Instructive

Huffington Post: Danny Hafley of Casey County, Ky. said this week that people are reading the mannequin in his front yard depicting President Barack Obama eating a watermelon completely wrong.

"The way I look at it, it's freedom of speech," Hafley told Lex 18 in a recent interview, going on to state that he had included the watermelon not in attempt to play to any racist stereotypes, but because the statue "might get hungry standing out here."

According to Hafley, the display is "popular" and a frequent draw for people passing by to stop and take pictures.

We're quite sure it is popular with that crowd. It is freedom of speech.   And we would like to thank him for it.  The more we can discuss how racist the GOP base is the better we can show good people the Republican party is not for them.

We Want Clean Elections For Christmas

The Examiner:  Someday Americans may know the name of King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell like they know Brown v. Board of Education. This case was filed on August 31, 2006 over allegations stemming from vote count irregularities and voter suppression in violation of the 1st, 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution in the presidential election of 2004 in Ohio.

Putting aside for the moment the fact that by their constant efforts to rob all manner of poor, elderly, young, and minority Americans of their right to vote, Republicans are betraying democracy, or that with Citizens United they're trying to buy the outcomes, on top of all that, they're also rigging the vote count.  The GOP stole the election in 2000 in Florida.  They stole it 2004 in Ohio.  Roves now famous election night freak out in 2012 indicates they tried to steal this one as well (2008 was apparently not even close enough to try). And they're already trying to steal it in 2016.

We almost had our smoking gun in 2008 but after being threatened with death the star witness mysteriously died  in a plane crash right before the trial.  
   
So we need to do some things, 1) a federal election protection law that takes control of elections away from partisan state officials and demands a paper trail in every state, 2) a federal investigation into Republican party election rigging, and 3) a coordinated, sustained effort to brand the GOP as the election stealing scoundrels that they are.

We need to  be able to win elections when the electorate says we won, and not only when GOP public policy causes complete economic and fiscal meltdown making the election a blowout or when hackers prevent the theft.  We need to drive a stake into the heart of the America killing criminal conspiracy that is the Republican party.  These are great ways to get that done.

Merry Christmas.

From The Elephants Mouth

Jennifer Rubin on the GOP:  A Republican senior aide explained, “We have some members that would rather let all tax rates go up ‘without their fingerprints’ than save some taxpayers from a tax hike and letting just the top rate go up. That is what it amounts to.”

So there you have it, in their own words.  Republicans are so clearly only out to serve the billionaires they will fuck the middle class to do it.   In 2014 Americans have a chance to get rid of these people.  Let's hope we've finally learned our lesson. 

Explanation

NEWTOWN, Conn. — A man opened fire inside the Connecticut elementary school where his mother worked Friday, killing 26 people, including 18 children, and forcing students to cower in classrooms and then flee with the help of teachers and police.

This continues to happen because the NRA (and the gun industry they represent) and their whores in the Republican party have made sure military style guns are so widely available and easily obtained that any nut job can get as many as they want.  As if that's not enough, they constantly take funding from mental health care to pay for tax cuts for the rich.  The first part plus the second part will continue to equal a steady stream of these kinds of horrors. 

Trust

Raw Story:  Mitch McConnell’s campaign suggested that Obama ordered a polling firm to “manufacture” a survey that said he was the “most unpopular senator in the country.”

Right.  Except the firm, Public Policy Polling, has a track record.  And a pretty good one.  In fact, of all the people polling the presidential election, PPP was number one.  The most accurate.  Out of everybody.  What this means is that there is not a more reliable organization in the entire universe when it comes to making this kind of judgement.  But there is a larger point here, Republicans are lying scumbags who can't be trusted on this or anything else.  Vote for them at your peril. 

Terrorist Watch List

Raw Story: Conservative rocker Ted Nugent is urging the Republican Party to “stop the insanity” and insist that voting rights be suspended for welfare recipients as a part of a larger budget deal. 

Perhaps we should insist people who obviously can't stand democracy, threaten the president, prefer the confederate flag to the American flag, and openly wish the south had successfully betrayed and defeated the United States in the civil war should have their citizenship suspended and be immediately deported as part of a national security effort to root out potential terrorists and traitors. 

Teh Crazy

Huffingtonpost:  How badly are Republican voters taking the results of the 2012 election? Pretty badly, according to the latest numbers from Public Policy Polling. Fully one-quarter of the Republicans they surveyed want their state to secede from the Union, "compared to 56% who want to stay and 19% who aren't sure." That's a real blow for patriotism, and it also indicates that the word hasn't gotten out about the GOP's successes in redistricting. But if there's one part of the poll that sums up what a terrible place Republican voters are in, emotionally, it's this:

49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn't exist anymore.

Great, more than half of the Republicans believe an organization that doesn't exist stole the election for Obama.  Of course nearly a quarter of Republicans think Obama just might be the anti-Christ.  And last, we haven't seen any polling but we're pretty sure a majority of Republicans think the earth is only 5000 years old and cavemen used to ride around on the backs of dinosaurs. This is the base of the GOP.  If you're a reasonable person and you vote Republican, please just know you're voting the same as bunch of lunatics.  And we're going to go out on a limb here and say that's probably not a good idea.  

That's Not It

Huffington Post:  Forrmer Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (R) said the criticism of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice over the September 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya has nothing to do with racism or sexism.

For once we agree with Palin.  For proof look no further than Condi Rice. Black and female, she stood up there and lied for years to get us into, and to keep us in Iraq.  That cost us 40,000 dead or maimed American troops and several trillion dollars.  Not one Republican called for her prosecution on war crimes. 

Treason (R)

Think Progress:  Twenty five percent of registered Republicans want their state to secede from the United States, according to a new poll from Public Policy Polling. 

Yeah, conservatives tried that over slavery.  Stands to reason they wouldn't want to be part of a country that actually has a black president.  But the reality is this crowd has long shown hostility to the very things that make America American - civil rights, equal rights, the constitution, upward mobility, democracy, reason, compassion, politics without violence, etc.  That's why the base of the Republican party is more partial to the confederate flag than the American flag.  But we are a society accepting of all views, no matter how disgusting or un-American.  So we'll let them live here.  And they can even fly their confederate flag.  Given their hostility to our American ideals however, letting them serve in government is not a good idea. 

Robbery

Washington Post: “I think we’re going over the cliff. It’s pretty clear to me they made a political calculation. This offer doesn’t remotely deal with entitlement reform” Graham said on CBS’s “Face The Nation.” 

Lets be clear.  Whenever anybody says entitlement reform, they're talking about stealing the earned benefits Americans pay into their entire working lives.  We earn our Medicare and Social Security benefits.  Republicans want to steal them to give tax cuts to the rich.