As they like it

By Capt. Fogg 

Wake up, little Susie, wake up
Wake up, little Susie, wake up
We’ve both been sound asleep, wake up, little Susie, and weep
The movie’s over, it’s four o’clock, and we’re in trouble deep
Wake up little Susie
Wake up little Susie, we gotta go home. 

- The Everly Brothers -

___________________________ 

I'm relatively sure that our new "save your way out of unemployment, no job needed" austerity program will stifle the economy and thwart any meaningful recovery and that a good share of the people who held the gun to our heads to push this sorry debt ceiling bill, not only know it too, but desperately want that outcome so as to help push the Tar Baby out of office and privatize the presidency in 2012. 

The Tea Terrorist Great Leap Backward may not let 20 million people starve as Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward did, but it's not only not going to put bread on the table. For many of us, that table may be a park bench.

Victory is so close, they can almost taste it. Unemployment is so high so that millions don't have the money it takes to be heard, don't have the money it takes to buy the products that make the economy expand, but corporate profits are up -- way up. Call your congressman? Write your senators? Sorry Charlie, tea bags come with strings attached and unless your letter is stapled to a million dollar check you might as well save the postage and stationery.

Corporate profits are up, and that's OK. We're selling overseas and manufacturing overseas and American workers are redundant -- and face it, America and what we used to think of as the American way of life, the American Dream, is a millstone around the corporate neck. It's a global economy now and global corporations owe no allegiance to the United States even if they're nominally American companies. They will use every strategy they can to avoid paying taxes in the US or benefiting workers who can be replaced and exploited cheaply in China and India. We're witnessing one of those strategies today. The only people not in danger of being outsourced or laid off or screwed out of benefits and pensions are the legislators and judges and corporate propagandists on the payroll and sorry, little Suzie Teabag, that ain't you. Wake up. 

Now all that Social Security money and that Medicare money go right back into the economy, purchasing goods and services immediately. Minimum wage workers spend every dime they make. Nobody hoards food stamps. They don't want that. They don't want money in your hands, since it's money that might give you some political power, since it's money they could sit on and hoard and invest abroad with no taxes paid. Think it will go to creating American jobs? Are you stupid? 

Your taxes aren't going down, theirs is. They're not creating any jobs you're eligible for or would accept, and your cost of living will be going up as the Dollar shrivels like Limbaugh's penis and your freedom and your rights and your privacy and your political voice and your retirement plans are dissolving in the rapidly rising water. 

And they like it that way.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Little green apples

By Distributorcap

It took 30 years and 204 days, but on Tuesday, August 2, 2011 the fruits of the Reagan Tree of Life will finally have reached its peak when the over-ripened, low-hanging, worm-filled Reagapples will begin to pound the ground, not with sweetened blossoms, but with a dead thud. Thirty years and 204 days of belittling and ignoring the American education system, calling ketchup a vegetable, telling us trees cause pollution, cutting taxes to create trickled-down imaginary jobs (okay, there are a few more maids and gardeners), and teaching Americans that they could have everything they want and it will cost nothing -- the Teadras-educated Republican Party is willing to take the ultimate bet and tell the piper (or croupier) this time to shove it.

The U.S. Congress has spent the better part of the past month arguing over whether the credit limit on the Visa card should be raised in order to pay their bills -- bills they have committed and signed to pay. If this game of cold-war brinkmanship weren't so dangerous on so many levels, it would actually be comical to watch. Watching the children of the right storm out of a meeting (Eric Cantor, who probably has the distinction of having had the most spit balls thrown at him during 7th-grade lunch) and then say no, no, no as the opposition capitulates to nearly every one of their demands is nothing short of having Macbeth playing in a Kabuki theater.

The 80 or so Teabaggers who sandbagged their way into Congress last November promising to stop those eternal welfare queens from driving Cadillacs and finally ridding the country of the leeches who live off their hard-earned (over)taxed dollars, are about to allow the real grand experiment to go forward -- let the U.S. default on its payments for the first time in history, and default by choice. You know the world's strongest economy is going to look like it is managed even worse than Greece.

I used to think the only item on the Republican platform (aka Our American Mein Kampf) was the personal destruction of Barack Obama (or any Democratic president), but now I realize there is actually a second principle enshrined in the GOP's manifesto. Not only do the Teabaggers and their enablers want to see Obama fail, they also want to prove that the ripened fruit of the Reagan revolution ("something for nothing") is actually a sweet treat, that the U.S. defaulting on its bills will have absolutely no consequences.

After all, American exceptionalism is American exceptionalism. Chicken Little is really just Donkey Little, a completely made-up scenario just to allow those pesky liberals to abscond with more money from hedge-fund billionaires and private jet owners to pay for BMWs for those food-stamp queens and unemployed kings. Unlike Bill Clinton, Barack Obama has not given the goose-stepping lunatics in the GOP any stained dresses to use as evidence of a grand socialist conspiracy. Short of the 21st-century version of Fanne Foxe showing up in next few days, the Teabaggers will have to resort to their only other weapon, actually pushing the nuclear trigger. In other words, in order to save the country, they have to vaporize the country. Three hundred million Americans will just have to hope the dice on 8/2/11 are boxcars or snake eyes and not a craps. Good luck with that when one die is all threes and the other is all fours. 

Obama has made this so easy for the Republicans. He has caved so many times to the right on so many issues even the more "reasonable" Republicans (an oxymoron if there ever was one) realize they can play the blinking game knowing their odds of winning are about as good as Secretariat's was at the 1973 Belmont. His obvious weakness as a leader and his hesitancy to confront a group of people bent on his destruction has made the Republican work of making a mountain out of a molehill as easy as selling worthless credit default swaps to a bunch of insurance companies. Compromise requires compromise, not rolling over time after time. Obama has rolled over so many times John Boehner finally figured out that those 80 or so Teabaggers in Congress must really be onto something.

What the Teabaggers and their enablers (actually, they are all a bunch of Teabaggers) fail to realize is that if the sky does fall on August 2nd (and it will), it will be more than repossessed Cadillacs. While those teabagging Congressmen will barely suffer the loss of a nickel in salary, benefits, and pensions (and plenty of them have more than enough money to cushion the potential blow), I would think they have relatives who will suffer, and suffer badly, from a default. And what about the millions who actually voted for the Teabaggers thinking these really smart guys would save them from the leeches on society, only to see now that a government that cannot pay its bills means no Social Security checks mailed, no medicare payments, soaring interest rates on their variable mortgages, a collapsed housing market, more bridges and roads crumbling, weakened airport security, soldiers in Afghanistan watching their checks bounce, and finally a lot of very angry Europeans, Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Brazilians, Australians, Saudis, and Swiss, people who help fund the elite of Wall Street?

And what about those private companies the Teabaggers just love so much? You know, the ones that actually employ thousands of teabagging voters, the ones that receive a big chunk of their revenue from government contracts? Do you think Boeing and Lockheed Martin are going to keep pay a lot of private employees sitting around the lunchroom while they wait for Tim Geithner to sign the checks? What about the diners, dry cleaners, auto mechanics, waiters, coffee trucks, baby sitters, and hundreds of thousands of other private businesses that exist because of companies employing thousands of workers based on government contracts? And those free parks the Teabaggers love to take their kids to on vacation -- gonna get awfully expensive at $50 a head to get into Yellowstone. This is the real trickle-down economy, people who really do earn a living because other people are getting a paycheck, no matter where that paycheck originates, not from so-called job creators who just take their tax breaks and buy more Prada or stash the money in the Cayman Islands.

So old people, government contractors, ancillary businesses, soldiers, medical professionals that help the elderly -- it is time for you to sacrifice in the name of proving the Teabag Gambit. The road to Teabag nirvana is filled with collateral damage. We may suffer, we may default, we may see rising interest rates, we may start opening Hoovervilles, but those fine Republicans in the House, the ones that were sent to ensure an orderly country -- well, they will just be right.

Maybe we can form a new union of people to pick up those little green Reagapples.

West world

By Capt. Fogg

When Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, many of the ugliest Republicans told us that Democrats were "playing the race card" a mawkish cliché which means, I think, falsely accusing them of the racism they do really espouse. In other words, talking anal cysts like Limbaugh were having their pearls of wisdom denounced by the "politically correct" because you can't criticize a black man these days without being called a racist. It's a cheap dishonorable gambit, but like counterfeit money, it can be passed off on an uncritical populace.

An uncritical, astigmatic, angry and greedy American public seems to have had another bit of counterfeit money passed off it. Allen West, the Republican Congressman from the 22nd Congressional District right here in Florida, land of snakes, lizards, Teaturds, pollution and poisonous toads -- Allen West, one chromosome short of a tape-worm, says in his blog:

"I must confess, when I see anyone with an Obama 2012 bumper sticker, I recognize them as a threat to the gene pool."

Well isn't that special? Indeed it's the one feature of that pretentious Club of Fools that keeps it in business: it allows the mentally under-endowed, cognitively incontinent circus clowns to challenge their betters and to assault us with ideas that don't hold water nearly as well as a worn out douche bag. The giggle gallery in the back of the class, mocking the teacher.

Indeed West, speaking from his teabag-buttressed platform of arrogated biological superiority seems to be of an intellect too limited to have noticed the irony of a black man appealing to the snobbery of the uneducated, ill-informed, probably stupid and definitely angry whites, and offering soothing delusions of genetic superiority in a grotesque parody of white supremacists from Montgomery to Munich. But then, when has any American been too stupid and dishonest to be someones hero?

There is indeed a tide in the affairs of men and there is an armada of those now afloat on that full sea of hate, not only using it for their own purposes but seeking to make it rise further until it drowns the land. Allen West is such a man, a man whom under ordinary circumstances would be a nobody, a flyblown bit of flotsam in a stagnant pool; but because of this tidal wave of fury, he can pretend to be a battleship and his flatus a volley of cannon. He can twist, misuse, misquote and invent, he can put on the white-face and wear a red tie, He can grin like Uncle Tom and mock like a monkey, but while honesty is within reach of all, what he pretends to is not.

Women from Planned Parenthood and the activist group Code Pink "have been neutering American men" he says and making them weak. West tells us this with his genetically based intellect still unaware of Dr. Strangelove and bodily fluids. Perhaps he himself is having problems with his manhood and this talk of virility and gene pools tells a cover story. Perhaps his politics serve as verbal Viagra for the intellectually impotent Representative. But I don't need to postulate such questions, the doctored Obama bumper sticker with the hammer and sickle tell us the whole, sick, sad, disgusting tale. Allan West is a whore. Allen West is Count Dracula's rat-eating Renfield, Allan West is a liar. Allen West, and for reasons probably too disgusting to contemplate, is trying to ruin everything good about the United States of America. So what do I do when I see that sticker? You don't want to find out.

The president, despite all appearances and lack of opposition to corporate abuse and capitalist excess is a "low-level socialist agitator" reciting "Marxist demagogic rhetoric." Is West describing himself again, or is he just grabbing bits from the instruction manual like a tent-meeting preacher with his mouth full of Jesus and a mind full of money? Obama is a Communist to the extent that John D. Rockefeller was a Communist and Bernie Madoff was a capitalist.

No, this high water mark of anti-government anger that produces foul and foetid things like Allen West and the Tea Party has little to do with genetics and everything to do with our national ignorance and our manufactured delusions; both fed and cultivated by the people who reap benefits in their billions and trillions by subverting the values of civilization and setting the dogs on the ever expanding masses. It's an old story, but in our new version, not all the dogs have four legs.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

If you don't get the joke, you might be Republican

By Capt. Fogg

Well no wonder they don't think The Daily Show is funny and don't notice when Colbert rips them to pieces.

Some scientific folks at UC San Francisco have completed a study indicating that people in the early stages of dementia have lost the snark detection system most of us were born with and can't tell when you're lying or being facetious. It explains a lot of things, actually, from why people send their life savings to Nigeria to why they can support a candidate who changes his entire philosophy from hour to hour to negate whatever his opponent says.

"Divergent Neuroanatomic Correlates of Sarcasm and Lie Comprehension in Neurodegenerative Disease," a paper presented Thursday at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in Hawaii, suggests that dementia can be detected earlier by noting this telltale disability. Fans of Blade Runner will smile and those of us baffled by the thought processes of Sarah Palin disciples will say "AHAH!" Perhaps we can now begin to understand why there are no really funny conservative comedians and how John McCain can flip and flop faster than a Cray supercomputer without fostering the slightest cynicism from the right.

After all, what has been eroded by disease in some people may simply not exist in others.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Elephant Dung #25: Maine Republicans slam Republican Gov. Paul LePage

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

I wrote last year about "Mainesanity," the takeover of Maine's state GOP by Tea Party wackos. And by that I don't mean your run-of-the-mill small-government Teabaggers, the sort who are extreme but not utterly insane, or not necessarily so, but rather... well, wackos. As Maine Politics explained at the time:

The official platform for the Republican Party of Maine is now a mix of right-wing fringe policies, libertarian buzzwords and outright conspiracy theories.

The document calls for the elimination of the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve, demands an investigation of "collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth," suggests the adoption of "Austrian Economics," declares that "'Freedom of Religion' does not mean 'freedom from religion'" (which I guess makes atheism illegal), insists that "healthcare is not a right," calls for the abrogation of the "UN Treaty on Rights of the Child" and the "Law Of The Sea Treaty" and declares that we must resist "efforts to create a one world government." 

This was extreme even by Republican standards.

November 2010 witnessed yet more "Mainesanity" with the election of Tea Party Republican Paul LePage as governor. (It was a narrow win. LePage squeaked by an independent candidate and won with just 38 percent of the vote.) He proved to be a pretty nasty character during the campaign and has done nothing since then to indicate that he's anything but a right-wing extremist who rode the Tea Party wave, got lucky with a split vote, and somehow got himself elected in a state where leading state-wide Republicans typically resemble Olympia Snow and Susan Collins, not, well, Paul LePage.

And like certain other Republican governors -- Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio come to mind -- he's made labor unions (and working people generally) one of his primary targets. But that isn't going over all that well in Maine, including among Maine Republicans, some of whom (presumably not the ones who wrote that platform) are pushing back:

Eight Republican state senators have issued a rare public rebuke of Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), writing an op-ed expressing "discomfort and dismay" with some of his recent comments directed at labor backers.

The controversy centers around LePage's recent decision to order a mural depicting the state's workers' history removed from the Department of Labor, arguing that it was biased against businesses and employers. When asked how he would react if protesters carried out their plan to form a human chain around the mural, LePage replied, "I'd laugh at them, the idiots. That's what I would do. Come on! Get over yourselves!"

"But for him to announce that he would 'laugh at the idiots' should they choose to engage in our honored tradition of civil disobedience is another personal attack that only serves to further lower the bar of our public discourse," write the senators in the op-ed, which ran in The Portland Press Herald and the Kennebec Journal. "We may disagree with civil disobedience in this particular instance, but it is a fundamental right each and every one of us might engage in if we found the issue important enough. 

Now...

These are "proud Republicans" who "want Gov. LePage and his administration to succeed." They want to see his right-wing policy agenda (lower taxes, less government, etc.) enacted. And their criticism of LePage isn't directed at his opposition to organized labor but at "the tone and spirit of some of the remarks he has made." What they seek to uphold is civil disobedience, the right to dissent, a political culture of dignity and respect, a spirit of civility. While they claim that they "are not the enemy of labor and labor is certainly not an enemy to [them]," it is clear that the rights of workers, and particularly organized workers who bargain collectively, not only isn't their priority but may actually be antithetical to their pro-business ideology.

So is this really dung at all? These Republicans like LePage. They just want him to tone it down and respect their common opponents.

Fair enough, but this is a case of a prominent Tea Party Republican going too far and members of his own party publicly chastising him. And even if these Republicans aren't necessarily pro-labor, and even if they support much of the Tea Party agenda, their call for greater dignity and respect, including towards labor, is very much a rebuke to the politics of extremism and absolutism that characterizes so much of the right these days. 

It's good to see that at least some Republicans have had enough.

Elephant Dung #19: The Tea Party prefers Charlie Sheen to John Boehner

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

Poor Johnny B.

Try as he might, he just can't win -- that is, win over the Tea Party that is now so much an integral part of the GOP. And the radical rightists are placing him squarely in Palin's crosshairs:

A national tea party group is in revolt against House Speaker John Boehner and wants to see him defeated in a 2012 primary, arguing that he looks "like a fool" in the debate over spending cuts and makes less sense than actor Charlie Sheen.

"You look like a fool," Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips wrote in a post on the group's website, directing his message at the Ohio Republican. "Charlie Sheen is now making more sense than John Boehner."

Ouch. That's like saying you have less musical talent than J-Lo. (Yes, American Idol reference. I went there. I'm not watching this year -- why, without Simon? -- but I did catch her new video on last night's show. "This is the worst song ever," said The Reactionette. Hyperbole, to be sure, but only slight. "That was terrible. Just awful." Agreed.)

Boehner "did not get the message" from the tea party movement demanding big cuts to federal spending, Phillips said, and "the honeymoon is over." The movement should respond, he said, by finding "a candidate to run against John Boehner in 2012 and should set as a goal, to defeat in a primary, the sitting Speaker of the House of Representatives."

Right, because Boehner is all-powerful and can therefore make it all happen, even with a Democratic Senate and president. Not that I wish to defend him, but he's reasonable and sane compared to the Tea Party, which largely sits on the sidelines spouting ideological extremism, and attacking sinners while seeking to cleanse the Republican Party of the ideologically inadequate, while legislators like Boehner are forced to work within the parameters of a democratically-elected legislature, that is, to seek compromise to get anything done.

The Tea Party completely misunderstood last year's midterm election results, just as it misunderstands politics generally, and expected right-wing revolution right away. But revolution was never to be, and not just because of Boehner. It's not just extremism but delusional ignorance that drives the Tea Party.

The Republican right, the party's new mainstream, has taken over. It's pulling the party further and further to the right, away from its former establishment, and it's purging the party ranks of those who aren't sufficiently right-wing, who aren't ideologically acceptable to the new Bolsheviks. Among its many targets are some of the most reputable members of the party, including those with long careers advancing conservative causes, like Orrin Hatch and Richard Lugar. We can now add Boehner to the list, a long-time loyal partisan who's been speaker for just two months.

And Democrats, of course, are salivating.

Elephant Dung #17: At CPAC, Ron Paul libertarians attack Cheney and Rumsfeld

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.) 

Highlighting a major divide within the Republican Party -- that separating isolationist (often Tea Party) libertarians from interventionist, warmongering neocons (and their ilk) -- Ron Paul supporters used the right-wing insanitarium known as CPAC to launch into a verbal assault on two of the major figures of the Bush regime, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the latter (hilariously) receiving this year's CPAC "Defender of the Constitution" award:

One shout of "where's Bin Laden?" rang out as Cheney spoke of Rumsfeld.

That led to the pro-Cheney contingent (which it should be said greatly outnumbers the opposition) to shout the hecklers down with the familiar "USA, USA" chant.

It was all very odd, especially considering that when Cheney appeared as the "surprise guest" at last year's CPAC he was greeted with the kind of cheers generally reserved for a rock star.

But Team Paul -- whose numbers appear to have grown at CPAC in 2011 -- were not going to let that happen this time around.

"Uh, Defender of the Constitution?" Justin Bradfield of Maryland scoffed when I caught up with him after he walked out of Rumsfeld's speech. "Let's see: he expanded the Defense Department more than pretty much any other defense secretary and he enforced the Patriot Act."

"[Speaking] as a libertarian, that's not really the type of person who should be getting Defender of the Constitution," he added.

Bradfield said the moment showed that "half" of CPAC this year is libertarian, which means his side is winning in the civil war between "libertarians and right-wing conservatives."

"We're loud," he said.

Ah, yes, the GOP civil war. (Hence this whole Elephant Dung series.) Good times.

Oh, by the way, someone even shouted "war criminal" at Cheney. Sure, that could have been someone on the left who just happened to be there, but the battle was clearly being waged between the Ron Paul Teabagging libertarians and the supporters of the warmongering neocons.

That divide isn't going away anytime soon, and it promises to contribute to the further fracturing of the GOP's coalition, not least with the Teabaggers gaining more and more confidence.

Here, watch it for yourself:

Elephant Dung #10: Tea Party slams Reince Priebus, RNC

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

Well, that didn't take long, did it? Reince Priebus has only been RNC chair for a few days and already the Tea Party is trying to knock him down: 

While Priebus boasted, during his campaign for RNC chairman, of his good relations with Wisconsin tea party groups, the leaders of those groups give his tenure mixed reviews, with some accusing him of giving only lip service to the movement while stacking the deck against its candidates, shutting them out of the process or working to absorb them into the GOP.

"Priebus will do whatever it takes to co-opt the tea party movement," said Mike Murphy, chairman of a tea party-allied 527 group called The Republican Liberty Caucus of Wisconsin, founded in late 2009.

In the midterm elections, Murphy's group supported tea party candidates, including some who were undercut by the state GOP, which largely ignored long-shot tea party candidates and endorsed the primary rivals of others at its May convention — months before the primary election.

"He didn't allow for conservative voices that didn't jibe with the establishment view and if he charges down that course (at the RNC), the tea party people will wake up and it may very well split up the Republican Party" coalition that powered the GOP's 2010 landslide, said Murphy.

Interviews with eight other Wisconsin tea party leaders since Priebus's election Friday as RNC chairman revealed similar misgivings about Priebus's handling of the party endorsement process, which they saw as emblematic of the clubby establishment politics that the tea party has railed against since the movement burst onto the scene in April 2009.

Priebus is hardly some wishy-washy moderate. He may be an insider, but his politics are on the far right (and hence well within the mainstream of the GOP).

And yet the Tea Party still doesn't like him? Why?

Well, because he didn't turn the Wisconsin GOP over to the Wisconsin Tea Party, obviously, even if he was more than willing to embrace Tea Party politics.

And that's the key here, you see. The co-opting goes both ways.

The Tea Party accuses the GOP of trying to co-opt it, and, sure, the GOP has very much been trying to do just that, that is to say, to capitalize electorally off Tea Party support, but the Tea Party is also trying to co-opt the GOP, to take control of it and use it to win elected office.

The Tea Party presents itself as against the establishment, but what it really wants is to became establishment itself, specifically within the Republican Party. To put it another way, it wants the counter-establishment to be the establishment. It denies this, of course, but its pursuit of control of the Republican Party, and its pursuit of power generally, would seem to refute its credibility.

Of course, most, if not all, revolutionaries -- and I use the term broadly when referring to Teabaggers, most of whom are either right-wing Republicans or otherwise right-wing anti-government types who are Republican in spirit -- desire power, not merely the overthrow those in power. Simply put, they want what others have, and often want it badly enough to resort to violence. (Read Hannah Arendt.)

I get it. 

But let's stop pretending that the Tea Party is really all that distinct at this point from the GOP. They may not be one and the same, but they need each other and feed off each other, and they're moving closer and closer all the time.

In this case, Priebus is surely more than happy to open the doors of the GOP as wide as possible to the Tea Party. But even that won't be enough. The Tea Party won't be happy until it takes over, until Priebus and the "establishment," however right-wing, bow to its every command.

It's an uneasy relationship, but it's the essence of the Republican Party.

Bill Maher to the Teabaggers: "The Founding Fathers would have hated your guts."

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm generally not much of a Bill Maher fan, even if I agree with more often than not, but I think he's quite right about this. The Founding Fathers would have hated the Teabaggers, and vice versa.

Mustang Bobby posted the clip at his place yesterday. Here it is for your edifying amusement -- the part about the Teabaggers starts at 2:51, but it's all pretty good:

As Maine goes...

By Distributorcap

Until 1960, Maine held all its elections (except for president) in September. With those early elections, Maine was often a bellwether state for the November national vote. From 1832 until 1932 (with few exceptions), the party that won the governorship in Maine went on to win the White House.

Hence the once popular (and now passé) political phrase, "as Maine goes, so goes the nation."

In 2010, there was a 5-way race for the statehouse in Augusta. Paul LePage was elected governor of Maine with about 38% of the vote, barely 2 points (or 10,000 votes) ahead of independent candidate Eliot Cutler. The Democratic candidate (who by all accounts was a weak candidate) was in third with 19%. Paul LePage may have an R after his name, but have no hesitation with this, Paul LePage is a Teabagger -- and a really nasty one at that.

During the campaign, LePage denied courting the Teabaggers, even though there are videos of him courting the Teabaggers. Also on video (doesn't ANYONE remember why George Allen's macaca moment was more than a moment?) is LePage telling Obama to "go to hell." He also said he was "about to punch a reporter" and has received 10 speeding tickets and was involved in 7 collisions. The best part of LePage's campaign was that he was livid that Maine charges sales tax on bull semen (which they don't).

And true to Teabagging form, LePage is a racist. He said that "private schools have brought their math scores way up because they bring in kids from Asia."

As one of his first moves as governor, LePage, who promised to avoid political cronyism, "hired" his 22-year old daughter (who was just out of college) as assistant to the governor's chief of staff, a job that pays $41,000 plus $15,000 in an expense account. His daughter will also live in the governor's mansion, thus eliminating any money she would have to spend on rent and food. There are no rules in Maine that bar a governor from hiring his family.

Note that LePage's daughter graduated from Florida State, where she paid in-state tuition for two years because Mrs. LePage claimed residency in Florida and Maine. Mrs. LePage had to pay back taxes after avoiding paying any Florida property taxes.

In keeping his Teabag credentials front and center, Governor LePage turned down an invitation from the NAACP to participate in some Martin Luther King Day events. LePage "claims" the NAACP is a "special interest" group and that he "would not be held hostage to special interests." (I am sure if they are Teabag or gun-related, LePage will happily be held hostage). When criticized, LePage, in language representing the new tone of civility from right-wing politicians, told the NAACP they could "kiss my butt." And it didn't end there. LePage went on to say that the NAACP should "look at my family picture. My son happens to be black, so they can do whatever they'd like about it."

The new Teabag meme (give the 'baggers some credit, they come up with new memes as fast as they protest community centers being built -- Sarah "Blood Libel" Palin is a victim, Jared Loughner is a liberal, repealing health care will save jobs, etc.) is not "some of my best friends are [Black, Hispanic, Gay, Asian, Jewish, Muslim or fill in whatever group is the Teabag target du jour] but rather, this new-fangled Paul LePage meme, "my son is ____."

They would be laughable if they didn't have so much political power.

I will guarantee that civility will be defunct by Super Bowl Sunday. Based on the language this week related to Tucson and other issues in the forefront (see statements by Virginia Foxx, Louis Gohmert, Trent Franks, Rand Paul, and of course from the Queen of Teabagging, Sarah "Blood Libel" Palin), the Teabaggers' arrogance is hitting new dizzying levels. I suppose LePage thinks he can easily get away with his snub/disparagement of the NAACP, the nation's leading advocacy group for African-Americans, since only around 1% of Maine's 1.4 million citizens are Black (and around 1% are Hispanic), making Maine the second "whitest" state in the Union (only Vermont has a smaller percent of minorities). It is easy to say such idiotic and harmful stuff when you don't have to worry about the impact of such a small political constituency.

Maine is a wonderful state, with some of the most beautiful coastline and forestlands in the country. While not as liberal as New England-neighboring Massachusetts (Maine split off from Massachusetts in 1820 and is the only state that borders only one other state, New Hampshire), Maine is decidedly not a red state. How the Teabaggers were able to organize and elect such a tyrant is beyond comprehension.

Either buyer's remorse will ooze to surface quickly in Maine, or we really do need to hope that as Maine goes, so goes the nation is as passé as political civility.

Out, out, damned spot

By Capt. Fogg

I saw this clip on The Impolitic this morning: Sharron Angle having a bit of a smugfest about how Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Ben Franklin really wanted us to have the uninfringable right to own firearms, not to facilitate raising a militia, as was stated, or to put food on the table or keep the fox out of the henhouse, but to protect us against tyrannical despots demanding to provide us with affordable health care.



To be fair, I'd like to know the rest of the sentence starting "we need to take Harry Reid out. . ." Vote him out of his elected position, or just "take him out?"

Inquiring minds want to know, but batshit crazies with their hairy ears glued to the radio don't bother to ask. They already know. One has already spoken and as in Mao's famous statement about the voice of revolution -- from the muzzle of a gun. Indeed many self styled conservatives seem to have read intensively from the little red book.

I'll give her the benefit of the doubt for the nonce, but although Jefferson did indeed, how literally I don't know, suggest further revolutions, one would have a hard time convincing me the system he helped design wasn't intended to facilitate that process bloodlessly and with due process of law.

The bit about guns being needed to protect against "tyranny?" to allow the minority to have bloody revenge for the actions of elected representatives? Sorry, Sharron, this is beyond the boundaries of acceptable speech and perhaps even further into the territory of treason, if fomenting armed insurrection against an elected government be such.

It recalls Henry II crying "will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" Not exactly a demand that someone kill Thomas à Becket, but someone soon did and Hank got to wash his hands of the matter. Whether it be the king of England, the Queen of Scotland or a Prefect of Roman Judea, some bloody bastard is always seeking such cleanliness, but that damned spot usually proves rather difficult to remove.

(Cross posted from Human voices)

Alexander's Teabag Band

By Distributorcap

Senator Lamar Alexander, Teabagger senator from Tennessee:

On CNN Sunday morning, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) sought to deflect blame for yesterday's attack in Arizona away from the Tea Party.

Twice, unsolicited, Alexander highlighted facts about the culprit that clash with tea party norms.

"What we know about this individual, for example, is that he was reading Karl Marx, and reading Hitler, and burning the American flag," Alexander said. "That's not the profile of a typical tea party member if that's the inference that's being made." 

Of course not Lamar, the good upstanding Tea Party members NEVER referenced Hitler.

Way to tone down the rhetoric, Lamar. What an asshole. We have to call these people out every time on their lies and distortions

Gearing up for a delusional 2012

By Greg Prince

Delusions of adequacy. There's no other way to explain it.

With the newly-sworn Congress barely in session, we are well into the horse race leading up to the 2012 presidential election. Chronologically, we're entering the third year or "autumn" of the cycle, and appropriately the nuts are starting to fall from the trees.

Thus far the Obama administration has governed differently than candidate Obama campaigned, frustrating progressives and liberals and compromising away hoped-for policy gains. Given both disappointment among the base and the slow pace of economic recovery, especially unemployment, you'd think the president would be particularly vulnerable to a primary opponent. Certainly, some on the left would welcome the prospect of a Democratic primary, but at this point it doesn't seem likely.

The water is a bit muddied by the successful lame-duck session, which demonstrated that once in a rare while Democrats can accomplish something, yet generated a sense of frustration and wondering where that can-do competence had been the previous two years.

Frustrations notwithstanding, a credible primary challenge on the left seems increasingly unlikely. That leaves the GOP side of the aisle where the excitement is to be found.

Starting with a blast from the insufficiently distant past, CNN reports that former Senator Frothy, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, is making preparations for a 2012 White House run:

A source close to the former senator from Pennsylvania confirms to CNN that later Wednesday Santorum will announced [sic] that he's bringing on board one of the top GOP political strategists in New Hampshire, a state that plays a crucial role in the race for the White House. Santorum will also next week make another visit to the state, which traditionally holds in nation's first primary in the presidential calendar.

Haven't we suffered enough? It's hard to imagine a world in which a Santorum candidacy would be taken seriously, but then I look at the current House of Representatives and wonder if he isn't an ideal stealth candidate. He's got the social conservative bona fides Multiple Choice Mitt lacks. He was a wingnut before teabagging asshattery was cool and the public at large doesn't have the longest of memories.

But things could be even more entertaining. Gazing northward from my comfortable home in Minnesota's Fourth Congressional District, we find the Sixth District, a rather "special" place represented by the always entertaining (usually not deliberately so) Michele Bachmann.

Michele Bachmann is always unpredictable – her logic isn't like other people's logic. There was speculation she would consider taking on Minnesota's senior senator, Amy Klobuchar, who will stands for re-election in 2012. It turns out Bachmann's ambitions may be a bit more grand in scale:

MinnPost has learned that Bachmann loyalists have already begun holding conversations with activists and officials in key early caucus and primary states and will begin travelling to those states in the coming weeks and months. Internal conversations have already begun about who might leave her Washington and district offices to staff a potential bid. And Bachmann told reporters she will likely visit additional early voting states in the upcoming months.

I have to admit this is a bit mind-numbing. Bachmann's ability to raise vast sums of money, mostly from out-of-state, was demonstrated in the 2010 election, but that's not the same thing as a national draw for votes. Bachmann's idiocy is a known quantity in the Sixth and they vote for her anyway. It's probably a mistake to think Americans nationwide, even a majority of GOP voters, are equally forgiving.

There is yet some amusement value to be had here. The GOP leadership created the monster. As Hot Air observes, "[a] 'Palin vs. Bachmann' storyline in the primaries would be the political event of a lifetime." Yeah, it would. The GOP leadership has fed the teabagging beast for electoral advantage, praying all the while they could keep it under control. But the beast doesn't want to be controlled.

When Bachmann stopped having her way with the GOP leadership in the Minnesota Senate, she launched her quixotic bid for Congress in the Sixth. Bachmann aspires to leadership, having recently formed the Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives and campaigned actively for far-right candidates in the 2010 season. Not only were her attempts to secure a leadership position within the House GOP solidly rebuffed, she was denied a desired seat on the Ways and Means Committee, to be placed on the Intelligence Committee. Now in principle the Intelligence Committee is prestigious, but it's also a committee that by nature of its work is often out of the limelight – something troublesome for Bachmann, who follows TV cameras like a moth to flame.

Rep. Keith Ellison had this to say about Michele Bachmann's possible candidacy:

I think it would be great for her to run for president. I think she has strongly-held views which she should test on the whole of the United States – see how her views are received across the country, not just in the comfort of the 6th District.

It certainly could be educational:

I think her views would not match up with the mainstream of American society, but I do encourage her to try it, I think it would be a very good thing for her to get out there – and maybe she should resign from office now so she can devote all her time to her presidential run.

Educational indeed. This has potential for some great political theater. Please Michele... please GOP.

(Cross-posted from Greg Prince's Blog.)

Ayn't She Sweet

by Distributorcap

The 112th Congress opened today - and it isn't taking long for teabag insanity to rear its ugly head straight from the rectum of an colic elephant. Led by the orange Oompah-Loompah from Ohio and his band of mirthmakers, the next two years are guaranteed to supply a plethora of fodder to the comics, photoshoppers and intelligentsia of this country. Sadly it will also be two of the most pathetic, tragic and regressive years for the America people.

In honor of this new and improved form of psychosis known as the House of Representatives, we announce the creation of the Randbag Award. This award, named in honor of the Queen of Insensitivity herself - Ayn Rand - will be given on a regular basis to a most deserving member of the In-crowd - the teabagger that shows the most insensitivity, insanity, intolerance and/or inappropriate behavior. With the land inside-the-beltway now polluted by an overabundance of dirt-teabags - this is sure to be a very, very competitive award.

First up - Diane Black - freshman Congressteabag from 6th district of Tennessee

One of the early signs for the onset of GOP dementia will be the parade of teabaggers demanding the repeal of the Affordable Health Care Act - the watered-down and insurance company-friendly health care bill that took all the oxygen out of Washington to pass last year.

Ms. Black has stated her case for repeal - and it meets all the earmarks of a Randbag.

There is a mandate there that insurance companies must insure children up to the age of 24, and what we have found is that there are a lot of insurance companies that are just saying we’re not going to be in this business any longer, because we know that we can’t survive if that’s what we’re going to do.

And the second piece of that was to insure children regardless of their health care history, and as a result of that, I know several health care insurance agents in my district who have said we’re just dropping any insurance for children whatsoever.

Those damn sick kids - they are just medical terrorists! Better for them to die than to force insurance companies and agents out of business. After all, it is just too expensive to pay claims to those sick people who paid premiums.

Ms. Black (a registered nurse!) couldn't be more clear - she is more concerned about the bottom line of insurance companies than the health and well-being of children. But then again she is a teabagger who campaigned on the nasty things liberals want to do to ruin America - so this should come as no surprise to her constituents.

Ms. Black thinks the provision in the law that allows parent to keep their children on their policies to age 26 (not 24 as she states - it is amazing how many teabaggers in government don't even bother to get the facts straight while they are criticizing) is just too burdensome for the poor burdened insurance companies. She also thinks that requiring insurance companies to insure sick kids is just another form of cadillac-driving welfare - and that this is just too anti-capitalist.To put this simply,  Representative Diane Black of Tennessee looks forward to watching the ailing children of America drop dead - it is good for the bottom line.

Diane Black describes herself a champion of long-term health care for the disabled - and of course like all good teabaggers - she is for strong family values.  Values like the ones that let families watch their children get turned down for insurance because they have diabetes, cancer, muscular dystrophy or some other illness. Values that will force families to choose between food and medical care for their kids.  I can guarantee you that Diane, her three children and six grandchildren all have good health policies. While she attends Community Church in Hendersonville, I am sure Ms. Black pats the heads of all the healthy children in the pews.

Diane Black believes that access to health care -even for kids - should be based on the ability to pay, not on any moral obligation or need. Diane Black is also saying that it is okay for insurance companies to drop you - and kids - once you get sick, that they are not required to deliver services even after you pay. Diane Black cares more about the viability of insurance companies than she does not care about Americans - or her own constituents.   Or rather Diane Black cares more about receiving her campaign donations from insurance companies, agents and brokers than she does about affordable health care for kids.

Let's give her some credit - Ms. Black is right in one respect - it is time to get insurance companies out of the health insurance business and have universal coverage - so no family has to stress out wondering how they will pay for an ill child.  Only Diane Black is right for all the wrong reasons and Diane Black will NEVER vote for universal coverage.

As another worshipping teabagger at the Temple of AynRand,  Diane Black thinks health care is a privilege - for those rich white folks in Tennessee. For the poor - well that is too bad, have the community take up a collection. In addition, Diane Black was on-board with the hate-the-Islamic-Center crowd. She is a true teabagger through-and-throuh - the hate oozes out of her pores.

For showing insensitivity and idiocy early on - Diane Black is the first recipient of the Randbag.

Waiter, there's a terrorist in my tea

By Capt. Fogg

"In a free society we're supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it."

- Ron Paul -

What is it about Florida? Is it as Frank Lloyd Wright once said, that since it's the lowest point on the map of the U.S., everything loose wound up down here?

We may be no more fatuous than the rest of the country in blabbering about our "freedom" and how everyone in the world is jealous of it and how every military exploit is about freedom and every casualty is a sacrifice for freedom and that this freedom is the result of our foreign wars rather than our constitutional law, but we sure look strange to that supposedly jealous planet when we agitate that more and more of it be taken away from us -- in the name of freedom.

Speaking of loose things floating around in the bilges of America, Florida Representative-elect Allen West, soon to represent the 22nd district, who identifies with that nebulous assemblage of misfits and nitwits called the Tea Party, seems to be all in favor of censoring the press despite all his tea soaked and treacly rhetoric about constitutional restraints on government power:

I think that we also should be censoring the American news agencies which enabled him to do this and also supported him and applauding him [Julian Assenge] for the efforts. So that's kind of aiding and abetting of a serious crime.

No, he's not talking about reporting troop positions or exposing covert agents, he's talking about embarrassing the administration as "a serious crime." That's the same administration Tea Party folks have been waving guns at and making threats at and calling tyrannical, Marxist, and illegal.

Yes, it's been all too hard for most of us to tell exactly what message the Tea Party people are bringing to the party, and this message of government for government's sake; government by, for and of the Executive Branch and military authority and damn the Constitution, smells more like plain old exaggerated nationalism and authoritarianism than tea.

One of the ways "the terrorists" won is that domestic authoritarians posing as libertarians can simply identify anything that threatens them: things like the truth, for instance, as "terrorism" and make it a crime. Things like identifying high crimes and high criminals and the kind of lies and manipulations of truth that get people killed and bankrupt economies. Revealing a crime -- a politically motivated burglary, for example -- becomes, by the Logic of Tea, "aiding and abetting a serious crime" and "terrorism," while actually aiding and abetting by hiding it or obstructing justice becomes... what, freedom?

Is West a moderate compared to Uncle Mike Huckabee, who demands summary execution for Assenge? Palin, Gingrich, Mitch McConnell, and even CNN are calling him a "terrorist" and telling us not only that we can't handle the truth but that we don't deserve it and the government doesn't owe it to us. It's all about freedom, of course, and all of this from people calling Obama a "tyrant." So whatever the Tea party is selling, I think we can dispense with the idea that it has anything to do with less powerful government, a government restrained by lawm anything to do with a government of the people, responsible to the people and most of all, anything to do with freedom other than to garble its meaning.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)