientists on the reality of man-made global warming – and the simple minded folly of “Drill baby, drill!”

I was raised Roman Catholic. So were the 90% of Catholic women who use birth control. The Catholic faithful don’t subscribe to everything the Bishops tell us anymore. Those old men in robes lost the moral high ground even before we knew they looked the other way while priests were buggering children. And don’t even get me started on those 6,000 year-old Earth freaks. I love Jesus and I honor his message of compassion for the poor, the sick and the oppressed. But I don’t believe that so-called “conservative Christians” have any clue about what Jesus was trying to tell us. According to the four Gospels, Jesus said nothing about homosexuality – but he had plenty of negative things to say about divorce. Based on the Gospels, Newt Gingrich’s marital history is far more unchristian than the same sex marriages he opposes.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned the American economy around after three Republican Presidents (Harding, Coolidge and Hoover) ran us into a deep, desperate ditch known as The Great Depression. President Bill Clinton built a budget surplus after 12 years of increasing national debt under Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. And now, President Obama is turning George Dubya’s Recession around. Given the evidence of the past century, the GOP has NO credibility on the American economy, public spending, or the national debt.

Again, I was raised Roman Catholic and attended Catholic school from Kindergarten through 12th Grade – and I do not recognize Right Wing Jesus. If the Jesus of the Gospels had been a U.S. Congressman, He would’ve written the legislation that established Social Security and the social safety net. (Sorry, Newt, but He would have also tried to outlaw divorce.)

Both House Speaker John Boehner (R. Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R. Kentucky) have stated their primary objective is to make Barak Obama a one-term President. To that end, they’ve done all they can to depress job growth. Unfortunately for Boehner and McConnell, Obama’s Stimulus Package, the Detroit auto bailout, the extension of unemployment benefits, and other economic initiatives against which the GOP fought and lost have led to positive job growth and a slowly but steadily growing economy. Now, the GOP is in the sorry position of having to root against American progress.

Big Blue liberal states like New York and California pay more in Federal taxes than they get back in Federal funds. However, backwater Tea Party states like Alabama and Mississippi pay less in Federal taxes than they receive in Federal funding. So, let’s make a deal, all you Red State conservatives. We in the Blue States will keep 100% of our tax payments – and you good ol’ boys can keep 100% of yours. Good luck building a highway, or a school, or a hospital, you principled Tea Partiers. You’ll be lucky to get your garbage picked up.

‘Nuff said. George W. Bush said he didn’t really pay much attention to Bin Laden. Obama did. Game over.

I hate to say that this virulent Right Wing animus toward President Obama is due to race. (And I’m willing to overlook all the Tea Party rally posters depicting Obama with a bone through his nose, etc.) But the GOP mainstream didn’t accuse President Bill Clinton of being a fascist and a communist and a socialist all at the same time. So, what drives that kind of unreasoning hatred? When Newt Gingrich calls Obama “the food stamp President” – I think his motivation is clear. Am I wrong? Sadly, I doubt it.

Election 2012 is shaping up to be an epochal contest. But don’t assume the good guys will win. Fight. Argue. Vote. We have nothing to fear but our national ignorance.

* Turns out it was our good friend Rob Mendel who forwarded the bumper stickers to me.

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