Thread: The GOP in Meltdown

Many a true word said in jest. The problem with the GOP is they are kids. Or at least they let the kids dominate them. The comparison to the politics of a more mature nation seems apt.

Now, am I saying there are no adults in today's Republican Party? Absolutely not, there are -- but like a lot of parents today, the adults let their kids cow them. And silence them. And rule over them. Rush Limbaugh is a child, a primal scream of a man, but he gets his way because he's the fat bully on the playground; and Glenn Beck is the weepy kid who's always crying because he's insane and you don't know what he's going to do and who he's going to take with him.

For example: to solve our debt crisis, a bunch of Republican senators suggested a bipartisan debt commission, which is the adult thing to do. But when Obama agreed to it, immediately seven of them said no -- now they're against it. Because Obama has cooties. Democrats have cooties, so you can't vote with them, or work with them, and compromise is treason. Compare this to England, where they just had an election two weeks ago and, power changed hands -- but the party that lost is working WITH the part that won -- they are not accusing them of being Bolshevik Zulus out to destroy the Magna Carta. Because the English are grown ups, including their conservatives who enjoy a wonderful luxury that conservatives on this side of the pond do not. They're allowed to be sane. They don't have to pander to creationists and anti-intellectuals. Only in this dumb country do liberals and conservatives argue over things like "evolution" and "climate change" and whether "sick people should be left to die in the street."

Bill Maher: New Rule: The Republican Leadership in America Must Produce Their Birth Certificates


Touche'.

Maher. hehehe Yep, love those libbbies. They must be grown up coz they sure know how to spend other people's money, do kissy face with their foreign enemies and then run home to the libbie press and whine when things don't go their way.

We need several Chris Christie types to clean up the nation.

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

Yep, love those libbbies. They must be grown up coz they sure know how to spend other people's money, do kissy face with their foreign enemies

Right, and I suppose Republicans only spend their own money on trillion dollar wars.

Kissy face anyone? Didn't most of the hijackers on 9/11 come from Saudi?

Yeah but Bush isn't Black.
You know, it I know, they know it, that is what their problem with is with the man.
Not only did they lose the presidency, they lost it to a black man.

Backflip of the Century -

“It was the president who was trying to be cute by half by flipping a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be Afghanistan, well, if he’s such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan?”

Next day -
“For the sake of the security of the free world, our country must give our troops the support necessary to win this war,” Mr. Steele said. “As we have learned throughout history, winning a war in Afghanistan is a difficult task. We must also remember that after the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, it is also a necessary one.”

Something to do with this? -
Mr. Steele’s comments prompted William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and a leading voice of conservative support for the war in Afghanistan, to call for Mr. Steele’s resignation as party leader.

“Your tenure has, of course, been marked by gaffes and embarrassments, but I for one have never paid much attention to them, and have never thought they would matter much to the success of the causes and principles we share,” Mr. Kristol wrote Friday. He added, “Needless to say, the war in Afghanistan was not ‘a war of Obama’s choosing.’ It has been prosecuted by the United States under Presidents Bush and Obama.”

He added, “There are, of course, those who think we should pull out of Afghanistan, and they’re certainly entitled to make their case. But one of them shouldn’t be the chairman of the Republican Party.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/03/us...l?ref=politics


I don't think Joe Biden has much to worry about with Micheal Steale around.

And whats this then- Republicans no longer 'supporting our troops'. There is hope for you yet.

^ Dunno why Steele said that. Stupid.

Heh...sure looks like the GOP is in melt-down mode, eh?

SHOCK POLL: John Dingell (D-MI) Down 4 Points To GOP Challenger In… DETROIT!

Time for an update on how the GOP is in meltdown...

Gallup Poll: GOP Approval Rating Highest Since 2005, Democrats Worst Since 1992


How’s that hopeychangey working out for you?

For the first time since 2005, more people like Republicans than dislike them, according to Gallup’s latest poll. The margin is small: 47 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the GOP, and 43 percent have an unfavorable opinion, according to the poll, which has a 4 percent margin of error.

Still, that’s better than Democrats are faring. Gallup reports that President Obama’s party is liked by just 46 percent of respondents, and is disliked by 47 percent, “among the worst for Democrats since 1992, but is an improvement from last year.”
“The two parties’ ratings are now generally similar, suggesting they are starting off on relatively equal footing as a Democratic president and Senate, and a Republican House of Representatives attempt to govern the nation over the next two years,” wrote Gallup’s Jeffrey M. Jones.

Gallup: Republicans are liked again | POLITICO 44

Americans have a choice between two right wing parties by developed world standards. Two heads of the one snake as some have described it.

The US political system in true right wing style puts politicans of both colours in the pay of big corporations rather than the people who vote for them.
And the mainstream corporate media simply reinforces the xenophobic ignorance of the voting public as to the alternative forms of democracy in other developed nations.

USA has the widest gap between the rich and the poor of any developed western nation. The majority blue collar workers (voters) in USA are paid less and enjoy less social benefits than workers in other developed countries.

The only reason the ordinary people of have been able to enjoy the limited standard of living that they have for the past few decades is through the $us hegemony over-inflating the tradable value of the $US. Thus making imports cheaper and propping up their standard of living. But at the same time destroying manufacturing jobs for the working class and driving their country deeper into a bottomless debt hole.

Its a policy pursued by both major parties; -- fund the economic parasites at the top and force the peasants to pay for it through devaluation of the currency and handouts to the ultra rich. Its USAs own version of "austerity" all be it in a somewhat disguised form.
But the thing is that with the US working class starting from such a low base compared to wages and social benefits in other developed countries, a substantial cut in living standards drives them from coping OK into real poverty. All this while the Banker CEOs and Wall Street tycoons receive massive financial handouts and receive multi million $ bonuses courtesy of the government which is raping the working class and driving them into poverty.

This cant go on forever in a democracy. Sooner or later the people will wake up.
It is ironic indeed that all this is happening under a Democrat President with leanings to the left of center under the "US norm". Things would be a lot more harsh for the peasant mass voters under a more right wing Republican economic policy.

But in the end the US voters really have only a choice between the far right and the ultra right. Both parties have dug themselves (and the people of their country) into one hell of a deep hole.
The people have no choice really when they go to the ballot box. They can vote to get screwed, or they can vote to get screwed even more.

USAs version of democratic capitalism has run its course. More of the same just pushes the ship further up onto the iceberg of destruction.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/01/libya-201101

Governments are enslaved to big business in many countries. Notably the UK as reported in this interesting article about Tony Blair's dealings with Libya.

Was just thinking how ironic it is that we would wish Thailand to adopt a democratic model more like developed western nations when so called developed nations like USA are in fact moving their model of democracy more towards the corrupt version of Thailand.

Michael Moore - Capitalism: A Love Story

A satirical documentary by Michael Moore detailing with the corruption of capitalism and democracy in USA.

Bump. They say it's rude to kick a dog when it's down, but some dogs deserve it. A fairly lengthy paste, sorry, but this article from Britain's 'Independent' pulls absolutely no punches-

Since the election of Barack Obama, the Republican Party has proved that one of its central intellectual arguments was right all along. They have long claimed that evolution is a myth believed in only by whiny liberals -- and it turns out they were onto something. Every six months, the Republican Party venerates a new hero, and each time it is somebody further back on the evolutionary scale.

Sarah Palin told cheering rallies that her message to the world was: "We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way!" -- but that wasn't enough. So they found Michele Bachmann, who said darkly it was an "interesting coincidence" that swine flu only breaks out under Democratic presidents, claims the message of The Lion King is "I'm better at what I do because I'm gay," and argues "there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows carbon dioxide is a harmful gas."

That wasn't enough. I half-expected the next contender to be a lung-fish draped in the Stars and Stripes. But it wasn't anything so sophisticated. Enter stage (far) right Donald Trump, the bewigged billionaire who has filled America with phallic symbols and plastered his name across more surfaces than the average Central Asian dictator. A survey suggests he is the most popular candidate among Republican voters. It's not hard to see why.

Trump is every trend in Republican politics over the past thirty-five years taken to its logical conclusion. He is the Republican id, finally entirely unleashed from all restraint and all reality.

The first trend is towards naked imperialism. On Libya, he says: "I would go in and take the oil... I would take the oil and stop this baby stuff." On Iraq, he says: "We stay there, and we take the oil... In the old days, when you have a war and you win, that nation's yours." It is a view that the world is essentially America's property, inconveniently inhabited by foreigners squatting over oil-fields. Trump says America needs to "stop what's going on in the world. The world is just destroying our country. These other countries are sapping our strength." The U.S. must have full spectrum dominance. In this respect, he is simply an honest George W. Bush.

The second trend is towards dog-whistle prejudice -- pitched just high enough for frightened white Republicans to hear it. Trump made it a central issue to suggest Obama wasn't born in America (and therefore was occupying the White House illegally) -- even though this conspiracy theory had long since been proven to be as credible as the people who claim Paul McCartney was killed in 1969 and replaced with an imposter. Trump said nobody "ever comes forward" to say they knew Obama as a child in Hawaii. When lots of people pointed out they knew Obama as a child, Trump ridiculed the idea they could remember that far back. Then he said he'd "heard" the birth certificate said Obama was Muslim. When it was released saying no such thing, Trump said: "I'm very proud of myself."

The Republican primary voters heard the message right -- the black guy is foreign. He's not one of us. Trump responded to these charges by saying: "I've always had a great relationship with the blacks."

The third trend is towards raw worship of wealth as an end in itself -- and exempting them from all social responsibility. Trump is wealthy because his father left him a large business, and since then companies with his name on them have crashed into bankruptcy four times. In 1990, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Clay Johnson studied the Trump accounts and claimed that while Trump claimed to be worth $1.4bn, he was actually worth -$600m. That is, he owed $600m more than he owned. You and I were worth more than him.

Johnson says that in fact most of Trump's apparent fortune comes from "stiffing his creditors" and from government subsidies and favours for his projects -- which followed large donations to the campaigns of both parties, sometimes in the very same contest. Trump denies these charges and presents himself as an entrepreneur "of genius."

Yet for the Republican Party, the accumulation of money is proof in itself of virtue, however it was acquired. The richest 1 percent pay for the party's campaigns, and the party in turn serves their interests entirely. The most glaring example is that they have simply exempted many of the rich from taxes. Johnson studied four of Trump's recent tax returns, and found he legally paid no taxes in two of them. In America today, a janitor can pay more income tax than Donald Trump -- and the Republicans regard that not as a source of shame, but of pride.

How are these tax exemptions for the super-rich paid for? Here's one example. The Republican budget that just passed through the House slashed funding to help premature babies to survive. The rich riot while the poor shrivel. Trump offers the ultimate symbol of this -- he won't even shake hands with any ordinary Americans out on the stump, because "you catch all sorts of things" from them. Yes: the Republican front-runner is a billionaire who literally won't touch the poor or middle class.

The fourth trend is to insist that any fact inconvenient to your world-view either doesn't exist, or can be overcome by pure willpower. Soon, the U.S. will have to extend its debt ceiling -- the amount of money the government is allowed to borrow - or it will default on its debt. Virtually every economist in the world says this would cause another global economic crash. Trump snaps back: "What do economists know? Most of them aren't very smart."

Confront the Republicans with any long-term social or economic problem, and they have one response: it would go away if only we insisted on our assumptions more aggressively. So Trump says "it's so easy" to deal with rising oil prices. He says he would call in OPEC, the cartel of oil-producing nations, as if they were contestants on his show 'The Apprentice', and declare: "I'm going to look them in the eye and say 'Fellows, you've had your fun. Your fun is over.'... It's so easy. It's all about the messenger." It's the same, he says, with China. He will order them to stop manipulating their currency. When he was told they have some leverage over the US, he snapped: "They have some of our debt. Big deal. It's a very small number relative to the world, OK?"

Johann Hari: Donald Trump Has Revealed the Truth About the Republican Party


Trump won't get the GOP nomination, anymore than Palin or Bachmann, that much is surely true. But the Republicans are in some post-meltdown parrallel universe to have these sort of buffoons speaking for them. To say nothing of Limbaugh, Beck etc. So this is what the Teabaggers have apparently reduced the GOP to. How long will it be before the GOP can be taken seriously again?

Especially since it was Leon Pinetta who made the call, eh?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/rep-michele-bachmanns-muslim-brotherhood-claims-draw-fierce-fire/2012/07/18/gJQABN9KuW_story.html


Bachman Claims A Huge Embarrassment to GOP

WASHINGTON — Accusations by Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., that an Islamist group has infiltrated the U.S. government are drawing fierce criticism from fellow lawmakers and religious groups.
Bachmann and four other GOP legislators have sent letters to five government agencies citing “serious security concerns” about what Bachmann has called a “deep penetration in the halls of our United States government” by the Muslim Brotherhood.



Bachmann also accused Huma Abedin, an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s wife, of having family connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., defended Abedin. “These attacks on Huma have no logic, no basis and no merit, and they need to stop now,” he said in a Senate speech on Wednesday (July 18).

Bachmann’s letters cite a report by Frank Gaffney, a conservative who has accused President Obama of “embracing the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Gaffney has also argued that most U.S. mosques have been radicalized by Islamists, a claim that government terrorism officials have called “inaccurate and counterproductive,” according to The Washington Post.
The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist political movement founded in Egypt in 1928 with branches in several other Arab states.
The Bachmann letters “asking for investigations of American Muslims are cause for concern and give an undeserved and harmful platform to fringe accusations,” said Christina Warner, director of the interfaith organization Shoulder-to-Shoulder.
Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said that Bachmann’s accusations “reflect a general pattern of Islamophobia that touches too many areas of our society.”

“Allegations such as these by members of Congress add legitimacy to this distressing trend,” Saperstein said.

Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., a Muslim, suggested that Bachmann was using the accusations for political gain and asked for evidence to back her claims.
“Your response simply rehashes claims that have existed for years on anti-Muslim websites and contains no reliable information that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the U.S. government,” Ellison wrote in a letter to Bachmann.


I guess it is not a great surprise to anyone that the Bachmann stoops to this
level. She is without a doubt the modern day successor to Joe McCarthy. Nice to see Mc Cain call her out on the Senate floor.

MacCain is an idiot and need to be ass raped politically,

he has no integrity or conviction, like Lieberman, he is a political whore

Originally Posted by Butterfly

MacCain is an idiot and need to be ass raped politically, he has no integrity or conviction, like Lieberman, he is a political whore

McCain is an odd bird.

McCain circa 2000 seemed OKish, the 2008 version was not.

Still, him taking to the floor of the senate to defend Huma Abedin was a good thing to do imho.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

MacCain is an idiot and need to be ass raped politically,

he has no integrity or conviction, like Lieberman, he is a political whore

Funny that he's the only politician of the bunch who bucks the earmark agenda.

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

Originally Posted by Butterfly

MacCain is an idiot and need to be ass raped politically,

he has no integrity or conviction, like Lieberman, he is a political whore

Funny that he's the only politician of the bunch who bucks the earmark agenda.

what's funny is that some people actually believe that.

• In 2006, McCain co-sponsored with fellow Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl a bill that asked for $10-million for an academic center at the University of Arizona named in honor of William Rehnquist, the former U.S. Supreme Court chief justice. The project died in committee.


• In 2003, he advocated and won authorization to buy property to create a buffer zone around Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, a project requested by the Air Force but not the president.



• In 1992, he wrote a letter to the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requesting that the "EPA either reprogram $5-million out of existing funds or earmark the amount from an appropriate account" for a wastewater project in Nogales, Ariz., according to documents obtained by the Washington Post. The EPA administrator, William K. Reilly, said it wasn't doable.

PolitiFact | There are a few blips on the record



but as posted above, he's better than most republicans.....he'll sometimes speak out against something he knows to be wrong even though it's red meat for the base of the party.

Goldwater hated Tea Party types, too. McCain wants to be Goldwater, the only problem is nobody likes him, either. He's a hothead and nasty. He's also pretty honest. Now that Lugar is gone McCain is the last of the reasonable Republicans, unless you include Hatch, which I don't.

It's a shame in a way about McCain's tilt at Pres in 2008, because he would otherwise be a pretty credible VP candidate.

Originally Posted by robuzo

He's also pretty honest.

I think that is a bit of an overstatement, given the Keating stuff and the fact that McCain has had a gubmint paycheck for basically his whole life. He displays occasional glimpses of character though..

Originally Posted by sabang

It's a shame in a way about McCain's tilt at Pres in 2008, because he would otherwise be a pretty credible VP candidate.

Bad blood between McCain and Romney, never happen.