I bet Mia Love doesn't know the story of the "Opelousas Massacre".

In a sad development here in America, the republican poster child for their party's inclusiveness has been receiving letters that aren't so...well, loving.

Someone out there doesn't like Mia, and they are letting her know in no uncertain terms how they feel about her.

 "A packet of information sent to Mayor Mia Love's office that city officials described as racist launched a police investigation Tuesday.

City Manager Mark Christensen described the contents of the thick envelope as "disturbing" and "pretty creepy stuff." He said it included a picture of Love and her husband, Jason, and a hooded Ku Klux Klan character. There also were pictures of aborted fetuses, he said.

 

"I couldn't tell if it was threatening or anything. It kind of shocked me, what I saw," he said.

 

Christensen said the city has received others mailings aimed at Love but nothing like the one that arrived Tuesday. He said he turned it over to the police department. " 

 

Now who would do such a thing? Mia, of course, believes that an Obamaholic is not playing nice with her.

 

"Calling herself a "tough cookie," Love said she would do everything she can to protect herself and her family. Hicken said police might increase patrols around Love's house as they would for any resident who receives threats.

Love said she believes she's a target because she poses a problem to the policies of the Obama administration. She said the threats are meant to divert her from the issues in the race." [Source]

 

Sorry Mia, but you might want to check under your own tent. I know that this might come as a shock to you, but not everyone in America is buying into your color blind kumbaya view of the right.

 

Anyway, even though Mia's milk has been less than clean lately; I certainly hope that the culprit doing this crap is brought to justice. BTW, if it happens to be an Obamaholic or someone from the dumbocratic party, I will be the first to report it on this site.

 

Finally, Friday was the little known anniversary of a very serious incident which took place in Mrs. Field's home town back in the day. Those of you who are not  up on real American history might want take a little time to read up on the Opelousas Riots Massacre. It's particularly relevant now because of all this voter suppression crap going on. [Read here]

 

Just remember, "If you don't know your history, you are doomed to repeat it." 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

     

Voter fraud from the right. And is Virginia for racists??

"Beware of the hand
When it's comin' from the left
I ain't trippin' just watch ya step
Can't truss it" ~Public Enemy~

Down in Florida the GOP has a problem:

"Republicans on Thursday fired a vendor suspected of submitting 108 questionable new voter registrations in Florida's Palm Beach County, ground zero for disputed ballots in 2000's presidential race.

The Republican Party of Florida used Virginia-based Strategic Allied Consulting to help register and turnout voters in Florida, one of a shrinking handful of states President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are contesting. The Florida state party had paid the firm more than $1.3 million so far, and the Republican National Committee used the group for almost $3 million of work in Nevada, North Carolina, Colorado and Virginia.

"We have zero tolerance for any threat to the integrity of elections. When we were informed of an alleged incident we immediately cut all ties to the company," RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer said." [Source]

OK, it would be bad but not the end of the world if this was an isolated incident but.....

"What first appeared to be an isolated problem in one Florida county has now spread statewide, with election officials in at least seven counties informing prosecutors or state election officials about questionable voter registration forms filled out on behalf of the Republican Party of Florida.

Lux said there have been forms that listed dead people and were either incomplete or illegible. He met with local prosecutors on Friday, but added that his staff was still going through hundreds of forms dropped off by Strategic employees.
Lux, who is a Republican, said he warned local party officials earlier this month when he first learned the company was paying people to register voters." [Source]

How is this for irony? The GOP is enacting tougher voter ID laws all over the country so that they can suppress minority votes and win the elections stamp out voting fraud, and it seems that they are guilty of fraudulent voting practices themselves. Nice.

Finally, Virginia is not only for lovers, it seems that it also the place of racist republican party leaders as well.

 "The Mecklenburg County Republican Committee has come under fire for posting racist photos of the president on its Facebook page. One image depicts Obama as a caveman; another portrays him as a thug.

The Virginia Republican Party has ordered Mecklenburg County to take the photos off its page. Pat Mullins, chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, said:

“These kinds of images have no place in political discourse — period. They are offensive, tasteless and should never have been posted anywhere, let alone a local unit’s Facebook page. The Republican Party of Virginia condemns this sort of imagery in the strongest possible terms.”

The photos had been on the page for several months, but it wasn’t until a luncheon event with Republican Senate candidate George Allen on Monday that they started receiving criticism. Allen was campaigning in the state at a luncheon the Mecklenburg County Republican Committee promoted and ProgressVA, which supports Allen’s opponent Timothy M. Kaine, found the photos on the committee’s page. Allen said he had prior knowledge of the photos and has condemned them." [Source] 

So Mr. Macaca Man had "had prior knowledge of the photos"? Oh lawd, I think we have been down this road before.

Anyway, as is to be expected with folks of this ilk, they do not see a problem.

R. Wallace “Wally” Hudson, chairman of the committee, was surprised to hear from a reporter that anyone had taken offense.

“If that group is that sensitive, I’m sorry, they’re just not human,” he said, chuckling. “It’s not American. If they’ve got a problem with it, we’re not going to change what we do.”

I hear you Wally, because being the right kind of "human" is so American.







  

Shooters.

Yet another day in America  brings more tragic news of a mass shooting. This one, like so many others, was a work place shooting by a man who lost it after losing his job.

"The man who shot up a Minneapolis sign-making business selected his targets carefully, walking past some employees while shooting others, police said today.

Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan detailed Andrew Engeldinger's shooting rampage today as a fifth victim died from wounds. Engeldinger shot himself in the head, bringing the total of Thursday's carnage to six.

Engeldinger, 36, shot up Accent Signage Systems Thursday afternoon just hours after he was fired from the company.

"It was a case he was terminated that day. He did come back about 4:25 to that location, parked his car and walked in the loading dock area and immediately started shooting people at that location,"  [Source]

Dude came back and took out his boss, a bunch of co-workers, and even the UPS man. Andrew Engeldinger's parents are saying that he suffered from mental illness. (Why is it that only certain people suffer from mental illness when they commit these types of crimes?) Of course he suffers from mental issues; he just killed four f&^%$* people!

 "Joe Engeldinger, who lived with the gunman shortly after he graduated high school, told the Associated Press that his nephew's immediate family was having a "horrible time."

"I can only assume there was some kind of mental break there," Joe Engeldinger said. "He wasn't a monster. He wasn't. He was a real good kid, a real good person. He had a real good heart. I don't know what made all this transpire. Hopefully the truth will come out, and won't get twisted into some demented thing."

"A real good kid"? Yeah right, Joe. Four grieving families would tend to disagree.

There was another shooting in Connecticut that has been all over the news as well. This one was tragic because the shooter killed his son without knowing it. Seems the young man was burglarizing his aunt's home. She then called her brother who went all George Zimmerman on the poor kid.

Now you will hear a lot about how tragic this story is, and how, unlike another teenager who recently lost his life, this young man should not have died in such a way. Although, unlike another young man, this one was actually committing a criminal act.

But hey, by all accounts the kid's father was afraid he was being attacked, and that his son-the attacker- had a weapon. This might or might not be true. Sadly for him, unlike that other guy, he had a much more personal stake in the outcome. 

 

Violence truths and videotapes.

It's a beautiful thing when you live in the age of the video tape. Can you imagine all the s**t that went on BEFORE everything was caught on camera? Heck, crazy stuff is still happening.

Anyway, consider this latest incident in Norwood, Ohio.

So we are beating handcuffed women in America now? Wow! And here we thought that it was only some of those "savages" in other countries who treated their women like something less than human.

Still, maybe this has more to do with our culture in general than just some out of control police officers. Not far from Philadelphia a group of young girls decided to administer an unprovoked beat down on an older woman while she was minding her own business. {Video}

This, of course, is a classic chicken and the egg problem. Violent folks in authority and violent children among the citizens that they police. What's a society to do? I guess keeping those video cameras running is a start.

Speaking of videos, I wasn't going to talk politics tonight, but my man Mitt was caught on tape again being....well, Mitt.

"While CEO of Bain Capital, Mitt Romney said the firm "harvested" the companies in which it invested to produce a "significant profit," according to a new video obtained by Mother Jones.

The video of Romney, who made the remarks in 1985, was part of a CD-ROM produced in 1998 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Bain & Company. In the video, Romney says, "Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then to take an active hand in managing them and hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit." {Source}

Two words that poor Mitt Romney will never want to hear again: Mother.Jones.

"Achy breaky heart"

Obamaholics, don't break out your dancing shoes just yet. I know that your boy is opening a new "can of whoop ass" on Flipper, but there are some debates-- and a few more weeks to go-- before your boy can break out the barbecue on the white house lawn.

Still, if you are a republican in America, you have to be wondering why you are wasting your prayers every Sunday morning. Why would the guy/gal upstairs  send you this candidate to be your party's standard- bearer?

But I have to give it to the poor guy, at least he is trying. Just today he said that his "heart aches for struggling Americans".

 "Mitt Romney kicked off a day of campaigning in this battleground state by insisting his "heart aches" for struggling Americans and that he is better prepared than President Barack Obama to help those who are "hurting" under the tough economy.

Speaking at a rally located in a swing district just outside Columbus, Romney kept repeating his empathy for people out of work and trying to pay their bills—insisting that he will do his "very best to help" those in need "when I am president."

"I've been across this country, and my heart aches for the people I've seen," Romney told a crowd of several hundred people here. "There are so many in our country that are hurting right now. I want to help them." [Source]

Yes Billy Bob, Mitt feels your pain, and if you just vote for him he will help you.
Well, he has to first help your boss by lowering his taxes; and then he will help you.

Before Mitt gets a chance to help Billy Bob he has to win the presidency. But how does he do that when Newt Gingrich, of all people, has to be giving him advice on how to beat O? Then there the whole "Etch A Sketch" thing.  It has gotten so bad for Mitt that even the NASCAR crowd is supposedly turning against him. (That one is hard to believe. "It's the damn liberal media lying again!!")

Finally, one of you should help me with this one. I don't live in Wisconsin (only been there once in my life) so someone who is familiar with that wonderful state has to tell me if it's really that hard to find a sexual partner there.

"A pervy Wisconsin man redefined the term “love seat” when an off-duty cop caught him having sex with a couch that had been left out on a curb.
Officer Ryan Edwards was jogging in Waukesha on the night of Sept. 3 when he saw “a subject leaning over the couch facing down,” according to an arrest report obtained by The Smoking Gun.

He initially thought 46-year-old Gerard Streator “was having sexual relations with someone on the couch,” but Streator apparently didn’t need the “someone.”

Edwards called out to Streator, who ran away with his pants down." [Source]

Gerard, in the future, you might want to bring your sofa friend up to your place.

You sir, are one American whose pain I hope that Mitt doesn't feel.













      







  

FOX blows the news and the replacements blow a call.

You have got to love the folks over at FOX NEWS. Their very own expert on voter fraud debunked their meme that voter fraud is rampant in America. And the gig is up about their reporting on climate change. Sadly for them it turns out that their coverage was 93% wrong on the subject.

Still, I am sure that their followers are hanging in there with them, (although judging from the latest prime time ratings that too might pass) so unfortunately the "ignorance quotient" will continue to rise in America.

Consider the following:

"In a video posted online Tuesday, supporters of Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown are seen at a rally doing tomahawk chops and war whoops in an apparent attempt to mock Democrat Elizabeth Warren, Brown's opponent in a closely watched Senate race.

In the video, posted to YouTube by the BlueMassGroup2012 account, Brown supporters confront Warren backers at a rally near Eire Pub in Boston on Saturday, according to the video's caption. The Brown supporters laugh as they mimic Native American war cries and do the tomahawk chop in the face of Warren's crowd." [Source]
 
Nice. Let's just go ahead and throw in the Native Americans with the rest of the other groups who have been mocked and marginalize in the GOP's America.

Speaking of being mocked and marginalized. How would you like to be one of these replacement referees working in the NFL these days? Man talk about a rough couple of weeks. The entire country is up in arms over the blown call in the Seahawks -Packers game last night. (A brother was right there, got the call right, and then he allowed "Mr. Charlie" to overrule him.*shaking head*) If only Americans cared this much about their politics.

Anyway, I feel for you Packers fans. It has to be tough to lose a game on a blown call. Especially in the NFL where every game counts. Now there is tweeting, weeping, and gnashing of teeth. Still, we can rest assured that come 1:00 on Sunday the usual suspects will be right in front of the television cheering on their favorite team. My bookie friends in South Philly can relax. We all know that America's number one sport will not miss a beat.

Sick? We have an "emergency room" for that.

I didn't bother to watch the "60 Minutes" interview with Mitt and Barack last night, because I had some things to do before my date on the boardwalk with Nucky. Besides, I expected it to be the usual talking points and controlled spin from two professional candidates and politicians. (Nothing to see here folks; let's move along until the debates.)

But then Mitt, like the gift that just keeps on giving, apparently made some revealing comments about himself and his philosophy of governing:

"On 60 Minutes last night, Mitt Romney told Scott Pelley he does too have a solution to the problem of America's millions of uninsured citizens: Send them to the emergency room.

'Well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance,' Romney said. 'If someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die.["Apartment"? As Chris Matthews pointed out earlier; that line is telling.] We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care.'

The saddest part is the Romney knows this isn't a viable solution to the health care crisis. After all, he said so himself on numerous occasions.

The Huffington Post quotes a Morning Joe interview from two years ago in which Romney said it 'doesn't make a lot of sense' to have millions of uninsured Americans who get 'entirely free care' with 'no responsibility' from emergency rooms, especially when those people 'have sufficient means to pay their own way.'

And in his book, No Apology, Romney recalls the 'collective epiphany' that lead to the creation of Romneycare: 'The people in Massachusetts who didn't have health insurance were, in fact, already receiving health care

He continues:

 'Under federal law, hospitals had to stabilize and treat people who arrived at their emergency rooms with acute conditions. And our state's hospitals were offering even more assistance than the federal government required. That meant that someone was already paying for the cost of treating people who didn't have health insurance. If we could get our hands on that money, and therefore redirect it to help the uninsured buy insurance instead and obtain treatment in the way that the vast majority of individuals did — before acute conditions developed — the cost of insuring everyone in the state might not be as expensive as I had feared.'''
That's the ticket Mitt: wait until those citizens have a medical emergency and start dropping like flies before they have access to affordable medical care.

Black v. Brown, a republican's dream.

It's one of the oldest political tricks in the book: divide and conquer. And Ann Coulter, bless her tortured soul, has been doing her best to put it into action.

Ann is known for her provocative comments, and this time she figured she would try to put a wedge between two of the democratic party's most loyal constituent groups.

"During the "This Week" roundtable's discussion of the politics of immigration reform and the Latino vote, conservative commentator Ann Coulter made the provocative claim that "Democrats are dropping the blacks and moving on to the Hispanics," while arguing that immigrant rights should not be considered civil rights."
 
This of course is how you weaken the brown coalition; get black folks and Hispanics fighting over the left over crumbs that have been given to them from the American pie.

Ann has a special place in her heart for the American Negro. She has previously declared that they are her Negroes.

"That's why the Democrats are dropping the blacks and moving on to the Hispanics," seeming to claim that Democrats are more aggressively courting the Latino vote than the African American vote, which polls show is firmly behind President Obama.

Coulter, author of the new book "Mugged: Racial Demagoguery From the Seventies to Obama," also argued that groups on the left, from feminists to gay rights groups to those defending immigrants, have commandeered the black civil rights experience.

"I think what - the way liberals have treated blacks like children and many of their policies have been harmful to blacks, at least they got the beneficiary group right," Coulter said. "There is the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws. We don't owe the homeless. We don't owe feminists. We don't owe women who are desirous of having abortions, but that's - or - or gays who want to get married to one another. That's what civil rights has become for much of the left."

When asked whether immigrant rights were not civil rights, Coulter responded, "No. I think civil rights are for blacks… What have we done to the immigrants? We owe black people something. We have a legacy of slavery. Immigrants haven't even been in this country." [Source]

Unfortunately, I suspect that a lot of black folks agree with Mrs. Coulter. There is not a lot of love between some black folks and Hispanics, who they feel-- and rightfully so-- can be just as racist and ignorant as the folks in the majority population. It's a fragile coalition, and it has been brought together because of the injustice reaped on each group --in one way or the other-- by some in the majority population who views them both in the same disdainful way.

Still, I find some of Ms. Coulter's comments to be interesting and true. But I think some of her conservative friends would strongly disagree with her. To them, America owes the Negro nothing. Her comment that "we owe blacks something"  might cause some eyebrows to be raised  in wingnutville.

Ann is a loose cannon, and when loose cannons fire there is no telling where the cannonball will drop.

Finally, WTF is wrong with the po po in Houston?

"A Houston police officer shot and killed a schizophrenic, wheelchair-bound double amputee threatening people with a pen at a group home for the mentally ill after authorities said the man advanced on the officer's partner.

The shooting occurred early Saturday morning after police responded to a call that resident Brian Claunch was acting aggressively after his caretaker refused to give him a cigarette and a soda, the owner of the home and police said."

 

"But field, the officers were in fear of their lives. Read the rest of the story." 

 

"The officers made verbal commands for the suspect to drop whatever he had in his hand, to stay still and to speak with the officers, but the suspect continued to make threats," Jodi Silva, a police spokeswoman, told CNN affiliate KTRK in Houston.

 

Claunch, who lost an arm and a leg in a train accident, trapped one of the officers with his wheelchair in the corner of a room and attempted to stab the officer with an object that turned out to be a pen.

 

Officer Matt Marin, "in fear of the safety of his partner and the safety of himself, discharges his duty weapon, striking the suspect," Silva said.

 

Marin shot Claunch once. He died at the scene, according to investigators." [Source]

 

"Trapped an officer with his wheelchair"?  Houston, I think that we just might have a problem.

 

 

 


   

Criminal behavior.

There are truly heinous crimes, and truly dumb crimes. With this post I would like to give you an example of both.

"Two 13-year-old Wisconsin boys have been charged with first degree murder for the brutal slaying of one boy's great-grandmother, whom they allegedly bludgeoned with a hammer and hatchet before robbing her spare change and going out for pizza.

Both boys, Antonio D. Barbeau and Nathan J. Paape, were charged Friday as adults in the death of Barbeau’s great-grandmother, 78-year-old Barbara J. Olson, prosecutors said.

In a crime that was both gruesome and callous, the boys are accused of going to Olson’s Sheboygan, Wis., home on Sept. 17 “to get some money,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Barbeau allegedly told his friend they should kill the elderly woman and they armed themselves with a hammer and hatchet.

The boys got a ride to Olson’s home from Paape’s mother and they “hid their weapons in their clothing,” police said. [Source]

I bet they ordered Papa John's.

And then there is the dumb:

"He may be a conservative, but he's pretty liberal when it comes to calling 911.
Orange County resident Terrence Bonney, 53, called emergency services several times on Saturday to complain about President Barack Obama. The president was visiting Central Florida that day, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

After his first call, Secret Service agents were alerted to Bonney's behavior and responded to his home. They searched his house but didn't find any threats, so they left. That is, until Bonney called 911 several more times to complain.
While he was being arrested, Bonney allegedly told officers that he had a photo of Obama with a noose around his neck, but "did not intend on hurting the president," according to a police report obtained by the paper.

"It's like I shot JFK," Bonney allegedly said during his booking, according to WKMG. "I guess you can't threaten the president."

No Terrence, you cannot.

Finally, I am glad that Maxine Waters was vindicated after three years and over a million dollars spent investigating her. Good job by Lauren Victoria Burke reporting on this story. There was no criminal behavior found here.

As most of you probably know, I have a problem with black politricksters who betray our trust, and even though I don't always agree with her politics; it would have been disappointing to know that Mrs. Waters was found guilty of wrong doing.

Tough times for white people.

These are tough times for white people in America. Especially the uneducated ones.

"Researchers have found a disturbing trend while examining life expectancy in the United States, as the least educated white Americans have actually seen a massive drop in number of years that they live. The most shocking decline was in white women without a high school diploma, who "lost five years of life between 1990 and 2008, an almost unheard of decline. For example, one of the biggest life expectancy declines ever seen was among Russian men who lost an average of seven years after the fall of the Soviet Union, according to The New York Times.

The new study, by the University of Illinois at Chicago, specifically compared groups by their level of education, as the amount of schooling one has tends to predict other health issues as well. Less educated people are more likely to smoke, be obese, abuse drugs, and (most importantly) lack health insurance. The gap between life expectancy for white women with a college degree and those without a high school diploma is more than 10 years. For men, it's 13 years." [Source]

Things have gotten so bad for white folks that it left Mitt lamenting the fact that if were a Latino he would have a better chance of winning the White House. Heck Mitt is so disgusted with the disadvantages of his whiteness that he tried to darken his skin a little bit. Hey if you can't beat em...  

Now I see where all this anger towards the beige guy occupying the people's house comes from. I bet that some of the white folks who read that study blame Obama for their shortened life span. (I am serious. You did read the part where it said the less educated, right?)

Is it any wonder, as Chris Rock tweeted, that the leader of the free world has to prove that he was actually born in the country where a majority of the people elected him to be their president?

"A Texas man who hung a chair from a tree on his front lawn — in an apparent rebuff of President Obama and nod to Clint Eastwood — has taken down the display after offended locals associated it with the lynching of blacks.
Austin homeowner Bud Johnson, 73, said he removed the stupefying sight Thursday because of a misconception.

“I decided to make the change because some people are stupid,”

Poor Bud is 73. I think that study had folks like Bud in mind.










    

Is this the "Macaca moment" Obamaholics were hoping for?

I have some news for you Obamaholics: this election is going to be close. Why? Because the country is split pretty evenly between the two political gangs, and in spite of all the latest polls in key swing states, Mitt's people are going to ride or die with him no matter what. This election will be all about getting out the base.

I see republicans doing whatever it takes to win: Coordinating with wingnut bloggers to create a false narrative. Coordinating with wingnut state legislatures to make sure that it's harder for the other gang's voters to get to the polls. And literally changing the message of their candidate from day to day to fit the particular group he is speaking to. Democrats, if you are only relying on "hope and change", you are going to be in for a long day on November 6th.

Still, there is Mitt Romney, and if you are a dumbocratic supporter, you have to be thinking that as long as Mitt is at the top of the wingnut ticket you will always have a chance.

Mitt's political problem started a few years ago with an incident in Virginia.

"As the 2006 midterm campaign began, Virginia Republican Sen. George Allen seemed well on his way to a big re-election victory—the prelude to his all-but-certain campaign for president in 2008. Allen’s strong appeal to the religious right promised to provide him a huge advantage in Iowa, where more than half the Republican electorate is self-identified evangelicals.
Then, on Aug. 11, while campaigning in Breaks, Allen spied S.R. Sidarth, who was video recording Allen on behalf of his Democratic opponent, Jim Webb. Turning to Sidarth, Allen said:

“This fellow here over here with the yellow shirt, Macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent. Let's give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia.”
"....With Romney’s enormous financial advantage, the thinking went, Romney could win in Iowa, capture his neighboring state of New Hampshire a week later, and effectively cinch the nomination in its opening weeks.

To do that, however, Romney would have to accelerate his efforts to move to the political right. His essentially centrist moderate tenure as governor—pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control, pro-environmentalism—was always going to be a problem with the increasingly conservative base of the Republican Party. Had Allen won his race and entered the presidential contest, Romney might well have chosen the path that McCain took: skip Iowa and concentrate his efforts in New Hampshire, where evangelicals represent a far smaller element of the GOP. But with Iowa now a target of opportunity for Romney, his move rightward became more like a lunge.

That has haunted him for six years.

It’s not just that the tactic failed as Huckabee leveraged his strong support among evangelicals to win the Iowa caucuses, and McCain reminded New Hampshire folks why they’d fallen in love with him in 2000.

It’s that Romney had to so completely redefine himself that it stamped him as a candidate who cannot tell us who he is and what he stands for. Despairing conservative pundits keep urging him to “tell America who you really are,” and it brings to mind Robert Kennedy in 1965 entreating New York mayoral candidate Abe Beame to “tell the voters why you want to be mayor!”—to which Beame replied: “Great—what do I say then?”

For me, Romney always seems in perpetual fear of saying the wrong thing, finding himself trapped between the governor he was, and the candidate he has been and still is. If my memory is correct, there has never been a moment when Romney has said to his party’s base, “I have a different view than you do about" about, well, anything, as Bill Clinton did on welfare and free trade, as George W. Bush did on the federal government’s role in education." [Source]

Of course, no matter what republicans do, it will all be for nothing if Mitt just had his very own "Macaca moment".

When the camera [and the tape] is rolling.

*

If you don't believe that we are living in a new media age, the events over the past few weeks should go a long way in changing your mind. Consider the following: Some wacko makes a movie denouncing and mocking Islam and it causes riots all over the world. The future queen of England is caught au natural while on a private vacation. And, here in America, the republican candidate for president was caught on camera letting regular folks know just how he feels about them.

I love it. The world has become smaller and everything has become more transparent. This means that if you are a public figure you have to be more careful. When Mitt was hobnobbing with his big money friends in the home of one of the owners of my hometown Sixers, he never expected that it was possible that one of the servants --who, to him, might as well have been a piece of the furniture in the room-- might be taping his every word and movement from a cell phone. I am quite sure that when Kate decided to do her best Janet Jackson imitation she didn't expect some paparazzi with a high powered lens to be picking up what she was pulling out. But such is life in our new media age; everyone can become his or her own version of Cecil B. DeMille with the drop of a hat.

Finally, there are a couple of stories out there where I am glad that the cameras weren't rolling. The first one comes to us from out in Cali:

"A California chef told police he slow-cooked his wife’s body for four days after accidentally killing her, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The grisly detail emerged Tuesday during the second week of the murder trial of David Viens, accused in the death of 39-year-old Dawn Viens in October 2009.
In two March 2011 interviews with authorities that were played for the jury on Tuesday, David Viens recounted how he caused the death of his wife and disposed of her remains. The interviews were conducted in a hospital because Viens had jumped off an 80-foot cliff when suspected by police in his wife’s disappearance.

He said he panicked when he woke up the next morning and found his wife dead. Viens told investigators he placed her body into a large drum of boiling water and used weights to keep it submerged, the newspaper reported.
“I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days,” he said, according to the paper.

“You cooked on Dawn’s body for four days?” responded Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Richard Garcia.

Before it was done,” Viens said. He didn’t say where he cooked the body, but Viens owned the Thyme Contemporary Cafe in Lomita, Calif., at the time.

The defendant did say he kept his wife’s skull. “That’s the only thing I didn’t want to get rid of in case I wanted to leave it somewhere,” he admitted, according to the Los Angeles Times.

He told police that the skull was in his mother’s attic in Torrance, but they did not find it there." [Source]

For today's special....let me stop.

The second story comes to us from Florida. (One day I am going to try and raise enough money to commission a study to research the behavior of people in Florida.)

"A frisky farm hand cuffed after allegedly telling police he masturbated with a donkey told a Florida court Tuesday that he wants his burro back.

“There’s got to be due process here. I paid $500 for her,” said 31-year-old Carlos Romero, according to the Ocala Star-Banner.

But Marion County officials want custody of the miniature donkey named Doodle, and plan to put her up for adoption, the newspaper said. The animal appeared in good condition after the alleged abuse.

Romero pleaded not guilty to charges of sexual activity involving an animal and animal cruelty. His bail was set at $2,000 and was placed into Marion County Jail" [Source]

Poor Carlos, there just aren't that many donkey pick up bars around. What's a love sick guy to do?

*Pic from Mother Jones

Mitt has 47 problems but the rich ain't one.

“Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.” 
~George Barnard Shaw~

You know things are going bad for you when Joe Biden of all people is letting your words speak for themselves to his advantage. Poor Mitt, he made a great effort to keep cameras and microphones out of those fund raisers with the wealthy few, but then he fooled around and pissed off Jimmy Carter's grandson by talking about his grandpa. (Always keep an eye on the help, Mitt)

In that now infamous video, Mitt wrote off forty seven percent of the people in America by saying that they are all basically freeloaders with a victimhood mentality. They are people who do not contribute their fair share of taxes. (Forty seven percent?!) Now we know why Mitt's idea of where the middles class starts and ends in this country is so out of touch.) Mitt, of course, is wrong. The truth of the matter is that ninety percent of entitlements in this country will go to seniors, people who are disabled, and working households. In other words, some of the very people Mitt might just need to beat Obama this November. Mitt and those other fat cats in the room were all thinking Reagan welfare Queen. They were thinking that a sizable amount of that forty seven percent belonged to *clearing throat* certain groups of people who tend to congregate in urban areas. Sadly for them, that forty seven percent includes a whole lot of people and not only urban folks.

Amy Davidson writing for The New Yorker does a wonderful job of breaking down Mitt's problem:

"The perfect concentricity of the income-tax-paying and the Republican-voting circles does not bear scrutiny. But the pliability of that number also says a great deal about Romney’s world view—the transitive property of wealth—and will make it hard for him to say (though he tried) that he was only talking about his lack of concern for votes, not for lives. That forty-seven per cent of Americans, by virtue of their tax treatment, “believe that they are victims”; think they are entitled “to you name it”; and are not even persuadable on the question of voting for anyone with the tax policies Romney offers: they are thinking not about growth or their country but their little check. What they are entitled to, in Romney’s view, is only contempt.

Does Romney think that this is why people will or won’t vote for him? Then he will lose this election. (There are people who have never worried about money who are attached to the idea that no one should starve in America.) It will not be lost on anyone that forty-seven per cent is a very big number. There has been a fair amount of discussion about how high the income level that is considered “middle class” by both candidates has become, to some two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. But one thing that is striking about the video is how many people Romney does not consider to be middle class—how many he lumps into the dismissible poor.

And how can they stop being poor? Simply and only by taking “personal responsibility.” And this connects with something else Romney related in the video: the story of his own wealth.

'I have inherited nothing. There is a perception, “Oh, we were born with a silver spoon, he never had to earn anything and so forth.” Frankly, I was born with a silver spoon, which is the greatest gift you can have: which is to get born in America.'

Romney was the son of a governor and an auto executive who gave him a wealth of connections, a private education, college tuition, a stock portfolio that he lived on while in graduate school, help buying a first house. That he recognizes the value of none of these things is both dismaying and discouraging for anyone who thinks that he will be able to do much to actually encourage opportunity in America. He is clear enough about one difference money can make in life, when he tells those present, “Frankly, what I need you to do is to raise millions of dollars,” and talks about how many foreign customers his campaign consultants have had. But Romney did, in the video, talk about a disadvantage that he feels he has labored under: had his father “been born of Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot of winning this.”  [Source]

Mitt, of course, is hoping that this too will pass. The country is pretty much divided down the middle and his people will not vote for the beige guy. Fortunately for Mitt, gaffes don't cause candidates to lose elections. Unfortunately for Mitt, the inability to connect does.  








 

  
    

FOX is punked, a racist clown, and Mitt thinks that 47 percent of Americans are leeches.

 

"gramercypolice

Reply4 hours ago

Romney is putting together a pretty tight coalition of neocons, rodeo clowns, Cheney family members,and the sleep-til-11 still-living-at-home crowd. That's going to be a tough bloc to break up."

 

That was someone commenting under the nom de plume of "gramercypolice" on the Gawker website after reading the post about FOX NEWS getting punked.

 

"Fox News morning show Fox & Friends clearly searched high and low for a young American — any young America — who gave up on President Obama and went looking for hope and change in his Republican counterpart.

And, in Max Rice, they got exactly the kind of young America who would pick Romney over Obama: A blithering troll.

Starting off by sup'ping Gretchen Carlson before greeting her with "Hello Miss USA" (Carlson was crowned Miss America in 1989), Rice — who may or may not be this guy — goes on to explain that a bet on a basketball game made him switch affiliations.

And the interview rolls steadily downhill from there.

UPDATE: Rice tells Raw Story he did the Fox & Friends interview in an effort to shame Fox " [Source] 

Mission accomplished Mr. Rice. Who is doing the vetting over at FOX? They are almost as desperate as the Romney campaign these days.

"Field, where does the "coalition" of "rodeo clowns" come into play?"

Oh, that would be this guy. He thought that it would be funny to make ignorant and racial jokes about the First Lady of the United States at a public forum with thousands of tax paying Americans present. This was a rodeo clown's lame attempt at being funny. Honestly wingnuts, you really need to get some new joke writers.

Speaking of clowns, I see that Mitt's campaign is in full Etch A Sketch mode and that they are changing directions again. Mitt is going to be more specific on what he plans to do to get America back on track, and his campaign will focus more on domestic issues going forward. This all sounds great, but methinks that Mitt, once again, has some issues that he might  need to address.

It seems that Mother Jones has caught Mitt in an unscripted off the cuff moment that was not meant for the general public's eyes or ears.

"During a private fundraiser earlier this year, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a small group of wealthy contributors what he truly thinks of all the voters who support President Barack Obama. He dismissed these Americans as freeloaders who pay no taxes, who don't assume responsibility for their lives, and who think government should take care of them. Fielding a question from a donor about how he could triumph in November, Romney replied:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Romney went on: "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." [Source]

Oh my! Mitt says that he will not be worrying about "those people" because they have no sense of "personal responsibility" and they view themselves as "victims." (Does that sound familiar?)  Interesting. I hope that Mitt doesn't think that 47% of Obama's voters are all minorities. I am sure that there are some poor white folks in that number as well.

Mitt, I think you will live to regret that statement. (Just think of President Obama with his now infamous guns and God comment that was made to group of his peeps that was secretly taped.) But don't worry Mitt, 47% of Americans will never leave you no matter what you think of them.

 




  



    

 

It's almost time for the "Hail Mary pass".

If you are Mitt Romney or one of his many supporters this must seem like desperate times. The general election is fast approaching and as it gets closer the margin in the polls seem to be getting wider between the two candidates. This has caused his many sycophants -both in the media and on the street- to become someone unhinged. (If you don't believe me read some of the comments after this post.)

I was led to one example by a tweet from CNN's Roland Martin. The AP ran a story about black Christians wavering over voting for Obama (yeah right) and the right wing News Max picked it up and stuck a false and misleading quote in their headline.

 "Some black clergy see no good presidential choice between a Mormon candidate and one who supports gay marriage, so they are telling their flocks to stay home on Election Day. That's a worrisome message for the nation's first African-American president, who can't afford to lose any voters from his base in a tight race.

The pastors say their congregants are asking how a true Christian could back same-sex marriage, as President Barack Obama did in May. As for Republican Mitt Romney, the first Mormon nominee from a major party, congregants are questioning the theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its former ban on men of African descent in the priesthood.

In 2008, Obama won 95 percent of black voters and is likely to get an overwhelming majority again. But any loss of votes would sting."

I read the rest of that article and I don't see where black pastors told anyone to "stay home" on election day. But it's certainly wishful thinking on the part of my friends over at News Max. I suppose with the voter suppression laws not going quite the way that they (the right) wants it to, they now have to go to plan B: manipulating the message. 

And then there is Cheltenham's own, Benji Netanyahu. Benjamin is a very good friend of Mitt Romney, and he would like to see nothing more than Mitt becoming president of these divided states of America. He is screaming for a meeting with Obama because he says that Iran has the materials to build a nuclear weapon. (Not that they have it; just that they have the materials to build it.)And now he wants America to take action or he will. Benji has gotten so over the top that one of Israel's biggest supporters in the Senate is calling him out for trying to influence our elections. And in Israel opposition leader, Shaul Mofaz has accused Benji of doing the same thing. Folks, this is called trying to force a crisis and bring panic to the American electorate. (Yeah that's the ticket; nuke Iran and watch all of our troubles go away.) I am sure that this is just how Sheldon, Mitt, and Benji drew it up. (Read the last link, it's important.) But sometimes the best laid plans...

Honestly folks, we might need to check the real origin of that film that caused all hell to break loose over in the Middle East. I am not accusing Karl Rove and his peeps of anything, but we might just need to check.

Finally, you folks know that I can chase racism with the best of them, but every now and then I have to call out a decoy on the racism chase.

A lunchtime staple of students for years, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich could be considered one of the more popular items found in the sack lunches of school children.

But in conjunction with recent equity training in local Portland schools, one principal is raising questions about the mention of the sandwich, arguing it has broader implications about race, the Portland Tribune reports.
The sandwich was reportedly mentioned in a lesson plan last year. Verenice Gutierrez from the Harvey Scott K-8 School used it as an example of a subtle form of racism in language, according to the report.

"What about Somali or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches?" Gutierrez said, according to the Tribune. "Another way would be to say: 'Americans eat peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?' Let them tell you. Maybe they eat torta. Or pita."
As part of a training program known as "Courageous Conversations" that has been phased into Portland schools in recent years, the Tribune reports that staff members at Gutierrez's school have been going through trainings, classroom observations and exercises, such as reading a news article and then talking about it from the perspective of "white privilege."
The organization behind the program is Pacific Educational Group. According to the group's website, their aim is to help minority students through initiatives that address racial educational disparities, "intentionally, explicitly, and comprehensively." [Source]

Stop it right now! Racism in a PB&J? I need a break.

Gotta go folks, the new season of "Boardwalk Empire" starts tonight.
















 

Angry mobs, and the GOP finds a star.

"Them belly full but we hungry
A hungry mob is a angry mob' ~Bob Marley~

These protests and riots in the Middle East aren't about a film. Those people you see foaming at the mouth in the streets were looking for a reason to protest and riot against the “great Satan”. It doesn’t matter if Barack Hussein Obama was the president or their own brother; their hatred for the West runs deep.

Here in America Obama’s political opponents (who might be the only people on earth who hate him  more than those mobs in the Middle East) are pointing fingers and blaming him for an Arab world filled with rage and hatred. “Leading from behind”, not enough "resolve and clarity of purpose.” Those are all nice republican talking points -which were first trotted out by Reagan in the eighties- but  words mean nothing. They are just words. Talking points to win an election.  The truth is that the hungry and angry mobs we see in the streets of these countries would be doing the same thing regardless of who occupied the White House. And, I hate to break it to Mitt, but short of bombing them off of the face of the earth there is nothing that he will be able to do if he is elected president. In fact, with his phony bravado and tough talk he might just make it worse.

Anyway it was republicans who declared that Obama wasn’t doing enough to let  freedom ring in the Middle East. It was republicans who said that Obama should be doing more to arm the rebels in Egypt and Libya. And it was republicans who declared that the "Arab Spring" was taking place in spite of president Obama, not because of him. Well, how do you like that” Arab spring” now? All it took was one crack pot to think that he was Oliver Stone and all hell broke loose. (No pun intended)

The irony is, of course,  that one of the reasons that the Arab world is so mad at Obama is because he has been so tough on terrorist. It’s as if he had to show Americans that just because he had a Muslim sounding name and complexion he wasn’t going to ease up on those Arabs. He has been droning them down from day one. One by one he has been taking out terrorist leaders, and he nabbed the big fish when his predecessor couldn't do it. He won't get credit from the right, and some on the left don't like how he has been doing it, but he has been able to keep the homeland safe, and the folks in the Middle East have been, for the most part, quiet. That has changed. 

Angry Arabs are burning embassies and KFC restaurants. It will be interesting to see the end result of this uprising. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail and the region won't go to hell in a hand basket. Hey maybe the protesters are just hungry.     

Finally, right wing Christians held their "Values Voter Summit" in Washington this week.  And sharing the stage with the republican Vice Presidential candidate was a gentleman by the name of Kamal Saleem. Mr. Saleem's presence was like a gift from God for the faithful. The timing, given all that is going on in the Middle East, couldn't have been better.  But wait....

"In a surreal performance, Kamal Saleem took the stage at the conservative Value Voters Summit Friday in Washington and described a life working as a jihadist for a who’s who of Muslim dictators on a mission to destroy America, Israel, and anyone else he disagreed with.
The crowd, virtually entirely right wing and Christian, went wild with applause.

Saleem has been a regular in evangelical circles for the last several years telling his story about how he was a violent terrorist who renounced his wicked ways for Christ.
“How do you change a terrorist? Introduce him to Jesus!” he said in a theatrical Friday speech delivered with a thick, unplaceable accent.
And what a terrorist he was. Saleem said that as a child he “dreamed about killing Jews and Christians” after being told by his mother in Lebanon that it was his sacred duty. From there, he claims, he went on to recruit new talent for the Muslim Brotherhood, study how to properly immigrate to Western countries and infiltrate them with jihadist propaganda, smuggle explosives for PLO leader Yasser Arafat, and run a Libyan terrorist training camp for Muammar Gaddafi — all before reaching adulthood.

“I started working for whoever paid the best to advance Islamism.” he said, pacing back and forth onstage. “Saddam Hussein pays better money than anybody else. He was very generous.”
If Saleem’s story sounds unbelievable it’s because there’s little sign any of it ever happened. News investigations into his past haven’t turned up any corroborating evidence of his terrorist resume, but they’ve found plenty of former colleagues and acquaintances who doubt the veracity of Saleem’s autobiographical details.

For one, Mother Jones reports Saleem, real name Khodor Shami, spent over a decade before his “ex-terrorist” act as a staffer at Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network and James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. And despite Saleem’s claims that the FBI relies on him for insight into jihadist thinking, they claim they’ve never heard of him. A 2008 expose by CNN’s Anderson Cooper found similar holes in his story, which paralleled other equally dubious figures making their living off the “ex-terrorist” talk circuit. "  [Source]

Whoops. Oh well, even a fake former terrorist will do the job for these Christian soldiers.
In their fight for America's soul they need all the encouragement that they can get.
Of course, the current terrorist in the White House is who these Christian soldiers really want to go.

"If there was one dominant theme at this year’s Values Voter Summit, the right-wing confab organized by the Family Research Council, it was that President Obama is endangering the United States by coddling radical Islamists. “[W]hat we’re watching develop before our eyes today are the direct consequences of this administration’s policy of apology and appeasement across the globe,” Michele Bachmann said of the attacks on American embassies and consulates in the Middle East.

Last year, you might remember, some American counterterrorism trainers were found to be using material so virulently anti-Muslim that senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins wrote an outraged letter to the Department of Homeland Security. Bachmann described the resulting changes in counterterrorism curricula this way: “That’s enforced Islamic speech codes here in the United States, and all done with the help of our president and secretary of state.” [Source]

Where are those drones when you really need them?