As Samuel L. Jackson once said, “Hold on to your butts.”
“G.O.P. “Super PAC” Weights Hard-Line Attack on Obama” – Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg (New York Times)
Go for it. Grab on to this third rail and ride the lightning. Every single poll shows that voters overwhelmingly like Barack Obama personally, even if they dislike his policies. He’s a decent, God-fearing family man that happens to be black, and it INFURIATES the Right.
What I think makes it sweeter is that it reeks of desperation. By launching a high profile ad hominem advertising campaign, the GOP is essentially conceding every single issue to the President. They’re saying “Look, Mitt Romney doesn’t have a clue about foreign policy, the economy, or anything else, but Obama’s a shitty person.”
Going back to themes I’ve touched on previously, all this is being funded by the Ricketts family. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because they own the Chicago Cubs. Joe Ricketts is going to spend $10 million to make this happen. One person is going to spend $10 million on a Presidential election for the purpose of defeating a political candidate they personally are not even running against. This is the real danger of Citizens United. Not unlimited corporate cash; corporations are risk averse and generally remain as politically neutral as possible. Individuals are decidedly partisan, and the billionaires that are spending so much to beat Obama are utterly amoral and do not give a single fuck what anyone thinks about them, so long as they have their own personal political party, bought and paid for.
“Minority Birth Rate: Racial and Ethnic Minorities Surpass Whites in U.S. Births for First Time, Census Reports.” – Hope Yen (Huffington Post)
In case you were wondering why the GOP is freaking out, this is why. A vision of a future America where there are more little black and brown babies than their are white ones. Little black and brown babies that turn in to black and brown adults, that turn into reliably Democratic votes.
“A Judge’s Plea for Pot” – Hon. Gustin L. Reichbach (New York Times)
For over forty years, the United States has been waging a War on Drugs. We’ve spent billions turning our police departments into paramilitary groups by equipping and training them like soldiers. Our incarceration rate is the highest in the world. And yet, only the most liberal politicians with secure political careers can say this, because it would be called “soft on crime”.
There are scores of judges, prosecutors, and cops that have come out and said that criminalizing marijuana is wrong, and our drug policies are out of whack. It’s the most asked question at every one of the President’s online town halls. And yet, our elected officials do nothing.
“Thing Falls Apart” – Paul Krugman (New York Times)
Americans Elect was always a joke, as is pretty much the entire notion of a magic third party sweeping to power and fixing the woes of the Republic.
We have a moderate, centrist party: they’re called Democrats. What we don’t have is a functional Conservative party, or an existent Liberal party.
And as for what’s next for AE, your guess is as good as mine.
Speaking of moderates, let’s talk about Evan Bayh, courtesy of Doghouse Riley.
There are two kinds of moderates: genuine centrists, whose political beliefs fall between liberal and conservative; and political opportunists, who vacillate between parties based on whatever way the wind is blowing. Evan Bayh is the latter. Consequently, whenever he opens his trap, I reflexively ignore him because he’s a shill for whatever’s in vogue.
“The Ultimate Return of the One and Only Herman Cain” – Charles P. Pierce (Esquire)
I’m posting this, only because the mental image of Mitt Romney and the GOP as the marauding, amoral cybernetic creatures from beyond the stars assimilating everything in their path, being opposed by the brave heroes of the U.S.S. Democrat is too much fun to ignore.
In the words of Lieutenant Commander Worf, “PERHAPS TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE! PREPARE FOR RAMMING SPEED!”
And in the words of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, “We’ve made too many compromises already, too many retreats. They invade our space, and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds, and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn HERE. This far, NO FURTHER. And I will make them PAY for what they’ve done.”
“What happens if Scott Walker wins is no good at all” – Charles P. Pierce (Esquire)
This illustrates the main weakness of the Democratic party. Focusing on Presidential and Congressional races rather than defining races like the Scott Walker recall fiasco. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz needs to get out the checkbook and write Tom Barrett a blank check, and get the big Democratic donors off the bench to fund him the same way the Koch Brothers are funding Walker.
“A prominent Neoconservative rants against drones, invokes the ACLU” – Conor Friedersdorf (The Atlantic)
That would be the same Charles Krauthammer that spent six of the eight Bush II years with an erection after invading Afghanistan and Iraq.
“How Republicans get declared RINOs” – Conor Friedersdorf (The Atlantic)
The first time any one of these groups says the word “purge” or “purity”, I’m buying a gun and all the ammo I can find, because it’s a short hop from there to Germany in 1934.
“Republicans have emergency plan to defend Arizona in the fall” – Evan McMorris-Santoro (TPM)
The fact that the GOP NEEDS an “emergency plan to defend Arizona in the fall” should be more worrying than anything.
“Wages for young college gradates haven’t grown in a decade” – Pat Garofalo (TPM)
So, for all of us college graduates ages 22-34, we’ve been collectively screwed.
“Plutonomy and the precariat: On the history of US economy in decline” – Noam Chomsky (Al-Jazeera)
THE LIBERAL BOOGEYMAN SPEAKS. You should probably listen.
“Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn is a European problem” – Neni Panourgia (Al-Jazeera)
The first one is a question of democracy: namely, what sorts of legitimate steps are available to democratic polities when they face the development of a totalitarian, racist, exclusionary formulation that actively engages in violent acts that severely restrict the civil and human rights of others? I argue that when a state is faced not simply with ideas but with the materiality of actions, then the state is obligated to outlaw them and the media are obligated to report on them.
I disagree with Neni Panourgia’s hypothesis. Golden Dawn is not just a European problem. It’s a global problem. That paragraph, right there, perfectly encapsulates the modern Republican party in the United States. A totalitarian, racist, exclusionary formulation that actively engages in violent acts that severely restrict the civil and human rights of others. Their ideas have been transferred into a materiality of action.
This is not to say that I advocate for making the Republican party illegal.
But it would be nice if the mainstream media would collectively pull their heads out of their asses and go back to work.
