Needlenose

When they are not killing their family and friends, Reactionary gun nuts take pot shots at the President and his family….

To prepare for the inevitable turkey-fueled confrontation with Uncle Bob the Total Tea Partier over the Thanksgiving Holiday, make sure to read Tim Dickinson’s “How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich.”  In fact, you might want to print copies, and highlight some of the juicier passages for Bob and any other Reactionaries with whom you need to interact.

In a misguided attempt to appear ‘fair and balanced,’ the San Francisco Chronicle syndicates Debra Saunders, who may be one of the most poorly educated syndicated conservative columnists writing in the U.S. today.  In particular, she seems ignorant of the actual contents of that conservative fetish, the U.S. Constitution.  In a recent rant against the Occupy Oakland movement, she attempts the following bon mot:

“Free speech does not mean free camping.”

If memory (or cut and paste) serves me, free speech shares the First Amendment with a prohibition against:

“…interfering with the right to peaceably assemble ”

Except for a few miscreants, the camping has been relatively peaceable.

It’s not the first time that Ms. Saunders has demonstrated her ignorance of Constitutional law.  I understand why the paper feels the need to have a token Reactionary in the editorial section, but why did they pick the most stupid one?

I think McCain is onto something in predicting the rise of a third political party in the U.S.  I’ve been musing about the subject for several months now, and I reckon that neither party are providing the voters with what they are clearly clamoring for – an old school populist willing to tax wealthy individuals and corporations who is socially reactionary.  Basically a pre-Robert Kennedy Democrat (or a guy like Ahmadinejad).

Such a beast could never get a nomination from the socially progressive Democratic party of today nor the corporate tool Republican party, so only a third party is plausible.  I don’t think any serious politician has either gotten this realization yet.  But I don’t think it would be too late for a dark horse Southerner with good hair, a little charisma and the balls to step out on his own to enter and pull the win from Obama.  If I could venture a name, I’d say somebody like Mike Huckabee, but he’d have to do is drop his new-found Tea Party pandering and add ‘Government’ to his “God, Guns ‘n Gays’ talk.

Keep in mind I’m not advocating this in any shape manner or form, as I particularly hate social reactionaries.  I’m just sayin’.

*Update 3:26P PT* Rep. Joe Walsh doesn’t get it

Okay, it wasn’t exactly betting on the Cardinals to win the World Series when they were still 5 games short of a playoff spot in mid-September, I’ll admit that.  But I wrote elsewhere three weeks ago that Herman Cain’s rivals for the GOP presidential nomination were due to turn up the heat against him, and it should be clear now what I meant.  And to boot, I wasn’t far off the mark with my lame joke educated guess that the insinuations against him would be sexual in nature.

However, the surfacing of past sexual harassment complaints against Cain hasn’t hurt him in the polls yet, which has surprised a lot of folks (including me) because Cain’s initial support seemed so soft.  And perhaps I haven’t watched the Republican presidential contest closely enough — don’t blame me; I’ve always been squeamish about seeing car wrecks — but Cain hasn’t seemed to demonstrate the kind of extraordinary charisma or resonant message you’d think he would need for voters to rally around him.

Maybe it’s not about Cain, though.  It could just be that the ever-more-delusional right-wing base has decided that this moment is as good as any to make a firm stand against reality, once and for all.  Or perhaps Cain supporters’ instincts toward denial have been helped by the fact that the charges against him are still essentially anonymous, and therefore an abstraction.

The question now is, what (if any) shoe is going to drop next?  Longtime observers of the politics of personal destruction know that once the amorphous issue of “character” has been raised regarding a candidate, all sort of follow-up allegations suddenly are treated as newsworthy, even if by themselves they would have been ignored.  And if someone scheming against Cain gift-wrapped the harassment “scoop” for Politico without one or more sequels ready to be released, then Republican political campaigns really have declined in quality.

Or perhaps there is a slowly unspooling plan to put a face to the current allegations… preferably, from the standpoint of Cain’s rivals, one that not only can survive the inevitable blowback but also triggers the primordial fears (“He’s after our daughters!”) and resentments of the GOP electorate.

Failing that, the camps of Romney, Perry et al. will have to hope that Cain engages in current behavior that accomplishes the same goal.  And, frankly, given the elevated levels of hubris that may intoxicate an inexperienced candidate who begins to believe he’s invulnerable — to the point where he starts to boast about his alleged vulnerabilities — that might not be such a surprising development.  When you think you’re getting away with something, why not keep doing it?

(Adapted from a post at Firedoglake.)

With Halloween coming up on Monday, there’s going to be a lot of grown-ups attending masquerade parties this weekend. Which, unfortunately, has meant a lot of long, last-minute lines in crowded costume stores — including the one in Washington, D.C., where all the Republican presidential candidates went shopping earlier this week.

As you might expect, they all wanted to dress up as Ronald Reagan, but someone had already snatched that up before the GOP contenders got there… and things just got uglier as they all scrambled for other choices.

Michele Bachmann took the easiest route, deciding to go as Bat Boy.

Jon Huntsman settled for being the Invisible Man.  (Some thought Tim Pawlenty did, too, but it turned out he didn’t stay long enough to buy a costume.)

All of his fellow candidates wanted Ron Paul to be the Invisible Man, but he kept asking if he could be Ross Perot.  Amid all the crosstalk, he wound up as Perot’s crazy aunt in the basement.

Sarah Palin, who showed up even though she isn’t running, opted for Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.

Herman Cain decided to go as Sarah Palin, but people are just beginning to figure that out.

Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich both wanted to be Elmer Gantry, which resulted in a terrible fight where they tore the costume in half.  Perry completed his outfit with a cowboy get-up once worn by George Bush — and when he worried people might recognize it, he dyed a Jimmy Carter wig to put on top of it all.  Newt combined his half with a science-fiction robot costume.

Mitt Romney took the same concept way too far, stitching together pieces from so many different costumes that no one really knows who he’s trying to be.

(Adapted from a post at Firedoglake.  Tip of the ‘Nose to Green Boy for his suggestions!)

Dictators of the world, if you say you’re gonna fight to the last bullet, take this piece of advice for me – make sure you go down fighting.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look at what happened to these guys who said they’d fight to the death, then either hid in spider holes or tried to flee the battle (not for the faint of heart):

Gaddafi

Hussein

Prabhakaran

So sure you can live a few extra weeks by hiding out like a wuss, but do you really want to be remembered that way?  Go down fighting and maybe you’ll get a cult following of extremist youth in the next generation.

Recent study project established by Climate Skeptic Richard Muller conclusively demonstrates that global warming is real and caused by human activity.  Like there was any doubt.

Why aren’t we changing our activity?

 

“I shure love the smell of napalm in the morning!”

Seems like only yesterday Shrubya was silently gloating over his secret plan to deceive American into invading Iraq.  But that was almost 10 long years ago and the costs of the Republican’s elective war have been extreme:

“More than 4,400 American military lives have been lost since the start of the war in March of 2003, and more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, according to Iraq Body Count, which cross-checks news reports with hospital and other official data. As of March, the war had cost the U.S.$806 billion.”

Looks like Obama is finally going to get us out of it.  Send this to every Reactionary you know and remind them of how much they supported this war back in ’03 and ask them who really failed America.

Freedom means...

When a Tea Party guys talks about ‘Freedom,’ what they mean is that they want to be free to do this.