Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino Moment

I've always heard a cowpoke always knew when it was time to leave a poker game.

Fold'em and go, Clint. You spewed bile tonight and came out of the closet of white sheets. Please don't hide behind patriotism. This was where art meets reality. This was your Gran Torino moment.

And, Clint, before you condemn the President for failing to close Gitmo, learn a little bit about how government works. Maybe your new BFF, Paul Ryan, can tell you how he and his cohorts in Congress effectively ensured that Gitmo couldn't be closed because they voted against funding for its closure?

Finally, Clint, I appreciate your sentiments against attorneys becoming President, but were you aware of the fact that Mitt Romney has a Harvard law degree?

I thought his faux comedy remarks were the height of disrespectful. If anything, he showed a new subtlety in the art of dog whistling ...

Gran Torino. He's just someone's crotchety old grandad who doesn't really like to see uppity Negroes in positions of power and authority.

Goodnight, Clint. From hero to zero in a dozen minutes.

The GOP Is Not Colour-Blind

They want to make the tent bigger, but only for a few ...

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As much as I love Toure', I have to interject a few corrections here. Those Republicans with Spanish-sounding names, who are hankering after the Latino votes, are not Latino. They are Hispanic, and there's a difference. Latinos are brown and are mixed Native American and European (Spanish). Latinos are brown.

Hispanics are 100% European. Their ancestors came from Spain, and if they intermarried with anyone else, it was someone from a European background. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, however much they might try to say they aren't, are white. Hilda Solis and Raul Grijalva are Latino and brown. So the Republicans you see with Spanish-sounding surnames are white Hispanics, whose background was traditionally a tad higher than the mestizo Latinos.

Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal (both of whom changed their first names for more homogenous-sounding American ones) are oreos. They are people of colour who want to be white and consider themselves as such, never comprehending that their Republican cohorts might think otherwise.

And as much as Allen West might remark about African American Democrats as "slaves who never left the Democratic plantation," I fear he needs to fact-check himself. Those few black faces we see talking on the podium and dotted about the hall are like those slaves who stayed behind after Emancipation.

Whatever they all think themselves to be, we know that they are just tokens to put on display.

Taking America Back

As the GOP seems to bask in nostalgia for the times when white was right in so many ways, when women were seen rarely and never heard, when they had no voice about their own bodies and were often discriminated against in education and work, when minorities were totally persecuted and condemned and when various demographics were restricted and/or proscribed from the voting process, here's the latest Democratic political message in the style of that period the GOP holds most dear ...



One question ... what's the significance of the cricket match? That's British.

The Abnegation of Abraham Lincoln

I am a white Southern woman, raised from the cradle as a Democrat by Democratic parents. I am still a Democrat, so I can say this:

All it took was the election of a black man as President to show exactly how racist this country still is.

There. I said it. And as a linguist and someone who's interested in how language constantly evolves and develops, I'm always amazed at how many different ways and how many different words mask latent racism.

We're seeing racism at work this week in Tampa, Florida. Look at the audience in rapture at white politicians telling bare-faced lies in language carefully attuned to dog-whistling - it's a sea of white faces, punctuated here and there by the odd black or brown face who, for some reason, feel safer in the bosom of a race who opposes their very existence as first class citizens.

I'm ashamed that most of the attitudes fostered by today's Republican party seem to emanate from the old traditional racist views found and founded in the Reconstruction South. The main propagators of these ideas, however, seem to be Northerners, as evidenced by the chosen Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates for the GOP.

Harold Meyerson, writing in today's Washington Post illustrates brilliantly this "Southernisation" of the modern Republican Party. It's a total flip-flop (like the chosen candidate) to the extent that the North has now become the South; and the party which authored the Emancipation Proclamation has now become the party of voter suppression and property rights.

When someone attending this convention openly throws peanuts at an African American camerawoman, remarking that "this is the way we feed animals," then someone has to call a halt on the measure of hatred emanating from this party.

This is a party whose members fear the changing demographic of America. This is a party where women are derided. It's also a party filled with bitterness and hatred cloaked in religious fervor. That's the only way I can describe a party where many of its married women members view a pregnancy resulting from a rape as a gift from God, if they don't believe the malarky promulgated by Todd Akin that a woman's body "shuts down" procreative processes if and when she's "legitimately" raped. Hell, this is a party which says it can only view rape as rape when it's "forcible" rape.

Today's Republican America has become the South.

But how is it that the South has come North in today’s GOP? The fact that Barack Obama is our first black president coincides with the United States’ transformation from a majority-white nation to a multiracial country no longer destined to remain the world’s hegemon. Augmented by an intractable recession rooted in a crisis of capitalism, this epochal shift has summoned the shades of racial resentment. To the extent that Republicans can depict government as the servant of this rising non-white America (precisely the purpose of Romney’s ads), the South’s antipathy toward government can find a receptive audience in other regions.

This transformation of the GOP has also been spurred by the Southernization of the economy. The U.S. economy’s dominant sector is no longer the unionized manufacturing of the Northeast and Midwest, whose leaders included such Republican moderates as George Romney, and whose white working-class employees were persuaded by their unions to back Democratic candidates. Instead, the economy is dominated by a mix of the low-wage, nonunion retail and service sectors, and by high finance, which has shown itself fiercely opposed to regulation and taxation, happy to reap and shield its profits abroad at the expense of U.S. workers, and willing to invest plenty in a party that does its bidding.

From the overt Republican lies and subtle Atwater-esque racial digs in Romney's political adverts aimed at stoking white America's racial stereotyping regarding welfare to Mitt's hokey and awkward birther joke made with that stupid mock-sincerity facial expression of innocence he always uses when he's trying to pass a lie off as a truth to Miss Ann's "you people" remark, this is the party of God's Word as law in exclusion and intent on taking the country back to a place and time where people were peasant poor and ignorant.

For all the accusations leveled at Barack Obama as "unAmerican" and leaning toward Europe, this is the Party who wants to rebuild an America on the backs of a cultivated system of serfdom that is a direct reflection of the European Middle Ages.

It's the party of mean, it's the party of hate and it's the party of cowardice, hiding behind an idea of America in order to mask its hatred of minorities, of women and of progress. 

The Moment When a Liar Is Hit By the Truth

Morning Joke this morning. Chris Matthews unleashed a plethora of truths on the Republican National Chairman, a man who looks like he's hiding a dirty secret, who sounds like a creep, and whose name has the cadence of a sexually transmitted disease.

Chris  levelled an accurate accusation of racism at Romney and the Republican party.

And the whine could be heard around the world.

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Look, if you don't want to be branded a racist, don't play the racist card. Man the fuck up.

Mitt's White Privileged Guilt

Did you ever notice how the more Mitt Romney sounds sincere, the more he's actually lying? And during his CBS interview, after making the appallingly tactless (but covertly revealing) Birther joke, he sounds like the contrite kid who's ever so sorry he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, but who's not at all sorry for having attempted to steal the cookie.

With that joke and its aftermath, a very large part of Mitt's (and probably Ann's) white slip is showing.

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Mitt's Birther Epiphany

Last night, Rev Al Sharpton, Melissa Harris-Perry and Dana Milbank had a good discussion about the repercussions surrounding Romney's unguarded remark, which reeked of birtherism.

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Sure, nobody ever asked to see Mitt's birth certificate because they knew he was born in Michigan, and it's also true that people born outside the United States cannot run for President.

But consider this: In 1968, George Romney, governor of Michigan and father of Mitt, ran for the GOP nomination. George Romney's grandfather left Utah in the late 19th Century and resettled in Mexico rather than give up his five wives. George Romney, himself, was born in Mexico and didn't return to the US to live until he was eight.

Nobody ever asked to see Mitt's birth certificate, but no one ever remarked on Old Man George's ineligibility to run for President of the United States.

I wonder why.

Real Time with Bill Maher Review - 25.08.2012

Monolugue:

Considering the fact that his first guest is Whoreanna Fuckington, who spent most of the Nineties blowing Newt Gingrich every week at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, that joke about Gingrich getting blown behind the garbage bins was good. Wonder if Whoreanna will be in Tampa too?

Yes, the Queen Ratfucker Omnipotent of MediaLand is going to Tampa. Is it me, or is her accent getting thicker?

This bitch's political analysis is so, so trite - likening Paul Ryan to George Clooney, but only in the looks department. Maybe she's going to suck Ryan's cock as well? I live for the day when someone calls this ratfucking bitch out for what she is. Americans are really SO stupid.

Now, she's talking about unemployment. That's like Scarlett O'Hara talking about emanci-fucking-pation. This bitch doesn't pay her employees, all of whom are w-h-i-t-e. So she contributes to slavery amongst white people. Slavery is slavery, and when you work for nothing, you're someone's slave.

The Panel:

Oh, goody ... Romney's healthcare advisor; Katty Kay, the absolute worst and  most ineffectual BBC reporter; and Jack-fucking-Kingston, another fuck buddy of Whoreanna's. Bring on D L Hughley.

The Romney guy is a smug, little shit. Think Darun Ravi.

Katty Kay talks shit too. Why do programmes always get this cow and not the other BBC anchor Matt Frei? This woman is so enamoured of the Beltway media, it's sickening.

STFU, Bill Maher! NOT EVERY COUNTRY WITH A NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE HAS A SINGLE-PAYER PLAN! FRANCE DOES NOT. GERMANY HAS ITS OWN VERSION OF OBAMACARE, AND THE UK PLAN IS BEING GUTTED AS WE SPEAK. LET'S SEE IF THE BOVINE MS KAY HAS ENOUGH NOUS TO POINT THAT OUT. I'M BETTING SHE DOESN'T.

Little Shit on the left lies again ... Mickey Kaus is not a liberal columnist for The Daily Caller, but a libertarian columnist. There's a big difference, Smugboy. He has the most slappable face.

Brilliant! D L Hughley actually says it ... some people in America have been absolutely driven crazy by the fact that a black man is President. People can quite happily work with and for black people, but it's a different kettle of fish when a black person is leader of the Western World.

Jack Kingston trying to talk the talk ... "You guys are being a little too hard on my man here."Oh please. And Katty Kay, shut the fuck UP!

The little Romney shit is just like Romney - an automaton with no personality. I want DL to hit him.

Little Shit differentiates "rape" from "statutory rape." Rape is RAPE, asshole. The statutory enhances the idea that the victim being raped is below the legal age of consent, so even if she said "yes" to the act, she's not old enough to appreciate the consequences and is, therefore, a CHILD. DO GROW UP.

Editorial - talking about climatology with Jack Kingston, a creationist, sitting there frowning.

Overtime:-

Ep. 256: August 24, 2012 - Overtime

For Anyone Who Ever Thought This Election Wouldn't Be About Race

This election is all about race. The Republican Party have made it about nothing but race. They've honed their communication skills to the highest level of euphemistic grandeur when it comes to ways of making something contain a racial undertone.

Somewhere Lee Atwater is smiling.

With various state officials, North and South, referring to a repeat of the Civil War, should the President win a second term to the subtlest of subtleties in racial innuendo, the Republican party are seeking out those people who fear that because a black man has made it to the highest office in the land, it will open the door to others of his ilk and other minorities to do likewise.

It's naked, ugly fear, and you can see it in every white face who gazes beatifically at Mitt Romney and the Eddie Munster monster clone who is his running mate. It won't matter, should they win, that these people's lot in life will worsen. That will always be blamed on Obama, even though we're reminded now that we really shouldn't blame Bush for anything at all.

Always easier to blame the black man.

Some of us remember when Mitt Romney's father pointedly walked out of the 1964 Republican Convention when the GOP refused to endorse Civil Rights as part of its platform. Today, George Romney's son is a race-baiter.



The boy ain't his daddy ...



And Willard is still hanging around with rats.

These people should be ashamed, and they should be called out for what they are - low and common, lying racists.

Spot the Hypocrite

He says Congressman Akins's remarks about rape were "insulting, offensive and flat wrong."

Well, his idea of making women undergo vaginal ultrasounds, invasive or not, as a pre-requisite to an abortion procedure is not only "insulting, offensive and flat wrong," but also demeaning. Does Gov Sponge Bob Square Pants not realise that some of these women undergoing a procedure on which he signed off may have been rape victims also?

Spot the hypocrite. His name is Bob McDonnell.

Listen to the Big Dog

A Southerner and a Democrat, a former President, speaks for Obama:-

Paul Ryan's Foreign Policy "Experience"

More like an out-of-body experience. Oh well, our media are so stupid. It takes a Brit to call a charlatan a liar ...

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Lyin' Ryan

From 2000 ... note the fear-inducing language, and the fact that the allowing abortion to stand as a part of women's health procedures would create a hole big enough for every woman wanting an ad hoc abortion.



By the way, having an abortion is not something women take lightly. And having a late-term abortion is something that is usually done for the health of the mother and because there may be something terribly wrong with the child.

As The American Prospect says:-

More seriously, if there’s anything that places you on the radical end of the abortion debate, it’s opposition to measures meant to save mothers from dying as a result of pregnancies gone wrong. Indeed, this is actually the least of Ryan’s anti-abortion extremism. During his 12-year career in the House of Representatives, Ryan has endorsed several measures that would ban abortion and greatly restrict women’s access to reproductive health care, even if their health is in immediate danger. 

Read the rest of the article to find out how many "personhood" bills Ryan either supported or produced in Congress. As the piece says, Todd Akin has a 90% rating from the National Right to Life Committee.

Paul Ryan has a 100% rating.

Rape is Just Rape

Like the President said, rape is rape; and if anyone doesn't understand what rape is, it's this - forced sex without a person's consent. Sure, everyone knows the standard image of rape in everyone's mind - think of a wartime situation, invading armies violating women and young girls. Or the date in a car down Lover's Lane when the petting in the back seat gets heavy and the fella wants to take things to another level. The girl says "no."

Back in the Seventies, when I came of age, those were the bad old days of rape. I remember the University of Virginia, new to having women students, confronting that crime, which often went unreported nation- and worldwide. The reason for that was that policing, during that period, often made the victim feel as though she had committed the crime.

"Were you wearing hot pants?"

"Was your skirt too short?"

"Was your neckline too low?"

In short, did you dress provocatively. Then there was the assumption, made by some lawmakers (mostly men) that "no" sometimes really meant "yes." Playing hard to get.

Bullshit.

"No" means "no." It means I do not give my consent. I do not give my consent when you suggest we indulge in a little bit of nookie when I don't feel like doing it or I don't fancy you. I do not give my consent when I'm too drunk or too drugged to know what I'm doiing. And if I'm anywhere under sixteen in the UK or eighteen in the US, I damned well don't give my consent, even if I do say "yes" and you're an adult - because that's illegal on my part and on yours. Think carefully about what the legal age of consent means.

So by all of the above, any and all rape is forceful rape. It's a forced action. And anyone will tell you this as well - that rape, an act of violence perpetrated against a woman, is actually all about control. It's about the perpetrator doing what he wants to the victim, because he can. It means the victim is powerless, worthless and denigrated. The perpetrator violates in the worst possible way and leaves the victim with nothing but a loss of self-worth - and an unintended pregancy doesn't make amends for that.

Todd Akin and Paul Ryan, Rick Santorum and any man or woman who thinks a woman left pregnant by rape - it does happen - should carry a child conceived in violence to term, even to view this situation as a "terrible gift" (as Rick Santorum put it) is asking the impossible.

As Eugene Robinson remarked in his Washington Post column today, all well and good for Akin, wittering after making his totally ignorant assumption, that emphasis should be on punishing the rapist and caring for the child who might be a result of that rape, but no consideration or reference was made to the other party affected by such a misdeed - the woman in question. No consideration. No reference. No regard.

And not just from the extremist branch of the Republican Party.

Michael Moore, opportunist, appropriator of the Occupy movement, self-publicist, and self-proclaimed big mouth of the extreme Left, is a high profiled defender of an accused rapist. Moore goes to great lengths to defend Julian Assange, another big ego who's snookered millions of people into believing his particular version of "freedom of speech" (indelibly attached to his own self-promotion, otherwise known as grifting).

People shouldn't lose sight of the fact that Assange's bleatings about being afraid of being extradited to the United States mask the fact that he really doesn't want to be hauled back to Sweden to answer rape charges. The voices of his two alleged victims are being lost in Assange's latest round of international attention-seeking, aided and abetted by Moore.

Another thing we on the Left would do well to remember is that not even two years ago, Michael Moore shared a giggle with Keith Olbermann, on Olbermann's then-MSNBC show Countdown, where he described the claims of Assange's alleged victims as "hooey." And Keith Olbermann agreed.

Akin ... Ryan ... Moore ... Olbermann ... two sides of the same coin or cut from the same cloth, it doesn't matter. It's just another strike from ignorant and insensitive men against women in general.

Where Chelsea Handler Hands Limousine Liberals Their Collective Ass

Chelsea Handler was the fourth guest on Bill Maher's first show after his return from hiatus, and she was the star of the show.

Not only did she take charge of a panel, which was increasingly being driven crazy by the dominant trolling of the incredibly rude Republican apologist and token Muslim GOPer, Reihan Salam, she put every wealthy, sulking limousine liberal in his/her place regarding the current au fait dismay felt by them toward President Obama.

Maher brought up the most recent piece of snark by Maureen Dowd, the lightweight who lives to find fault with any politician who doesn't worship at her particular altar. 

This was the column where Dowd reproached the President for what she perceives to be his gracelessness - the fact that so many wealthy liberal donors (many of whom are located in the entertainment industry) are refusing to donate this time to the President's campaign, because he failed to thank them (or thank them sufficiently) for their largesse in 2008.

Maher addressed Chelsea Handler with this question, because Handler, like Maher, had made a significant contribution to the current campaign. Oddly enough, Maher stated that he didn't expect a thank-you note from the President or his staff, but went on to say that this inability to thank big supporters could be the President's tragic flaw and could cost him the election.

You can watch the exchange and Handler's eventual response to the dilemma presented below:-




Maher is almost as indignant as Dowd, angry that the President would risk losing an election because he couldn't be bothered to write a thank-you note. His guest, on the other hand, was wonderfully pragmatic, poo-poohing the entire ego slight. As Handler said, she'd heard a lot of wealthy liberal types had decided not to contribute this time around because they'd not "heard from" the President - citing David Geffen (friend of Dowd) in particular, she asked why the hell would the President be calling David Geffen? In the end, she nailed it ... Rather than whining about not receiving a thank-you note from the President, these people should be writing him thank-you notes for his achievements.

Real Time Blog Back

First observation: Bill is irresponsible in his monologue, likening the President's $700 billion cuts in Medicare to those proposed by Paul Ryan. If Bill wanted to be responsble, he should have pointe out that the President's cuts are not from Medicare services, but from unnecessary administrative practices. Ryan just wants to cut the program, period.

An equal opportunity annoyance panel tonight. Annoying common senseless person with one brain-cell from the Left: Alex Wagner. Annoying common senseless person with one  brain-cell and a big mouth from the Right: Reihan Salam. Poor Mark Cuban.

Reihan Salam is SO annoying. He refuses to shut up. The last time he was on the show, Al Sharpton got him to STFU by reminding him that under a Republican regime, Salam would be sitting in the back of the bus with Sharpton. Salam is a talking-point putz.

I don't think it's me, but when dipshit Alex Wagner starts making sense, then it's proof positive what an annoying, monopolising little twerp Reihan Salam is. Jesus Christ. He's even annoying Mark Cuban.

Please ... somebody smack the shit out of Reihan Salam.

Surprisingly, I like Chelsea Handler. She bloody gets it. Assholes with egos give money to the President to seem cool and be in with the in crowd. Give money because you want the President to work for you and be thankful to him when he does.

Absolutely brilliant editorial about voter suppression - but is all this chutzpah too little too late?

Overtime:-

Ep. 255: August 17, 2012 - Overtime

Another Kind of Whistle Stop Campaign

I feel vindicated. For four years, I've been saying that everything hurled at this Administration from the Right was all about race. Nicer media pundits who dared tread those waters - and even some who aren't so nice (and, yes, I'm looking at you, Chris Matthews) - sorta kinda attempted to address the elephant flung into the room by the party whose symbol is an elephant.

As much as they would venture to say was that the Right was trying to delegitimise the Obama Presidency, in subtle reference to the not-so-subtle racist remarks emanating from the Tea Party right up to the hallowed established section of the mainstream GOP. They stopped short of calling overt racism.

Sorry, not good enough. Unreconstructed Clintonistas like Joan Walsh to claim that Barack Obama is certainly not the first Democratic President to be so actively delegitimised by the opposition. That reverse accolade goes to none other than poor Bill Clinton, whose poor white antecedents were used as a means of suggesting that he was unfit or unqualified for the Office. (Make no mistake, Clinton's "delegitimisation" was down to Slick Willie's hyperactive slick willie and had nothing to do with the colour of his skin, which was proven when Republican and fellow Deep (pun intended) Southerner, Newt Gingrich - then Speaker of the House - was found to suffer from the same slick willie malaise.)

Lord knows, there were an abundance of dog whistles four years ago, but now it seems they've been doubled down and enhanced. Language evolves, and the past four years has seen a super-abundance of evolutionary race-baiting terms that now all fall in line under the category headed "Other Ways of Saying 'Black.'"

Now that's an theory of evolution even the staunchest Teabagger could buy.

But this makes me happy, because now responsible pundits are broadening their shoulders and calling out the dog whistling exactly for what it is: racism - or as Toure' brilliantly and brutally expressed it: The Niggerization of the President.

I am glad he said it - n-word and all - because it needed to be said, even if it offended the blatant racism masked as delicate sensibilities of any and all Republicans. Because it's the truth: a vast number of the indignant-looking white people surrounding a Romney podium aren't really stupid. They remember when Romney was the moderate Republican who fronted one of the bluest states on the East Coast. Many of the older ones remember Mitt's daddy, and he'd be in the Progressive camp today. Some of them may even abhor some of the extremest pro-religious anti-women policies pushed through by the most virulent of the Teabagging crew. Maybe some are even worried about the fate of Social Security and Medicare in the hands of Paul Ryan.

But the single thing which unifies them is that they don't like the idea of a black man sitting in the Oval Office. More than anything, this signifies the changing of America from the homogenous white to multi-racial and multi-cultural, which is what they fear.

When someone says the President is unAmerican, that's just another word for "black." When they say he doesn't understand "our" (meaning the demographic there and then at whatever speech-giving), they mean "white" values, whatever they are.

Toure' spoke the bitter and hard truth that has to be hammered home this election cycle, and that ball was passed to him by none other than a Southerner, Krystal Ball, who successfully - along with Toure' - countered the inane false equivalency witterings of the dilettante S E Cupp.

When Cupp promoted the latest Republican guilt-tripping meme of falsely identifying Joe Biden's chains remark as overtly racist as a counter to Romney's blatant dog-whistling, she was way off the mark, and she knew it. 

Joe Biden was right. He was speaking to a typically Democratic audience, one that actually looked like - dare I say it? - real America. And he didn't direct the remark about the Republicans having people back in chains to the African Americans in the audience, but to everyone present and listening - white, black and brown, middle and working-class - because these two classes, the bedrock of American society, will be worked to the bone to benefit those whom Romney-Ryan really want to help - the infamous one percent.

I'm sorry if it hurts people to be called out on their racism, but the fact remains that it's there, it's prevalent on the Right, and it's time we stopped pussyfooting around and recognised that this is what's galvanised and motivated a lot of people on the Right for the past four years.

Joke Tapper

Poor Jake Tapper. He's feeling lost, alone, ignored and distinctly disrespected. Why?

Because that black man who holds a position of power which Jake the Joke thinks he neither deserves nor for which he is qualified has just given interviews to the pithy and inconsequential likes of People magazine and Entertainment Tonight, rather than mixing it up in a presser with the big boys who matter - you know, people like the Joke or upChuck Todd.

Jake the Joke whines:

President Obama hasn’t formally taken questions from the White House press corps in more than two months, while on the campaign trail in Iowa yesterday he made time for reporters from People Magazine and Entertainment Tonight.

His last news conference was at the G20 in June, when he answered six questions from three reporters on the European debt crisis, the conflict in Syria, and the notion of politics stopping at the water’s edge.

The White House press corps has not formally been given the opportunity to ask questions of the president on U.S. soil since his appearance in the Briefing Room on June 8 (when he said “the private sector is doing fine.“)

His last formal White House news conference was on March 6.

The president answered a shouted-out question about the shooting at the Sikh Temple on August 6, after the signing of “Honoring America’s Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012.”

That’s not to say the president has not faced the press. As he campaigns heavily across the country, Obama has done countless interviews with local radio and TV stations, including several ABC affiliates.

During his three-day Iowa bus tour this week, for example, he conducted three interviews with local radio stations, including a sports talk radio show, and a roundtable discussion with columnists from three Iowa papers, in addition to sitting down with People and Entertainment Tonight. On July 12, he did an interview with Charlie Rose for CBS This Morning.

What's this? Is the mighty mouthpiece from ABC News moaning about the President giving time to serious, respectful newsmen such as Charlie Rose? Is he looking down his aquiliine nose at the President speaking to local news media as he travels rather than the hard-working, irresponsible and utterly trustworthy (cough cough) Beltway media?

I wonder why?

Who is Jake Tapper? A shallow dilettante when compared with some of the journalistic and broadcasting giants of the past, a glorified overpaid blogger. He whines about not having access to the President, but that cuts both ways. Perhaps if he and his bumchum upChuck Todd had shown the President a tad more respect during press conferences and briefings, he might have the access he craves. Until that time, choke on it, Joker.

The Republicans Like to Pretend They're Above Dog Whistlin'

Unfortunately, we know better. Jonathan Capehart brilliantly recounts the Republicans' sins in this area:-

So much for the selection of Paul Ryan as the veep nominee as the end of the petty bickering and the start of the campaign of “big ideas.”Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul claims that “President Obama’s campaign keeps sinking lower.” What was the offense? Vice President Biden said the word “chains.”

In tone and bite, Biden is to the Obama campaign what John Sununu is to the Romney campaign. Only the vice president is polished and likeable. Biden was speaking at a Virginia rally that the Associated Press reports “included hundreds of black people,” and he warned the assembled that Romney wanted to do away with the post-2008 regulations on Wall Street. “Unchain Wall Street,” Biden said. “They’re going to put y’all back in chains.” Yeah, that was wince-worthy. It shall join all the others on the Biden blooper reel. But the high dudgeon of the Romney campaign is rather precious. 

This is the campaign that seemed perfectly fine with Sununu saying he wished the president “would learn to be an American.”

This is the campaign that continues to be a-okay with supporter Donald Trump’s racist birtherism.

This is the campaign that has been mute in the face of Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) hyperbolic assertion that Obama would “rather you be his slave.”

This is the campaign that is allowing Newt Gingrich to host “Newt University” at the Tampa convention this month. The former House speaker is fond of calling Obama a “food stamp president.”A wicked phrase that has more racial baggage than a klansman’s El Camino.

This is the campaign of the candidate who uttered the equally racially fraught “if they want more stuff from government ... more free stuff”when talking to supporters in Montana about what he told the NAACP about his desire to repeal Obamacare.

This is the campaign that is running a completely dishonest ad about the Obama administration’s welfare policy. “Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and you wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check,” the narrator says before the obligatory“I’m Mitt Romney and I approve this message” sign-off.

And, by the way,  this is the campaign of the candidate who could only muster, “[I]t’s not the language I would have used” after Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a “slut,” a “prostitute” and much worse on his radio show. Her offense? Testifying before Congress in favor of employer coverage of birth control in health-care plans.

So, rather than rail against what they claim is Obama’s “desperate campaign based on division and demonization,” the Romney campaign and Romney himself ought to spend more time cleaning up the garbage littering their glass house. 

As far as their faux indignation and attempt to take the moral high ground is concerned, I would simply say it's more a case of the pot calling the kettle black. 

Republicans Dish It Out But Can't Take It

I was born and bred to hate Republican politics, even though a few members of my mother's and my father's families decamped to the dark side. Those family members always seemed to be the ones who'd show up on Sundays, unannounced, right about the time the roast was being placed on the table. They were more than welcome to eat - Southern hospitality and all that - but they were always left with the reminder that they were eating in a Democratic kitchen, the party who sought to feed the poor and the indigent.

I know politics is an ugly business, and it's never uglier than during a Presidential campaign. However, it always seemed to me that the other side, the Republicans, didn't stint on playing dirty, whilst my side, the Democrats, always tried to be the adult in the room - stay above the fray and try to be better than they are. This angered me a bit. It got my Sicilian up. When they levelled insults, I wanted the Democrats to double back.

I watched John Kerry, the Northeastern patrician, take Swift Boating on the chin and lose an election for all his nobility. I watched Barack Obama forbid the Democratic party from even verbally reproaching Sarah Palin's family after having his own wife smeared as his "babymamma."

But guess what? This time, the Democrats have come out swinging, and something mighty has been discovered: Dish the Republicans some of their own medicine, and they whinge, whine and moan like a stuck pig.

Dana Millbank's column in today's Washington Post (which has gone a bit crazy lately) relates the Republicans' consternation at being dealt their own blows, with glee. John McCain and Brit Hume were blubbing about the big, bad, mean old Democrats, whining that this campaign is as ugly as it's ever been.

I disagree, as does Millbank, who pinpoints exactly what the difference now is.

What’s different this time is that the Democrats are employing the same harsh tactics that have been used against them for so long, with so much success. They have ceased their traditional response of assuming the fetal position when attacked, and Obama’s campaign is giving as good as it gets — and then some.

  In large part, this is because the Democrats are no longer simply whining about the other side being reckless and unfair: They are being reckless and unfair themselves.

The Democrats even seem to have found sufficient enough balls to get down to the real nitty-gritty and directly hint at, if not broadly nudge and wink, what the real ethos of this campaign is all about. Not content enough to look the other way and assume the moral high ground when Mitt Romney dog whistles, the Democrats sanctioned our own attack dog to remind our base about the relationship between Mitt's dog whistling and a history of chained enslavement.

When the GOP took umbrage with that remark, the Democrats, not for the first time this campaign season, refused either to apologise or walk back the remark. So now it's the GOP sounding like the proverbial adolescent and wailing about the Democrats not playing fair.

Seems like at last a lesson's been learned, or as Millbank opines, "Umbrage doesn't win elections; ruthlessness does."

Or as the British might say about this GOP ... They don't like it up'em.

The Definition of a Hyopcrite

I'm not a major fan of Charles P Pierce. Although we might reside on the same side of the political spectrum, he's too Yankee for my ken - the sort of Yankee who assumes that all Southerners were born stupid and toothless and remained thus for the rest of their lives.

However, Pierce has been on fire lately, especially in his latest piece where he justifiably pisses on The New York Times for misrepresenting Mitt's homeboy Paul Ryan as a self-made man of the people, when he's anything but.

You can read the all-too-sympathetic Times piece here, just make sure you keep the sick bucket close at hand.

However with his last sentence, Pierce absolutely nails the ultimate hypocrisy in Ryan's automatic for the people - that Ryan's been on one government payroll or another all of his adult working life, which means he's all right for medical insurance and a good government pension, whilst tolling and trolling around the country lecturing to people who should know better, but who only believe what Ryan's preaching because the speaker has a white face. Ryan's message? That anyone on any sort of government assistance is "mired in a 'culture of dependancy.'"

Methinks the man doth project too much ... albeit unwittingly.

As Pierce concludes:-

If it weren't for FDR and LBJ, and for the munificence of the American taxpayer, Paul Ryan would still be in Janesville, looking for a job.

Paul Ryan's Message Set to Music

Now you'll really see what Death Panels are.

Paul Ryan Playing Mr Potter

Paul Ryan makes me angry. He makes me angry in the same way Norman Tebbitt, a former Conservative politician in Britain, used to make me angry.

Tebbitt was a crony of Margaret Thatcher's and sat in her Cabinet. It was Tebbitt who, along with his wife, was injured in the Brighton bombing back in the 1980s. Norman Tebbitt, like Maggie Thatcher, had working-class roots. Tebbitt was the plain-talking face of the working class who'd turned to the Tory party for sustenance and had made good. Tebbitt was the Cabinent minister, who - when a huge chunk of the country was faltering under large-scale unemployment - told the unemployed, simply, to "get on your bike."

Meanwhile, in Spain, I read that unemployment is so bad and austerity has cut back on benefits so much that people are forced to remove their elderly parents from care homes, solely for the purpose of collecting their pension cheques as a means of financial survival.

Now, here's the gist of my message.

Paul Ryan's father died when Paul was a teenager. At the same time, his elderly grandmother was being cared for locally in a care home. When Mr Ryan Sr passed away, young Paul was entitled to his Social Security payments, considering that this is what SSI was originally supposed to do. And when Mr Ryan Sr died, his widow removed the elderly Mrs Ryan from her care home and brought her back to live with her and young Paul. One would like to think this was done from a sense of duty and devotion, but that pales before the fact that Mrs Ryan Sr used her mother-in-law's Social Security pension as a means of providing for the family, whilst young Paul dutifully banked his daddy's pension payment monthly toward the cost of his college education.

Without Social Security - a government-funded program - the Ryan family would have been destitute and Paul Ryan would have spent the rest of his life, probably driving the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile. So, really, Ryan should be down on his knees in thanks to the government for the education it made possible for this toerag to achieve. He should also be thanking Medicare, because - no doubt - whilst Grandma Ryan's pension provided food for the Ryan household, her medical expenses were covered by Medicare, another government program.

The cruel irony of all this is that Paul Ryan's infamous budget, passed by the Republican House,  and stamped with the Tea Party's seal of approval, would seek to obliterate Social Security and  Medicare from existence - amongst other things.

The fact that Mitt Romney has chosen this Eddie Munster-doppelganger with the winsome eye contact of Princess Diana (another fraud), gives credence to the fact that this version of the GOP lives only to gut the government of any help and assistance it would give to middle- and low-income earners. But then, this has been the aim of the GOP since Roosevelt enacted his signature legislation. Actually, it's ludicrous that, after the fact, that the cowardly Romney campaign is now distancing itself from the Ryan plan, which - when widdle Paul accepted the VP nod - became joined at the hip with Mitt Romney's Presidential campaign.

Anyone with any modicum of common sense would see that a Presidential candidate, ostensibly, at odds with his running-mate is big trouble for the nation; but let's be honest: As far as the Republicans are concerned, this election is actually, really, truthfully all about subtly pointing out to a particular tranche of people just how "scary" it is to have a black man at the helm of government. And that's the rub.

The price the people would have to pay for this fear is electing a liar who will be in thrall to the extremist Right wing section of the Republican party, accompanied by the architect of a budget which will leave riot and ruination in its wake with a firm FUCK YOU message to the poor, the elderly, the indigent and - above all - the sacred middle class.

Once again, the New York Times nails everything in a brilliant editorial.

As House Budget Committee chairman, Mr. Ryan drew a blueprint for a government that would be absent when people needed it the most. Medicaid, food stamps, and other vital programs would be offloaded to the states, but the states would not be given the resources to run them. The federal government simply would not be there to help the unemployed who need job training, or struggling students who seek college educations. Washington would be unable to respond when a city cannot properly treat its sewage, or when the poor and uninsured overload emergency rooms as clinics close.

More than three-fifths of the cuts proposed by Mr. Ryan come from programs for low-income Americans. These cuts are so severe that the nation’s Catholic bishops protested the proposal as failing to meet society’s moral obligations, saying the plans “will hurt hungry children, poor families, vulnerable seniors.”

To Mr. Ryan, the poor will benefit when they no longer rely on government handouts. But his plans contain no pathway to self-reliance for the tens of millions of people who are either poor, unemployed or uninsured. In his world, they will be entirely on their own, or will rely on charity.

If any of this should sound cruelly familiar, think Mr Potter from It's a Wonderful Life, because if budget proposed by Ryan were to be enacted, then we would all see our society forcefully hauled back to the bad old days of the latter 19th Century robber barons. In fact, in many Republican-controlled states, legislatures are doing just that by enacting the sort of legislation which would, effectively, prohibit certain demographics from voting.

For anyone and everyone on either side of the political fence who railed at and accused our current President of weakness (and in a way which whiffed unpleasantly of the pejorative mythology of the black man as weak), here's Mitt Romney, raised by a liberal father, who's formerly run to the Left of Ted Kennedy, and a moderate Republican governer elected by a blue state, tying his coattails and his future to the cruellest, most extreme faction of his Party.

 Mr. Romney made a clear statement in choosing the most extreme of the vice-presidential possibilities, both in Mr. Ryan’s economic views and his positions on social issues, like his opposition to contraception coverage under the health care reform law for employees of religiously affiliated institutions, repeal of the military’s don’t ask, don’t tell policy, and sensible gun control. More than any small differences that eventually develop between the men, it is their shared and troubling goals that bind them together.

If, at the end of the day, the electorate balk at re-electing the most competent President in modern history, then we may wake up to find we've allowed a 21st Century version of Mr Potter access and permission to mould our future to his vision. 

The Three R's for the First-Time Voter

For all those newly-enfranchised people who weren't old enough to vote in the last election, here's a bit of educating you to some basic facts about the situation this time around (just in case you're undecided).

I realise that some people may not be completely literate, so I've included pictures to illustrate the message.

It's really very simple.

Romney


PLUS

Ryan

=

RUIN

But, hey, I mean, if you're all right with that ...

Suggestion for a Campaign Song for Romney-Ryan

Seriously, Hank Williams Jr and Ted Nugent should record this as a campaign song. It fits Willard and Eddie so well ....

How about this for a campain slogan: Ride Romney-Ryan to Ruin?

The Republican Recipe for Disaster

Today's New York Times has an editorial which brilliantly assesses the scary future of what a Romney-Ryan Administration would entail. You can read the assessment here.

I can't get over thinking that Ryan was a man whose father died when Ryan was a teenager. As such, he was entitled to and did collect his father's Social Security payments, which he used as a means to help fund his university education. This is the man who now, not only wants to do away with Social Security as a whole, but who also wants to deny other unfortunate students without the financial means to a university education, completely disregarding the fact that he, himself, was once one of those unfortunates.

But that's the ethos of this Republican Party - "I'm all right, Jack, fuck you."

But the best assessment of the Romney-Ryan platform - and, indeed, that of the Republican Party - comes from a person commenting on the editorial, Nancy of New York City, who offers a Republican recipe for the future:-

Take Catholicism - throw out all concerns for the poor, and double the misogyny
Take Mormonism and double the homophobia. Add an extra helping of nuts.
Take the philosophy of Ayn Rand but throw out the atheism and double the hatred of government.
Cut programs for the poor and the sick - make your own best guess by how much
Throw out financial regulations.
Add tax cuts for the wealthy
Add two Koch brothers
Bake until the United States is a shell of its former self.

Serves 1%

Couldn't have said it better, myself. 

The Nightmare Ticket

Virginia has given so much ... Patrick Henry, the authors of the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, eight Presidents, the first woman elected to the British Parliament, a couple of Academy Award-winning actresses, a Wimbledon champion, an Olympic gold medalist in gymnastics ...

Today, my home state became the venue for Willard to announce his Vice-Presidential running mate - a traitor to the working class from whence he was whelped; someone who used Social Security payments (i e, gubment money) to finance his higher education, but who devolved into someone who would deny such benefits to future recipients of such benefits, effectively by cutting them altogether; a Roman Catholic who worships at the altar of Ayn Rand (go figure); and the human embodiment of a comic horror character ... as is the Presidential candidate, himself.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Repulican ticket for 2012 ...


Willard ...

(pictured here with his Cabinet and advisors)


and Eddie Munster ...

The devil's child.

A man who's more at home palling around with rats (literally) and a mutant spawn of the middle class intent on destroying that very foundation.

If McCain-Palin was bad, this is a nightmare ticket.