Limited Government

I think that when Republicans talk about "limited government" what they really mean is that they favor a government that limits the freedom and equality of everyone who disagrees with them. Ironically, this produces a larger, not to mention dysfunctional, government.

What are some of the major issues and themes of the Republicans?

Gays? The Republicans support limiting their right to marriage.

Atheists? The Republicans support limiting their right to the separation of church and state.

Women? The Republicans support limiting their right to healthcare and equal pay.

Blacks? The Republicans support limiting their rights in numerous ways.

Children? The Republicans support limiting their right to a public education, and their right to being safe in school.

Barack Obama? The Republicans support limiting his right to nominate a justice to replace Antonin Scalia.

Citizens Un-united? The Republicans support limiting the right of the 99% to democracy.

Taxpayers? The Republicans support limiting their right to a sane tax policy.

Muslims? The Republicans support limiting their right to be treated as human beings.

Immigrants? The Republicans support limiting their right to be treated as human beings.

"Terrorists?" The Republicans support limiting their right to a fair trial and their right to the Geneva Convention.

George W. Bush and most of his administration? The Republicans support limiting their right to a fair trial and their right to the Geneva Convention.

I probably could go on and on, but as The Traveling Wilburys once said "I guess by now you've got the gist".

Infinite Loop

Would an infinite loop of pleasure be better than an infinite loop of pain? Would you be able to tell the difference? Is there really a difference between heaven and hell? Who knows?

I think that the Republicans are experimenting with different forms of infinite loops of hell.

The Time-Loop Party:

By now everyone who follows politics knows about Marco Rubio’s software-glitch performance in Saturday’s Republican debate. (I’d say broken-record performance, but that would be showing my age.) Not only did he respond to a challenge from Chris Christie about his lack of achievements by repeating, verbatim, the same line from his stump speech he had used a moment earlier; when Mr. Christie mocked his canned delivery, he repeated the same line yet again.

In other news, last week — on Groundhog Day, to be precise — Republicans in the House of Representatives cast what everyone knew was a purely symbolic, substance-free vote to repeal Obamacare. It was the 63rd time they’ve done so.

When Stargate SG-1 did it, it was funny:


When Congress does it, it is not funny. It is tragic, a huge waste of time, resources, and money.

However, when Marco Rubio does it, it is somehow funny and tragic at the same time:

Religious Republicans Rescue Rules

Oklahoma Republicans offer home to Ten Commandments monument:

The Republican Party of Oklahoma has offered a home to a Ten Commandments monument soon to be removed from Capitol grounds by court order, saying the teachings etched in stone are espoused by the party, officials said on Thursday.

A state judge in September gave Oklahoma until Oct. 12 to remove the 6-foot-tall monument, denying requests from the state’s Republican leadership to leave it in its current spot a few paces from the Capitol.

The interim chairwoman of the Oklahoma Republican Party has offered to display the monument outside Republican headquarters in Oklahoma City.

“It really defines us as a nation,” said Estela Hernandez “We really are a moral nation and, when we look at those laws that are enshrined in that monument, that’s what we follow today.”

Because monuments are more important than representing all the people. Because Christian Republicans are more equal than others.
Because the Ten Commandments cover morality so completely:

Stupid enough as it is that some idiots think these arcane rules should be the foundation of national laws, there is obviously an enormous body of legal code that is not covered by the 10 Commandments, one of the more obvious examples being that nowhere is one forbidden to beat someone to a pulp because they look funny, or for any other reason for that matter (unless they're your mother or father, provided you've dishonored them). One of the more serious omissions, telling perhaps about the society's view of women, is that there is nothing here to prohibit rape, which is arguably a far worse crime than saying your parents' ideas are whacked or wishing you had that really hot Lexus.

Other omissions include slavery, torture, bodily harm, deceit, bribery, coercion, usurpation, etc.

I'm Still Looking For The Trickle

GOP tax plans benefit rich despite populist campaign talk:

Jeb Bush went to Detroit and talked about leveling the playing field. Marco Rubio wrote a book about helping the working class. Rand Paul is promising to expand the Republican Party beyond its traditional base.

Yet all three Republican presidential candidates have offered tax proposals that would, for reasons such as nomination politics and tax rate realities, overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest.

In doing so, they have drawn criticism from Democrats who call it proof that the GOP's eventual nominee will mainly try to help the rich.

Even some conservatives expressed concerns after Bush released his proposed tax cut last week. Then there was the analysis Thursday from the Washington-based Tax Foundation that concluded his plan would initially help the top 1 percent of earners 10 times as much as it would those in the bottom 10 percent.

Differential Gullibility

How the Stupid Party Was Made:

It’s easy to get inured to polling results that demonstrate that a significant part of the American population barely has enough brain capacity to operate their lungs. It’s hard to imagine how a brain that can simultaneously hold that the president is a Muslim and that he is at fault for being a member of Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s congregation can figure out how to simultaneously pump the heart and regulate body temperature. 

...the conservative movement has determined that they can hold onto power a little longer despite demographic changes and the browning of America if they can sharply increase their share of the white vote. And the way to do that is not to figure out what these people need and offer ways to give it to them, but to get them to think more in terms of their whiteness. Whites go over here in the right column and everyone else goes over there in the left column.

Very often it is Christian whites who "go over here in the right column and everyone else goes over there in the left column". This is why the "Obama is a Muslim" meme works so well for the Republican Party. Also, in their minds they are always right, because God is on their side, and everyone else is wrong:

1. A Nationwide Campaign Of Terror (Abortion and birth control)
2. Not An Onion Headline (Big Mountain Jesus)
3. Unfair Unbalanced Bill O'Reilly (Only Christians are moral)
4. Quote Of Note - Sarah Palin (Only Christians are moral)
5. Thems Fightin Words (Separation of Church and State)
6. God Authorizes Government Shutdown (God's authority supercedes the law)

The list goes on and on: Hobby Lobby, prayers opening meetings in the Town of Greece, NY, not baking cakes for gay weddings,etc. Christian whites think that they are always right and that the Freedom From Religion Foundation is always wrong.

Let's not forget the Republican Party's Southern Strategy:

With the ascendancy of Reagan, the Southern Strategy became a national strategy that melded race, taxes, anticommunism, and religion."^[59]

The Republican Party panders to whites and Christians.

Christopher Hitchens was on to this stupid thing some time ago:

We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.

It could be the motto of the Republican Party: "More mean, more selfish, more stupid".

The Immoral Minority: So true.

The Immoral Minority: So true.

I swear that if President Obama gets up tomorrow, takes a deep breath, and declares that oxygen is the greatest thing ever, every Republican in the country will suddenly refuse to breath.

A Perfect Summation Of The Republican Party

"They're very confused. In fact the only thing they are clear about is that they are very angry and unhappy with everything."

More Republican Lies To Make Your Head Spin

From SPIN METER: 'War and Peace' in 209 pages? by Calvin Woodward and Douglass K. Daniel:

Republicans are using everything short of forklifts to show Americans that Democratic health care legislation is an unwieldy mountain of paper. They pile it high on desks, hoist it on a shoulder trussed in sturdy rope and tell people it's longer than "War and Peace," which it isn't.

Although they complain they don't have time to read all of it, they found the time to tape it together, page by page, so they could roll it up the steps of the Capitol like super-sized toilet paper and show how very long it is.

Read the rest here.

I’ll bet that the Republicans have only read the War part of "War and Peace," if they’ve read any of it at all. And I think that maybe Barack Obama skipped most of the Peace part as well.

Monster Raving Loonies

From Not So Funny After All by William Rivers Pitt:

The problem, however, is that people like Palin stopped being funny a while ago. The prominence they enjoy in our political discourse is so far out of whack with their abilities and intentions that it vastly exaggerates their influence over a variety of very serious matters that affect each and every one of us. The British have the Monster Raving Loony Party, who are a joke and exert no real influence, and we have the Republican Party, filled with monster raving loonies who exert a tremendous amount of influence because the news media thinks we are a nation of people who like to look at car accidents on the highway, which, by and large, we are. We've been well-trained by 20 years of shock television to mistake clowns and jesters for serious people, and because of that mistake, these people's deranged opinions and deformed ideas get taken seriously.

Actually, the biggest wreck on the highway is the news media, and not all of us want to look at it. Some of us are sick and tired of it, fed up, bored too, and mostly just plain pissed off. Something is very wrong when someone like Sarah Palin is given such a large stage to be an idiot, and then is taken seriously by so many.

Why Does God Hate Republicans?

Why would an all powerful God allow the Republican Party to be such losers? After all, isn’t God a Republican?

From Pizza Party by Christopher Beam:

The question hovering over the proceedings—as over the party in general—was, should Republicans compromise or stand strong? Moderate their views or embrace conservatism? The answer coming out of this group seemed to be, Yes. On the one hand, said Cantor, "We should be an inclusive party." On the other, "the essence of being a Republican is a belief in free markets, a belief in individual responsibility, faith in the individual, faith in God."

Memories

The way we were.

From From One-Party Rule to Cry-Baby Caucus by Greg Saunders:

To sum up the last eight years, we’ve had one-party rule in Washington D.C. which had “fiscal conservatives” feeling entitled to spend taxpayer money like drunken sailors (which exacerbated the very fiscal crisis that the current Congress is trying to address). When the minority party tried to insert themselves in the legislative process, they were not only shunned completely, but the GOP leadership would shut down meetings until they left, hold open votes for hours until they got the results they wanted, and would actually call the police to have Democrats removed from meetings. Where the HELL do these guys get off complaining about partisanship?

Bailing And Stimulating

Put simply, I think that I am more in favor of stimulus and less in favor of bailouts. Sometimes I wonder if the news media even bothers to make any distinctions between the two. It also seems to me that the Republicans are more in favor of bailouts and less in favor of stimulus.

From Sen. Graham on the Stimulus: 'This Bill Stinks ... We're Not Being Smart'

VAN SUSTEREN: All right. We only have about 45 seconds left. Is this going to pass? I mean, the president has -- there are a lot of Democrats in the Senate and the House.

GRAHAM: I think...

VAN SUSTEREN: They own the two houses.

GRAHAM: If we can make sure that Republicans will insist on a better process, where Republicans ideas are heard, there are enough Republicans that will meet Democrats in a responsible way to get a spending bill that cuts -- a bill that cuts taxes and spends on infrastructure and help people who (are) out of a job. If this bill passes, I think the Obama administration has governed completely different than the way they campaigned, and the Democratic Congress will be reinforcing the public's view of them in a very bad way. We can do better. I want a bipartisan bill, not this bill.

VAN SUSTEREN: And so if this passes, you're going to get a bumper sticker that says, "Don't blame me."

Republican ideas have been forced down our throats for what seems like an eternity. As far as the economy goes, make that idea, rather than ideas. Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts… Other than tax cuts and obstructionism and whining, what are the Republicans offering? What are the great ideas that they want people to listen to?

The First Shall Be Last

From Watching Republicans grieve by Mark Schone:

I remember 2004, when they said that the Democrats were in the permanent minority. And now look. So, I think that the minute we write them off, the more we diminish their power, the stronger they're going to be in four years. I think sometimes losing empowers you more than it defeats you. And I found a lot of people who are so unhappy with Obama as president that they are going to do everything they can to help Republican candidates defeat what they see as the liberal takeover of America.

Those are the words of Alexandra Pelosi, Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker and daughter of Nancy Pelosi.

How Selfish Are Republicans?

Do Republican politicians even want the economy to recover? Are they placing their own self-interests before the interests of their constituents? It seems to me that all that the Republican politicians want to do right now is to try to make Barack Obama look bad. Good luck with that. Instead of making Obama look bad they are simply digging their own graves. They are continuing the terrible Bush legacy of pettiness, bullheadedness, and assholeness. The American public eventually caught up with how bad Bush was, and eventually they will catch up with how bad the remaining Republican politicians are.

These petty bastards should put partisan politics aside and actually try to do something to help this country and its citizens!!! In other words, stop being assholes!!!

From Opposing Obama on Stimulus, Republicans Party Like It's 1993 by Jon Perr:

Ultimately, of course, history was not kind to the Republican obstructionists who put politics before public policy. Reagan's massive 1981 tax cuts led to even more massive budget deficits, forcing the Gipper to later raise taxes twice. George W. Bush, too, saw the federal government hemorrhage red ink and presided over the worst eight-year economic record of any modern American president. Meanwhile, Democrat Bill Clinton's tenure in the 1990's witnessed rapid economic growth, low unemployment, balanced budgets and projected surpluses.

As for Barack Obama, it's clear that he's in for more of the same treatment as Bill Clinton. No doubt with a twinkle in his eye, Karl Rove said Thursday of the Republicans' stimulus stonewalling, "they are playing their hand extraordinarily well." Through their onstructionism, he said, "House Republicans have used the stimulus bill to redefine their party." And Bill Kristol, who almost single-handedly rallied the GOP to block the Clinton health care plan in 1994, last week called on Republicans to give Barack Obama a repeat on the stimulus - and just about everything else:

"But the loss of credibility, even if they jam it through, really hurts them on the next, on the next piece of legislation. Clinton got through his tax increases in '93, it was such a labor and he had to twist so many arms to do it and he became so unpopular...

...That it made, that it made it so much easier to then defeat his health care initiative. So, it's very important for Republicans who think they're going to have to fight later on on health care, fight later on maybe on some of the bank bailout legislation, fight later on on all kinds of issues."

And so it goes. Even in defeat, the Republicans want to party like it's 1993.

When will the remaining Republican voters wake up to the fact that Republican politicians put themselves first, corporate America second, and American citizens last?

Update:
Why is Karl Rove a weekly op-ed writer for The Wall Street Journal, a Newsweek columnist and writing a book to be published by Simon & Schuster when he should be in jail?

Fiscal Conservatism At Work

Why isn’t it “generational theft” when Republicans spend billions of dollars?

To be a Fiscal Conservative (actually a pretend Fiscal Conservative, not a real one) means you vote for government spending when your party is in power and complain and whine about government spending when the other party is in power. It means you vote for wars that send money out of the United States, allowing huge sums of it to be stolen or lost. It means you don’t vote for a stimulus package where the money would stay in the United States and be used by and for United States citizens. To be a Fiscal Conservative means you are unscrupulous, unethical, uncaring, unthinking, and unwise, because all of this will only come back and bite you in the ass in the long run. The Republicans are suicidal.

The Other Party

From Just Give It Up by Josh Marshall:

I think what most people see here is one side of (the) equation trying to put together a bill with big majorities, which means necessarily ones that wouldn't be his own parties wish list. The other party has used the overture exclusively as a vehicle for scoring political points and, more poetically put, being dicks.

Off Center

From Fetishizing off-center centrism by Jamison Foser:

From the way the media have covered this week's stimulus package vote, you would think the goal of the legislation was to get Democrats and Republicans to sit together for lunch in the House cafeteria, rather than to turn around an economy in free fall.

After the House passed the stimulus package by a comfortable margin, much of the media reacted not by examining the bill's contents and the likelihood that it would provide a much-needed boost to the economy, but by focusing on the fact that it passed without a single Republican vote.

Why the GOP's unanimity in opposing the stimulus package should be surprising is anybody's guess; the last time we had a newly elected Democratic president, in 1993, congressional Republicans were unanimous in opposing his economic package, too. Then-Rep. John Kasich went so far as to promise that if Bill Clinton's plan worked, Kasich would switch parties. (It did; he didn't.) Point being: Congressional Republicans do not have a strong track record of working with Democratic presidents in recent memory. Perhaps because they were too busy trying to subpoena the White House cat.

Nonetheless, the Democrats' purported failure to get Republican support for the bill was, according to many reporters, the story.

Read the rest here.

A Fool And His Money

Republicans were stupid enough to nominate and elect George W. Bush. Twice. I wonder how many are stupid enough to throw their money at what is basically a non-existent presidential campaign?

From Huckabee tells Republicans how to recover by Kristi Keck:

Huckabee abandoned his 2008 presidential campaign in March, but he's shied away from saying if he has put all of his presidential aspirations to rest.

"I'm quite a few months and many prayers away from making some decision like that," he said.

His supporters, however, already are preparing for 2012. Huckabee said that people showing up for his book signings -- often hours before the events are scheduled to begin -- are telling him that he has their vote in the next presidential election.

Supporters behind SaveforMike.com have even committed to setting aside $2.85 a day so that if Huckabee decides to run, they'll have saved up enough by the time of his announcement to contribute the maximum $2,300 to his campaign. And if not, they'll "just use the savings to splurge on something nice to lessen our disappointment," according to the group's Web site.

While he's amazed by the energy among his supporters, Huckabee said when it comes to a future presidential run, "we'll just have to wait and see."

Aren’t there laws against this kind of thing?

What The Hell Does This Even Mean?

"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation." Sarah Palin

Doesn’t she want people who live in big cities to vote for her? I live in a small town and I will never vote for Sarah Palin, even if she holds one of her guns to my head.

2008 Republican Platform On The Economy

An excerpt:

We support energetic federal investigation and, where appropriate, prosecution of criminal wrongdoing in the mortgage industry and investment sector. We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself. We believe in the free market as the best tool to sustained prosperity and opportunity for all.

They say one thing and do the exact opposite. They are not prosecuting the wrongdoers, they are bailing them out.