Coal miners required to attend Romney rally, give
up day's pay

What do you expect from a guy who likes being able to fire people?  From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:When GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney visited an Ohio coal mine this month to promote jobs in the coal industry, workers who appeared with him at the rally lost pay because their mine was shut down.The Pepper Pike company that owns the Century Mine told workers that attending the...

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ThinkProgress Live Blogs The Republican National
Convention

Welcome to ThinkProgress’ prime time Tuesday coverage of the Republican National Convention. We’re here all night to fact check and debunk the claims of the GOP’s brightest stars. Here is our guide to Tuesday?s speakers. 7:55: Sher Valenzuela is a small business owner currently running for the lieutenant governor in Delaware. Her upholstery business received [...]



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gress0Borg0Cpolitics0C20A120C0A80C280C7589810Crnc0Etuesday0C/story01.htm

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Neal Boortz Blames Public Schools For Obama's
Election

The Tea Party (who is really the Republican party but pretends they're not) held a rally in Tampa yesterday with a plethora of wingnut speakers including Jason Chaffetz and Michele Bachmann. However, these detestable remarks by Neal Boortz, right-wing Limbaugh wannabe hate talker, revealed the motives behind much of the right-wing movement to end public education.

Here's what he said, via Right Wing Watch:

Let me change your language on two things. [?]

They are not public schools, they are government schools. They are owned by, staffed by, operated by and forced upon by the government.

And, ladies and gentlemen, it is 100 years of government education that led us to the point that a man like Barack Obama could be sworn in as president of the United States.

So, wherever you are, preach school choice.

So, it doesn't get much more straightforward than that, does it?

Tim Wise published a brilliant essay yesterday about how deep the right wing has lunged into overt and covert racism:

How many times, one is left to wonder, must a person be called un-American before it?s accurate to claim that he?s being accused of being foreign, and a danger to the nation? A cancer to be excised from the body politic?

How many times can a man be the butt of racist humor, or likened to black dictators, or accused of seeking racial revenge upon white people, before it is no longer outrageous or the playing of some mystical, magical race card to assert that, indeed, the people doing these things are really just race-baiting white nationalists in conservative garb?

How long, in short, before we call that which walks and talks like a duck, a f*cking duck?

You should read the whole post, frame it, print it, and hand it out at Tea Party rallies, frankly. It's not going to get better. It's going to get worse. The Republican party has alienated Latinos, African-Americans, women, and moderates. The only thing they have left are scared white people, and they'd have to win a huge majority of them to win this election. The People's View:

Because Mitt Romney cannot run on Romney Hood. He cannot run on handing over women's health care decisions to their bosses. He cannot run on the Romney-Ryan budget to end Medicare once and for all, and on ending all programs that help give people at the bottom of the economic ladder a fighting chance to help themselves. He cannot run on ending our social and generational commitment, stealing the money, and giving it away to the super rich and multimillionaires. He cannot run on his vision of a dirty energy future of America. He cannot run on destroying America's social fabric and our sense of responsibility for one another.

He cannot run on destroying America's social fabric, but he sure as hell can try to tear that fabric apart. He can run on resentment. He can run on lies. He can run by telling poor white people that poor black people and poor brown people are to blame for their lot in life. He can run by telling people that "banks aren't bad people", and presumably, it was the poor people that tanked the economy by taking out liar loans they were sold by the banks. He can run on selling the idea that these poor black and brown people don't deserve the right to vote. After all, black people are all criminals, and those Mexicans, you know where they're from! Not like Mitt Romney, who was never asked questions about where he was born.

The fact of the matter is that for the Republicans, exploiting racism is an important election strategy. But until a decade or so ago, it used to be that they simply used the racism within their base to win election with a dog whistle once in a while. But now, with the advent of the Teabaggers, the inmates are running the asylum. Now, exploiting racist emotions are not enough (both in terms of electoral strategy and in terms of toeing the Teabagging line). Now, racism and bigotry is not simply part of the GOP strategy to win elections. It is the sole Republican strategy to win elections.

Hence, the red meat thrown to the base. It will get redder, bloodier, and uglier before the end.

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GOP Convention Approves Radical Right-Wing
Platform

The Republican Party has formally adopted their platform, amid a smattering of No votes and a bit of tension on the convention floor, which was for the most part safely shunted to the sidelines. The GOP platform would ban marriage equality and the right[...]

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Disaster preparedness tips for Republicans, by
Republicans

Since Republicans decided hurricane central during hurricane season is the optimal time and place for a convention, here are some previously approved Republican tips for surviving the nasty weather:

1. Eat birthday cake.
2. Defund FEMA.
3. Hot bottled water for dehydrated babies.
4. Find someone from the International Arabian Horse Association, and put him in charge.
5. Blame the feminists, gays, Obama and various unnamed sinners.
6. Do not bother Barbara Bush's beautiful mind.

So, any other tips?

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-tips-for-Republicans-by-Republicans

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How The Hell Did We Get Here

By TomBales1
If you're a regular reader here, you know that one of my pet bitches about America today is the sorry state of political discussion and political rhetoric that political extremists have drug this country down to.  I make no bones about it.  It sucks and it doesn't make a pinch of monkey crap who's doing it to who.  And don't take me for a hypocrite for saying so.  True,I take my jabs at the other guys right along with everyone else because it's really the only way you can play the game and manage to stay in it.  I think Romney is the worst presidential candidate in decades if not centuries  and I won't hesitate to say so, the difference being that I can give you chapter and verse reasons for thinking that while all his supporters can say... in trying to convince people that he's not only qualified for the job but the best man for it... is that "He's not Barack Obama".

I watched this present state of affairs begin to unfold way back in the Reagan days when the administration's two stock answers every time they got caught shoveling bullshit at the American people was either to ridicule and demonize those calling them out or to play the "I don't recall" card,. a ploy that perhaps reached it's zenith during George W. Bush's administration and which played a huge part in keeping Alberto Gonzalez's smarmy little ass out of jail.

The nineties brought us new faces in the political arena, people like Newt Gingrich, perhaps one of the slimiest reptiles ever to tread upon the political stage who led the battle to demonize Bill Clinton over his private life while he himself was cheating on his second wife.  We went through four years of pure hell in this country while the right did everything in its power to keep Clinton from accomplishing anything and when it didn't work we went through four MORE years as Clinton made one concession after another, concessions that we still are reaping the consequences of today.

But nothing that happened in the past can even hold a candle to the shit storm of invective, innuendo, ill informed bullshit and outright lies that erupted in November, 2008, when Barack Hussein Obama was elected 44th president of the United States.  When the Majority Leader of the US Senate looks the American people right in the eye and tells them that from this point on his ONLY agenda... and one would assume those of his Republican colleagues...  is to make damned sure that Obama doesn't get a second term, when indeed he hasn't even started his FIRST term, that tells you all you need to know about why they claim "nothing has gotten done" since Mr. Obama took office.

A lot of the persons who pass for conservatives these days love to cut and paste funny little cartoons and "I hate Obama" references, I often think mainly because it gets them attention from the others like them but at the end of the day they know they have made no contribution whatever to any kind of informed political discourse and that those who infallibly "like" those kind of posts are simply the choir that doesn't need preaching to and that people who take their discussion a little more seriously.  They also do it because it relives them of any requirement to do any kind of research to determine whether or not what's being said in those cutesy poo little slogans is true or not.  They deem it "funny" so they post it for others who share that sense of humor and it doesn't matter if it's true or not,

Think of Rush Limbaugh who actually  once had a vast audience for his radio show but who, in order to keep it going, had to come on every day and be even more outrageous and hateful than he was the day before.  As is always going to be the case in situations like that he eventually "jumped the shark" completely and today all he has left is wholly meaningless and often totally disconnected hate and invective, tons of which are just lame rehashes of talking points he was using when Clinton was president.  In other words, not only a total shit sandwich but a stale shit sandwich, which of course is eaten up by those diehard ditto heads that are all he has left.

I must admit to having dabbled in the practice myself.  A few months ago I had let myself get particularly offended by one of those "All Liberals Are ( Insert favorite Rank Insult Here) goodies posted by an ex son-in-law  and which are the epitome of political humor among the 40 something types these days.     I was informed that it was only humor and that I was overreacting and it had nothing to do with me, yadayada followed by more of the same.

So I decided I was going to try it myself and see what satisfaction there could possibly be in it.  While I had long made my feelings about the arrested development of certain kinds of people know on these pages, I had never done so on Facebook, preferring to keep politics out of my only form of communications with my family but as the posts got nastier, that got harder.

To make a long story (that I've already told before) short, it was fun to post an anti-Republican shot and watch it be followed immediately by a barrage of anti-Obama slogans and and jingoistic patriotic homilies.  You could tell that much it was counter battery fire and that the people doing the firing had nothing else to bring to the war.  I knew that it was meaningless and that there were a lot better ways I could have been spending my time but it was the only way I was allowed in the game.

At least it was fun until I got to the part about racism possibly motivating a lot of the downright offensive anti-Obama gibberish permeating my Facebook home page these days.  Now, out of the four of my kids that were involved in it daily, I have three who basically won't speak to me at all (one of whose kids won't speak to me either), and one who will answer if spoken to.  One of them even slapped me upside the head over the "hate" and "negativity" she found on this very blog never once equating what I was saying about Republicans and conservatives with what they were saying about Democrats and liberals.  I suspect I'm not the only one... I imagine it happens to any "old fogey" who dares to stand up and say, Hey, you guys know this is all just a humongous sack of childish bullshit, right?".

Anyway... in the words of Blake Zeff at Buzzfeed:

Barack Obama was a first-term United States senator back in 2008, a few years removed from the State Senate. Now he's an incumbent president of the United States who's led the nation for nearly four years. And yet - or, perhaps, as a result - the climate for invective and attacks on his core competency is more hospitable now.

Racial coding was alive and well in the 2008 campaign - in ways Ta-Nehisi Coates' excellent new essay in the Atlanticlays out - but criticisms of Obama's readiness and core competence were nonetheless scrutinized and mediated to a degree. This time around, when it comes to direct attacks on Obama's intelligence and capability, the sidelines have gotten further apart.

All of which raises the questions: When did the rules change? And why?

Why indeed? Why did we go from being a nation of reasonably intelligent adults to a howling pack of foot stamping, tantrum throwing juvenile delinquents just because the "{other guy" got more votes than "your guy" did and why is the only agenda for the opposition party to make sure that the other guy only has one term?  How the hell does that serve the interests of the people, more than half of whom actually CHOSE the "other guy"

When did we become a nation of hateful, spiteful little children that believe their side should rule even if they're in the minority and no matter who wins elections?  It makes a mockery of the entire system when they can't get over the fact that more people wanted the "other guy" than wanted "their guy" and that there are limits to "loyal opposition" that they have overstepped by miles during the last four years.

Check out the link  especially the mini tutorial on the Overton Window.  If nothing else it provides the emos, of which I used to be one, an explanation of why President Obama has done some of the seemingly inexplicable things he did during his first term.  Maybe you won't be so anxious to make that total meaningless gesture of staying home on Election Day.


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Climate Progress at Six Years: Why I Blog

From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner [...]



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gress0Borg0Cclimate0C20A120C0A80C280C7623210Cclimate0Eprogress0Eat0Esix0Eyears0Ewhy0Ei0Eblog0C/story01.htm

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2012 Republican National Convention: Day 2
(Evening)

The first day of the Republican Party Convention in Tampa, Florida was mercifully brief due to tropical storm Isaac. Isaac is now a hurricane and bearing down on the Gulf Coast as a eerie reminder of hurricane Katrina seven years ago and the disastrous[...]

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vening

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Let's Get This Show Going

Photos from Tampa: Tonight's main attraction and today's main disruption. [...]

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South Carolina Voter ID Law Author Cannot Cite
Single Example Of In-Person Voter Impersonation

As a federal court considers whether to reinstate a South Carolina state voter identification law — denied pre-clearance by the U.S. Department of Justice for violating the Voting Rights Act — one of the bill’s authors took the stand Monday to defend the bill. But when pressed, state Sen. George E. “Chip” Campsen III (R) [...]



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gress0Borg0Cjustice0C20A120C0A80C280C7545310Csouth0Ecarolina0Evoter0Eid0Elaw0Eauthor0Ecannot0Ecite0Esingle0Eexample0Eof0Ein0Eperson0Evoter0Eimpersonation0C/story01.htm

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