Ron Fournier jumps ship, the American Taliban in 2012, We Built It (with government funding), World Culture Wars, an astonishing panorama of the endtimes, Taibbi on the true story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, the RNC isn’t racist (except when it is), the Ron Paul Revolution, Todd Akin has met the enemy, and the Affirmative Action President.Welcome to the Daily Sausage.
For those of you unfamiliar with Ron Fournier, let me clue you in. Ron Fournier was an editor at the Associated Press. He’s notorious for being in the GOP tank, especially for John McCain. Today, he works as an Editor for the National Journal.
During an event with the National Journal and The Atlantic, Ron Fournier called out Senior Romney Campaign adviser Ron Kaufman on the welfare ad lie. More specifically, he accused the Romney campaign of playing the race card, and even openly postulated that they were doing it on purpose.
When Ron Fournier has jumped ship and is now openly questioning whether the Romney campaign is inciting racial animosity using an ad that’s been so debunked it has about fifty Pinocchio’s and at least a dozen charred-to-scraps pairs of pants, it’s clear that there has been a shift of some kind. That maybe the media isn’t going to treat Mitt with kid gloves anymore.
On December 16th, 1773, a group by the name of the Sons of Liberty boarded three ships in Boston harbor dressed as Mohawk Indians and proceeded to dump crates and barrels of tea into the water. They did this because this tea had been assessed with a tax they had not even indirectly voted on, thus the rallying cry of “No Taxation Without Representation”. This event is chronicled in American history as The Boston Tea Party, and is considered a major moment in American history.
The group that was astroturfed into existence in 2010 by a collection of moneyed interests for the purposes of subverting our democracy has absolutely nothing in common with the ideals of The Boston Tea Party. Consequently, referring to them by name they’ve chosen makes little sense.
Personally, I’d rather refer to them by a name much closer to what their beliefs actually are, or at least those voiced by their leaders: the American Taliban.
That’s not to say that everyone that belongs to this group is a card-carrying member of an extremist organization hellbent on the destruction of America. There are normal, average, everyday people who aren’t terrible people that are part of this group.
But, at the end of the day, you are who you elect.
The theme of this year’s Republican National Convention is “We Did Build It!”, a subtle jab at President Obama over a poorly worded statement that is, at it’s core, fundamentally correct. Namely, that none of us exist in a vacuum and that our success as individuals and corporations is due in large part to the existence and support of the federal government.
The GOP has trotted out a series of businesspeople over the last several weeks to support their claim that they, in fact, Did Build This, but every time without fail they’re found to have taken government funding in one form or another, whether through grants, tax breaks, direct purchases, or any other form of government largesse, essentially supporting the President’s point.
The point becomes even more poignant when GOP governors like Mary Fallin of states like Oklahoma fail to acknowledge the role of the federal government in the creation of their states, all while lamenting the federal government and the burden it puts on their poor, downtrodden constituents, many of whom are waving Gadsden Flags saying “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!”, thus identifying them as profoundly silly people who should probably not be participating in the political process.
All of this results in a scathing editorial from the New York Times that should effectively lay waste to the whole of the RNC. But it won’t, because they have no shame and no dignity left. Simply put, they are out of fucks to give, if they even had any to begin with.
Of course, we can’t mention a complete lack of shame and dignity without mentioning Rick Santorum, Colossal Dick. Rick Santorum, who is apparently not satisfied with dragging this country back to the 1950s and some never-existed-Leave-It-To-Beaver fantasy, has decided that our next stop on the Culture Wars should be the 1920s, when men were men, women and blacks had no rights, and children worked twelve hour days in incredibly dangerous factories.
Not content to undo the last hundred years of social progress, Santorum went on to accuse the President of being “above the law”. The strongest evidence that President Obama is not, in fact, above the law, is the fact that Rick Santorum still consumes oxygen expels carbon dioxide that would be better served doing literally anything else, and that his home in Pennsylvania is not a smoking crater left behind after a drone “accidentally” fired a Hellfire missile at it during a “training exercise”.
I have read a great many articles today, but one stuck out at me in particular. Specifically, the title: “An Astonishing Panorama of the Endtimes”.
I link to Matt Taibbi a lot, because he’s very good at what he does, and that is report on the utter horror-show that is Wall Street. So, when I say his latest, “Greed And Debt: the true story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital” may be his best, make of that what you will.
This has been covered ad infinitum, but it’s worth giving it another go around: an RNC attendee was removed from the premises after throwing nuts at a black CNN camerawoman while exclaiming “This is how we feed animals!”.
And they say the GOP doesn’t have a problem with race or gender.
The supporters of Crazy Uncle Liberty(!) are a silly bunch, but the fact is they’re in the same boat as everyone else. They’re being disenfranchised by their own party. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this bunch.
Todd Akin has finally admitted that the problem isn’t some vast liberal conspiracy trying to drive him out of the Missouri Senate election. If anything, the vast liberal conspiracy is trying to keep him in it. The problem for Mr. Akin is the national GOP has abandoned him to the wolves. He’s a man with nothing left to lose.
Finally, one last article from The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Myth of an Affirmative-Action President”.
Here’s what I think is funny: even if President Obama was helped along the way because of Affirmative Action, the truth of the matter is that the deck is so stacked against people like the President, and so stacked in favor of people like Mitt Romney, that you could make the case that Mitt Romney benefits more from the unwritten “White and Wealthy” Affirmative Action program than President Obama ever did or could have from the one actually passed by law.
