March 2012
“We’re covering this primary as a conflict over ideology. It’s...”
– David Frum.
Romney emerges from Michigan committed not only to the Ryan plan, but also to a 20% cut in tax rates, above and beyond his prior commitment to making the Bush tax cuts permanent. He emerges as the candidate who has endorsed the idea that President Obama is waging war on religion as ...
Limbaugh: Birth Control = Sluts Being Paid To Have...
“What does it say about the college coed Susan [sic] Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.
“She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the...
“Time was when Catholics (who, you know, *invented* the university) worked and...”
– Arch-Catholic Mark Shea.
The Right Sees Obama Winning
“When you have a candidate few people really like, whose support is a mile wide and an inch deep, whose raison d’etre (a 4am fancy word) is fixing an economy that is fixing itself without him, and who only wins his actual, factual home state by three percentage points against a guy no one took seriously only two months ago, there really is little reason for independent voters in...
At $500 Billion, Apple Is Worth More Than Poland
Apple’s stock market value topped the $500 billion mark in early trading Wednesday, another record high for what was already the world’s most valuable company.
The half-trillion dollar valuation puts Apple in some extremely exclusive territory, making it one of the five most-valuable companies at any point in history. Only Microsoft, ExxonMobil, Cisco (CSCO, Fortune 500) and General...
February 2012
“Five years from now when I’m not president anymore, I’ll buy one and...”
– President Obama, commenting on the Chevy Volt, to 1,600 workers and retirees from the United Auto Workers union.
James Murdoch Quits
Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, News Corporation, announced on Wednesday that his son James had stepped down as executive chairman of News International, the British newspaper subsidiary that is embroiled in layers of overlapping police and judicial inquiries into phone hacking and illegal payments to the police.
WatchPresident Obama spoke to U.A.W. members yesterday. And good luck, GOP candidates. Your bubble of constant conservative affirmation is worthless in the general election. You ain’t gonna beat this guy.
“I did run to make the tough calls and do the right things, no matter what the politics were.” - President Obama
BREAKING: Romney announces opposition to Blunt...
Romney v Santorum: Worst Capitalist v Worst...
Both have called for radical downsizing of government, with Santorum seeking to cap federal spending at 18 percent of gross domestic product and Romney seeking to cap it at 20 percent. Either cap, if enacted, would decimate key federal programs and all but certainly require undermining cherished social welfare programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Both want to repeal the...
“This is like watching a Greek tragedy. It’s the negative campaigning and...”
– Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), quoted by the Boston Herald, on the state of the Republican presidential race.
“It is shocking that in 2012, Brown and his Republican colleagues would try to...”
– In the Boston Globe, Elizabeth Warren rightly notes that Scott Brown (R-MA) and his GOP colleagues are not men who trust women. (via unquietmindofamy)
Romney's To-Do List
1. Draw unwanted attention to wealth.
2. Mention wife’s Cadillacs.
3. Highlight connection with NASCAR owners, rather than the sport, in general.
4. Lose Michigan primary.
Let’s see if he can get #4 tonight.
Twisted World Of Satantorum
Reality: JFK said all faiths are welcome and should be treated equally.
“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or...
Bush's Last Month: The Republican Legacy They...
December 2008, the economy lost 779,000 jobs. More jobs were lost that month than in any other single month in the previous 60 years. The GDP, the measure of all economic activity in the country, dropped by an unprecedented 9 percent in the final quarter of 2008.
Stock market dropped. Home values plunged.
Never forget what the Bush Administration and Republican policies did to America.
Republicans Hate Obama Tax Cuts, Prefer Head Up...
Ninety-five percent of all Americans got a tax cut under the plan. Small businesses and working families received a tax cut. First-time homebuyers received a tax credit. Parents caring for their young children received a tax credit. Some 8 million people received tax credits and financial assistance to help pay for their college education.
The next time a Republican brags about his...
“CO2 is a pollutant? Tell that to the plants.”
– Rick Santorum, this weekend in Davison, Michigan.
Yet another example of willfully ignorant being brought to it’s absolute apex.
We’re currently pumping about 90 million tons of carbon emissions into the air every day. This creates the conditions that lead to global warming, and the...
President Obama’s approval rating breaks 50 -- 53... →
How Republicans Move the Center
Rick Pearlstein:
Republicans “plant their flag in an uncompromising position, and wait for the world to come around - which, quite often, it eventually does. This is because in a media environment based on the ideology of ‘balance,’ in which anything one of the parties insists upon must be given equal weight to whatever the other party says back, the party that plants its...
The GOP's Heartland Identity Politics' Origins
In 1985, Stanley Greenberg, then a political scientist, immersed himself in Macomb County, a blue-collar Detroit suburb where whites had abandoned the Democratic Party in droves.
He found that the Reagan Democrats there understood politics almost entirely in racial terms, translating any Democratic appeal to economic justice as taking their money to subsidize the black underclass….
...
“Large-scale education was not developed to motivate kids or to create scholars....”
– Seth Godin, from his new manifesto on education “Stop Stealing Dreams”
2012: The Modern GOP Self-Imposed Extinction
Even such a sober figure as Mitt Romney regularly says things like “We are only inches away from no longer being a free economy,” and that this election “could be our last chance.”
The Republican Party is in the grips of many fever dreams. But this is not one of them. To be sure, the apocalyptic ideological analysis—that “freedom” is incompatible with Clinton-era tax rates and ...
The First Amendment Destroyed By Santorum
“To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes me want to throw up. What kind of country do we live in where only people of non-faith can come in the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up. And that should make every American [throw up]. I don’t believe in an America where the separation between church and state is...
“Republicans being against sex is not good. Sex is popular.”
– GOP strategist Alex Castellanos, quoted by Maureen Dowd.
Ironic considering how much the Republicans like to screw the country.
“The standard view that knowing more science, or being better at mathematical...”
– The ugly delusions of the educated conservative - AlterNet - Salon.com (via ronmarks)
Many Republicans Already Looking Past 2012
If either Romney or Santorum gains the nomination and then falls before Obama, flubbing an election that just months ago seemed eminently winnable, it will unleash a GOP apocalypse on November 7 — followed by an epic struggle between the regulars and red-hots to refashion the party. And make no mistake: A loss is what the GOP’s political class now expects.
“Six months before...
“I’m fascinated by [America’s income inequality] because a lot of the people who...”
– David Simon on unregulated capitalism (via thesoapboxschtick)
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Lies, Damned Lies, And Romney
“Every one of the Romney campaign’s major themes, from the attacks on President Obama for going around the world apologizing for America (he didn’t), to the insistence that Romneycare and Obamacare are very different (they’re virtually identical), to the claim that Mr. Obama has lost millions of jobs (which is only true if you count the first few months of his administration, before...
The View From Mitt's Correct Tree Height World
“This feels good being back in Michigan. You know, the trees are the right height, the streets are just right. I like the fact that most of the cars I see are Detroit-made automobiles. I drive a Mustang and a Chevy pickup truck. Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs.” — Mitt Romney, quoted by BuzzFeed, noting that he and his wife have four cars between them.
It’s not...
Money, Meet Mouth
Comedian and HBO talk show host Bill Maher donated $1 million to the pro-Obama Super PAC on Thursday night.
Rick's Wife Thinks 'Life Is Suffering' Is A Pledge
Karen Santorum:
“I did always feel in my heart that God had big plans for Rick. Eventually it was there, tugging at my heart. When Obamacare passed, that was it. That put the fire in my belly.”
When a bill was passed, by those democratically elected, to help cut deficits and improve the health care for millions, that is when God, the God of love, the mystery of the Universe, told...
“I used to be a conservative and I watch these debates and I’m wondering, I...”
– Jeb Bush, quoted by Fox News, on the rhetoric of the Republican presidential candidates.
The modern Republican is all about telling their voters how they should feel and how they should act.
Maryland Eighth State For Gay Marriage
Gay-marriage proponents celebrated another win in Maryland on Thursday after the state Senate approved a measure that would legalize same-sex unions. Gov. Martin O’Malley has vowed to sign the bill, which will make Maryland the eighth state to adopt gay marriage.
Progress in America.
“I think they were booing George W. Bush. He is the man who isn’t there. Until...”
– Charles P. Pierce (via azspot)
Conservatives Think Contraception Was A Plot To...
“The whole point of this contraception stuff [that] started last week is to make sure that if Santorum get this Republican nomination, that’s what he’s going to be known for, and of course the theme of that is: Santorum hates women, Republicans hate women, Republicans have no respect for women.” - Rush Limbaugh
The radio host went on to blast Americans “who do nothing but have sex ...