Easy to be a bigot, harder to be a racist? - Inside the mind of Jutice Antonin Scalia

So Justice Scalia thinks the Congress voted to re-authorize the Voting Rights Act without dissension, only because not a one of the Congress people were willing to be considered "racist" if they voted no.

But he explained, it's perfectly ok and socially acceptable for them to vote their consciences, that is to vote no, on women's rights, LGBT rights, poor people's rights - I mean entitlements.

But voting against black people, they only do that, because they fear ostracism. Not because voter suppression still exists, not because black people are still disenfranchised. No, every thing is peachy keen now. Jim Crow is dead and all people are equal. Amen.

Here is Justice Scalia's reasoning: In the beginning, only a few Republicans voted for the original act, then a few more voted for the first re-authorization, and a few more after that, until today when they all voted for it. Why? Because they feared the delicate sensibilities of - Who? fill in the blank - would be offended, and gentlemen that they are, they would not want to offend anyone.

No sir. Even though they have no problem denying women their reproductive rights or to be free from violence; it bothers them not one wit to find gay people getting married an abomination and as for poor people - Are there no prisons, no workhouses?

OK, we get it.  Republicans are scardy-cats, on certain issues.  It's hard to play Supreme Court Roulette, because you never know whose head the pistol is pointed at. Never mind where the bullet is.

And that reminds us, voting against gun safety laws is also just jim dandy. Not wanting to look like a sissy in front of their peers is all the excuse the pro-gun Congress dudes need.  

Poor Little Desperate Debra Saunders

Really Reaching Saunders:

Poor Debra Saunders, she's getting a little desperate this week.  It must be tough being a Republican in a Democratic Town, but she gets a column in the San Francisco Chronicle at least twice a week, and more this week.  (One of these days they'll get around to firing her and hiring me, or at least inviting me to post my blogs as a counter point, but I'm not holding my breath.)  First there was her column taking the Democrats to task for saying that the Republican's (Mitt's) economic plan was to give tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans while taxing the middle class more to pay for it.  Well, says Debra there's no evidence for that. The Dems just use the analysis provided by the Tax Policy Center.  

Well, Debra, where's your evidence that it's not true?  She doesn't cite a single reference for her supposition. What the Tax Policy Center did was analyze what they know of Mitt's plan pointing out they have to take what he says and make assumptions based on that because "Governor Romney has not offered a fully-specified plan. He has been explicit about the tax cuts he has in mind, including a one-fifth reduction in marginal tax rates from today’s level, which would drop the top rate from 35 percent to 28 percent and a cut in capital gains and dividend taxes for families with incomes below $200,000. He and his team have also said that reform should be revenue-neutral and not increase taxes on capital gains and dividends. But they have not provided any detail about what tax preferences they would cut to make up lost revenue."

Such a revenue neutral plan would logically "reduce taxes for high-income households, requiring higher taxes on middle- or low-income households. I doubt that’s his intent, but it is an implication of what we can tell about his plan so far." Understanding TPC’s Analysis of Governor Romney’s Tax Plan by Donald Marron.

Even Debra was forced to admit that Romney was vague about his policies, and that the Tax Policy Center's assumptions were logical given the information provided.  But, she continues, Romney would never raise taxes on the middle class.  Don't hold your breath.

Pro-life Saunders:

In today's column, she asks "where are the pro life Democrats."  Newsflash for Debra, we are all pro-life. We are also mostly pro-choice.  As in women should be able to make their own choices about their own bodies. It's not one or the other.  The anti-choice crowd calls themselves pro-life, but they are for the most part, anti-life, after that life is a born human being anyway.

Easy to love the fetus. No muss, no fuss.  No cost except for pre-natal care, which the I'm not sure how the Republicans feel about paying for for poor women, but I can guess.  Obamacare, as we are all now calling it, is a truly pro-life program.  Just ask that mom of the little girl with the heart condition who won't be kicked off her insurance plan by the time she's five - unless Romney is elected.  

Two Faced Republicans

I guess flip flopping and contradictions are natural to Republicans. Romney was for Obamacare, when it was called Romneycare, and he instituted it in Massachusetts, before he was against it, and Paul Ryan, who is ready to disembowel Obamacare if he and Romney are elected, in 2010 requested a grant that would be funded from that program for his own State.  What's that old song from the cold war era - the era the Republicans want to take us back to?  Oh yeah, "Two Faces Have I" 

Soylant Green, is it on the Republican Menu yet?

From our friends at the Pundit Pie blog:

We thought we’d be served some red meat by Paul Ryan in his Convention speech last night, but I felt like I got my blood sucked instead.                                                                   

I can still feel the fang marks.  He not only looks like a vampire, his seductive blue eyes and deceptive boyish good looks are geared toward taking you by surprise when the fangs go in.  Soon we may all be a nation of the undead if the Republican have their way.    

                                         Separated at birth?  Ryan and Eddie Munster

The meat they offering is just pink slime dressed up in Republican red white and blue.  Or is it something worse?

No red meat, or even rattlesnake that tastes like chicken, they offer up a diet of lies, devoid of nutrition, but sold in Prime-Time to a nation hungry for answers to the question of why they can’t find work, their kids can’t afford school, their homes are about to be foreclosed on.   Why they can’t afford health insurance.  Ryan glibly says Trust us, we’ll save Medicare.   But they neglect to tell you their savings will cost you dearly when you get to the check- out line and find that you have to pick up more of a bill, despite paying into it all these years.

They say they will create 12 million jobs, but they don’t say how or where.  (And oh surprise, the projection of 12 million jobs is about right for the economy anyway, that is, nothing they do has anything to do with it, and if they really were the job creators, they’re figures would be way higher than average.) Not everyone can come out of a community college and go into investment banking. Will these jobs be in China? Maybe they’ll export American workers the way they exported their money.  Set up work camps in China where you can answer tech support questions for pennies a day and sleep five to a room.

Their biggest lie is that giving tax breaks to the rich makes them into “job creators.”  Well, where’s the beef?, as the little old lady used to say.  Mitt Romney says trust me to fix what’s wrong with this country; I’m a successful businessman.   But success to these parasites means something very different than it to does t the average American taxpayer.  According  to Rolling Stone, Bain Capital, which Romney boasts about, was nothing but another blood sucking corporation not interested in “creating jobs” but in looting the treasuries of the companies they gobbled up.  There’s the red meat, unfortunately the meat of the working families sucked dry in the wake of the Romney and his “successful” business dealings.  Successful for him.  Tragic for you and me.  Let’s listen between the lines of the right wing rhetoric as they try to tell us how being a successful business man translates into being a successful leader of a nation. 

Sure Romney was successful in business; his success comes at our expense. He got rich. You didn’t.  And another thing,  While he boasts about tithing to his church, he refuses to tell us how much (if anything) he’s  tithed to his Country over the past several years.    Show us the tax returns Mitt.

When will Americans wake up out of their dream of pulling themselves up by bootstraps they don’t have and into an economy that people like Romney have already shipped overseas?   These people are in for themselves. They get the meat, we get the trickled down juices that spill out of their bloodied mouths. Worse, we are the meat. They would be very happy to turn all of the working Americans into their own version of Soylent green.  It’s what for Republican dinner.

Debra Saunders - Half Right

So, in today's Chronicle, Debra Saunders got it half-right.  Her column concerned dunderheaded Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin and his (as Saunders put it) "inglorious answer: 'From what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something: You know, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist and not attacking the child.'" 

Truly awful, anti-woman, anti-science, inhumane and really, really stupid.  When he tried to backtrack, he just made it worse, revealing incredible ignorance and misogyny.  Again in Saunders' words, his lame apology and stated empathy for women who are raped was "Too late. I think voters know exactly what Akin thinks of rape victims: If they get pregnant, they wanted it."

So far so good, right?  But wait, there's more, as they say on the infomercials for spray on hair and slice and dice-o-matics.  Debra Saunders cannot miss an opportunity to stick it to Democrats, and she gets in her jabs here. 

After making disparaging remarks about Obama, Barbara Boxer and Akin's opponent in the Senate race, sitting Senator Claire McCaskill, she says: "The so-called Republican "war on women" is a crock - a cynical ploy to gin up the Dems' distaff base."  say what?  Didn't you hear what you just said this creep Akin said?  If that's not fueling the Republican war on women, what is it?  He said that because there IS a war on women and he's just a less articulate soldier than his fellow Reps who are busy gutting abortion rights, defunding Planned Parenthood and even trying to take away birth control options.

If it walks and quacks and so forth, it is one genuine Baby Huey.  A big duck bill raspberry for Debra Saunders today.

 

 

Top 10 Reasons Romney Won't Release his Tax Returns

10. He's really, really modest about all those charities he donates to that help the poor children of liberals

9. He's paid more than the 13.9% he disclosed and doesn't want to look bad to his Bain buddies

8. He gave away all his money to the Church and is living off horse show proceeds only.

7. His evil twin hacked into all his accounts and made off with the dough to a secret hideaway in the South of France

6. A ten year old computer whiz named Otto living in New Jersey hacked into all his accounts and diverted them to funding his college education at Reed.

5. He gambled them all away in Vegas while on a mission for the Church to save the heathens on the Strip.

4. He used the money to bribe the Olympic judges into giving his wife's horse a better score then it deserved.

3. He joined with Michael Vick in funding animal rights organizations.

2. He pushed the wrong button on the Obama site and accidentally sent all his money to Obama's re-election campaign instead of telling him to burn in hell.

1. He pushed the wrong button on the Palestine Liberation Organization site and donated all his money to funding a statue of Arafat to be erected in Jerusalem instead of telling them to burn in hell.

What are the Repubs smoking?

Watching debates, hearing the spin, seeing the Repub Presidential candidates' heads go whirling madly on their necks like latter day Exorcist (the movie) stars, I have to say President Obama is looking better and better. His jobs program, not enough, no, but better. His health care plan, not enough but way better; his few testy moments, when he snarks back at the loonies to his right, really good

Keep it up. Keep them spinning. Get bold and bolder. We want you to succeed. We want to love you. We want to want to walk our asses off for you.

So Go, Obama, Go. Run, Obama, Run. Slam those Repubs. in the wallet, in the gut, in they tiny little brains. Make 'em weep. make the American people proud. Don't give in to fear. cuz that just leads to, you know, more fear, and then all that fear adds up to some powerful bad mojo.

Keep Hope alive. Corny as it is. Even if you lose on all fronts, keeping Hope alive, will keep us all on our feet and fighting another day.

Rush Limbaugh in the Ring

Rush Limbaugh to Star in Remake of the Wrestler
Posted 3/3/2009 9:55 AM PST

Why wait ten years to remake a Hollywood favorite? The Republicans, sensing their base slipping away, today announced that they will finance the remake of last year's surprise hit, The Wrestler.

Starring in the comeback role of the once washed up combatant, is Republican apologist and bombastic talk show host, Rush Limbaugh.

"Rush is perfect for the part," effused his one time rival, Michael Steele, head of the RNC, now chief producer of the Wrestler remake, to be called The Rustler, signifying the rustling up of the base who hunger for real blood and guts, long staples of Republican diets. "I know Rush and I sparred a bit, but I have apologized to him, as we have all agreed this project goes beyond petty internecine bickering.

"Our true enemies are the pinko-commie, socialist, abortion promoting, homosexual loving Democrats. Rush's comeback from his own foray into the dark world of illegal drug use and dropping ratings, not to mention his cholesterol laden gut, make him just right for the part of a down on his luck Republican operative, making one last gasp at bringing home the Party loyalists."

Critics were scratching their heads as they opined on the nightly news about the wisdom of the "last gasp" strategy.

"I don't know," said Ben Mankiewics of ABC's At the Movies "if this is really the image they want to broadcast to the public. In the original movie, the Mickey Rourke character appeared to be suffering a fatal heart attack as he flung himself from the ropes onto his opponent in the ring. I'm not getting the symbolism here."

However, Fox's Bill O'Reilly lauded the project as a sure box office hit, "and in politics, fundraising is everything. So what if Limbaugh expires in the movie; his ratings will soar and the coffers of the Republican Party will swell.

"I think it's a brilliant move. Liberals watch out"