They Are Going To Have To Change

For all of the drama queen in Andrew Sullivan, he really nailed it the other day in regards to the current political landscape.

Obama's record is immensely impressive as I argued at some length here. He inherited an economy in free-fall; he put a bottom on it and over 4 million private sector jobs have been created since and the unemployment rate is actually lower than when he took office. It would be much lower if Republican governors had not been slashing government payrolls. He ended the war in Iraq; he has brought the Iranian economy to its knees; he decimated al Qaeda and found and killed Osama bin Laden; he enacted universal healthcare - an historic change that eluded even that political master, Bill Clinton. 

What he didn't imagine and what I didn't imagine (and that Peter doesn't mention) is that the party that drove this country into the biggest fiscal, moral, diplomatic and military ditch since the 1970s would immediately turn around and, instead of constructively attempting to help in the worst recession since the 1930s, opted for total obstructionism and party before country. I think the GOP recognized the profound threat Obama represented, the magnitude of their failure, and have done all they could to stop him getting the second term he always needed to fulfill his promise and check them for a generation. They have failed, by and large. Which is why, of course, I felt so crushed after last week's debate. Obama allowed them to reset the narrative with lies that were left hanging as if unrebuttable. I've beaten him up enough. We all screw up. What matters is acknowledging the fuck-up and remembering to buck up. It's not any single failure that defines you, however great. It's how you respond.

I didn't think that the Republican Party would behave the way they have either. They don't want to do what's best for this country because they don't want to be proved wrong.

This is the threat that the Right faces and they know that even the president somehow manages to lose this election, the writing is on the wall, demographically speaking. As Senator Lindsey Graham recently said, "The demographics race we’re losing badly. We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.."

In short, they are going to have to change.

The Bittersweet Irony

Remember all that bitching about voter fraud and ACORN?

From the Wall Street Journal...

GOP Firm Accused of Voter Fraud

Suspicions of voter-registration fraud by a firm working for the Republican Party of Florida spread to at least eight counties Friday after apparent irregularities in registration forms emerged earlier this week in a single county.

Two words come to mind initially.

"Fuck" and "Off."

And now we're done talking about voter fraud.

What The Hermetically Sealed Bubble Has Done To The Right

A Most Excellent Summation

The video below is an excellent summation of why the tide is shifting to the favor of the Democrats.

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I'll never understand how the power of fear causes people to retreat so much into fiction.

Wishful Thinking?

I get a lot of grief from my ol' buddy last in line when I speak of the end of the Republican party. He chuckles and reminds me of how I am thinking wishfully.

But what about when his hero, Rush Limbaugh, says the same thing?


Before I get to why is he right, I'm happy to see that he as finally put a date on when our country is going to collapse. It's going to be sometime in the middle of 2014. Rest assured, I will be holding him to it.

But he is right. And so is Laura Ingraham. Of course, it's not for the reason they think they are right. Rush thinks it's because the party hasn't gone conservative enough and that we will then see a third, farther right party. That may happen and nothing would make me more pleased. What America needs is to hear more of how the Democrats are all communists and to see more old men yelling at empty chairs.

Laura thinks it's because the president has done a terrible job and people are just stupid. If only their messaging and delivery was better, conservatives would win. The deafness of tone here is staggering. Their message and delivery aren't working because what they are saying isn't real. Their policies have not worked and they have nothing else left except lunacy. It's not that people are stupid. It's that they are smarter than we give them credit for and can recognize how similar the Right is behaving these days to the guy on street having a conversation with an imaginary person.

I'm not saying we have a nation of geniuses. Anyone that spends any length of time on the teacher side of a parent-teacher conference knows of what I speak. But they are smart enough to know that the president was born in the United States, is not a Muslim, is not a socialist, and has done a decent job, given what he was handed. This is why he is up on the polls at present and is the favorite.

Recently, though, I have learned the hard way that it's like walking on eggshells when you fuck with someone's fiction. The hate for the president has gone far beyond Krauthammer's Bush Derangement Syndrome. At least there, people were dying in Iraq so one can see why there might be some folks upset. With Obama Complete Mental Meltdown Syndrome, it's a post apocalyptic delusion that has absolutely no basis in reality and is, hands down, the finest piece of destructive fiction since Goebbels.

Unlike Goebbels, these lies are not taking root with the majority of Americans. Yet there are still many who believe these things to be true and are acting even more crazy. Why?

The answer to this question is perfectly summed up in one of the last scenes in the film, Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt. Pitt plays Billy Beane, the GM of the Oakland Athletics, who takes a ragtag team of players, gathered because of their statistical ability to get on base, and manages them to a playoff berth, including a 20 game record setting win streak.

In one of the last scenes, the character of Beane meets with the owner of the Boston Red Sox, John W. Henry (played by Arliss Howard) for a job interview. As they are talking about Beane's incredible season, Henry says

I know you are taking it through the teeth out there but the first guy through the wall always gets bloody. Always. It's a threat, not just in doing business but in their minds...it's threatening the game....really, what it's threatening is their livelihoods. It's threatening their jobs. It's threatening the way they do things. And every time that happens...whether it's the government or a way of doing business or whatever it is...the people who are holding the reins...that have their hands on the switch...they go batshit crazy. I mean, anyone who is not tearing their team down and using your model...their dinosaurs. They're going to be sitting on their ass on the sofa..come October...watching the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.

I can't think of a better way to sum up the Right's mouth foaming about this election.

The way they think, the way they do business, the way they want to implement policy, their ideology...all of it...it's not working anymore.

There is no doubt in my mind that in the next 45 days they are going to get worse. Heaven help us if the president wins again.

Well, It Had To Happen

I saw this one coming from a mile away.

Now, when we don't like facts, we attack the people that relate them. Then there is a big argument over bias that ultimately results in a lot of wasted time and before you know it, the actual debate over the issue is gone and replaced with a whole lot of smoke and mirrors.

It's almost as if they can't admit fault and have no real solutions of their own....hmm....

Yes. Yes, It Can

Yes. Yes I Am

Rooting for America to fail since 2008.

Oops!

RNC Latino Site Features Stock Photo of Asian Children

Ah, they are all brown so what's the dif?

Yep

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. ---Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein

Give 'Em Hell, Harry

This would be why Harry S. Truman is in my top five.

Integrity, Not

In a not all surprising move, the House GOP just voted to back out of the budget deal that would've cut defense spending. Instead, there will now be cuts to poverty programs. Awesome!

I find the whole thing to be quite illustrative as to the integrity of the Republican party. Perhaps John Boehner's recent admission might need to be revised. 

No Fucking Shit

Are you KIDDING me??!!???!!????!!???

Some party officials were surprised by both the size of the debt and the ongoing spending.

Any Minnesotan who continues to support the GOP in my home state has just reached 11 on the hypocrisy dial and infinity on the moron scale.