Since most Americans cannot correctly tell you which parties control which houses of Congress, this whole accountability idea is pretty tough. I wish people could just scroll through the recent articles at Political Wire. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) sneaks up on a fellow congressman to “photobomb” him. Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) may have accidentally legalized marijuana in DC while attempting to oppose decriminalization. Republican members of the Virginia House of Delegates broke into Governor Terry McAuliffe’s office on a weekend to “deliver their budget.” Virginia Republicans bribed a Democratic senator into resigning his seat with promise of a job, cell phone, and a car. Mississippi Tea Party leader kills himself after getting into trouble for his participation in an illegal entry into a nursing home to film Sen. Thad Cochran’s (R-MS) demented wife. That doesn’t even get into the Republican who is accusing his primary opponent of being dead and impersonated by a body double or John Boehner’s announcement that he plans to sue the president for something he hasn’t decided on yet. There’s also something, something, IRS, The Benghazi! Committee, Govs. Scott Walker (R-WI) and Chris Christie (R-NJ) dodging prosecutors, Sen. Jeff Sessions opposing the Voting Rights Act, and Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) calling for the deportation of DREAMers. There’s Ann Coulter on a jihad against soccer and people at Fox News speculating that the World Cup is itself a conspiracy to take people’s minds off President Obama’s travails.
There is always some set of b.s. that the right-wing media are humping, but there seems to be a confluence of streams of b.s. all coming together at the same time to create some kind of polar vortex or SuperStorm of Bullshit.
Bullshit criminal behavior and bullshit rhetoric on anabolic steroids.
The only saving grace for Republicans is that most people don’t even know what they do, or what they’re supposed to do. They just sense that Congress sucks, without appreciating just how sick this patient has become.
Vote Republican — because we yell louder and wear little flag pins and Benghazi!
“There is always some set of b.s. that the right-wing media is humping, but there seems to be a confluence of streams of b.s. all coming together at the same time to create some kind of polar vortex or SuperStorm of Bullshit.”
Oh, BooMan, please remember – this is just the end of June.
They’ll need still more red meat for their base to come out for November’s midterms.
And we won’t see the ‘perfect storm’ of polar vortexes of SuperStorms of Bullshit, until the Presidential election process gathers steam, in 2016!
If you’re in it for entertainment value, the next 2+ years will be AMAZING!
If you care about the countries governance – even mediocre governance – the next 2+ years, will be fucking hell!!!
Is it Murray’s assignment to make the other TP candidates look sane?
Looks as if the floor in OK for the truly mad GOP pols in primaries is 5.2%. Lower than the number that believe Elvis is alive.
More of this, please.
This needs to be a headline story everywhere.
Got conservative family and friends?
Send them a link.
#FriendsDontLetFriendsVoteRepublican
Anybody wants a link, here is the Huffington Post version: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/27/frank-lucas_n_5537217.htm.
This is a one-off. Like that libertarian candidate from a few years ago that turned his skin blue.
Seriously this guy is so nutso that in an OK GOP primary he only got 5%. And was slaughtered by the incumbent. Somewhat encouraging to know that in GOP-loon-land, there are only 5% looney voters that vote for the looniest loon.
Fantastic– a case of the Capgras delusion . Some repubs really are clinically insane.
Probably shouldn’t make fun of him as it’s possibly an indication of organic brain disease or degeneration. (But I’m not always a nice enough person to resist mocking such obviously nutso claims. Particularly when it’s a conservative or Republican and especially if it’s a politician.)
glad you got the guy with the impersonation delusion. that’s really something. imo part of this is b/c the Kochs, or whoever, recruits for office marginal ppl whom they can manipulate. Look, for example at the latest Chris Christie scandal. It’s really something. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/24/nyregion/2nd-bridge-inquiry-said-to-be-linked-to-christie.html
and I’d say Chris Christie [I’ve never thought he was pulling his own strings as it were], Nikki Haley [a typical Koch bimbo] are the on-the-surface respectable ones, but most of these candidates since 2010 definitely are pretty blackmailable or crazy or both.
After last month’s primary the Tea Party has taken over control of the Central Committee and majority of the leadership positions in our county GOP. It is difficult to overstate what a significant event this is around here. If there was ever an “Old Guard” of traditional Republican politics, it has been our county GOP. It has been a very traditional, business friendly, generational and mostly moderate group of people; most of whom have tried to thread the needle when it comes to dealing with this rise of ultra right-wing and anti-government ideology that has popped out of the ground over the last few years. The schism has been so evident, in that most times the GOP and the Tea Party will set up separate booths at county functions in order to differentiate themselves from each other. There is no hiding the fact that each of the two groups really did not like each other a whole lot.
Well, that gap has now been closed. And the County Republican Party is going to be forced to assimilate with the Tea Party faction that they have so subtly scorned for so long.
I have been receiving the monthly Tea Party newsletter for quite a while. It reads like a schizophrenic collection of tin-foil hat conspiracies, anti-government rants, and loathing of everything that functions within the public sphere of government; including teachers, unions, public schools and anyone who might have found themselves experiencing the misfortunes of life which would require some sort of government assistance. It is a cacophony of CAP LOCKED screeching articles which have been copied and pasted from every wild-eyed right wing rag or blog, peppered with Tea Party event notices which are full of misspellings and demented calls to rise up against the inevitable tyranny that is coming. The author of this nuttiness is now the vice-chair of the Party.
So the craziness has finally gotten a significant foothold around here. There has been a lot of support for their principles among the local natives. The xenophobia, gun fetishes and Cliven Bundy type hatred of government is well received in much of this older white population in our county. Tea Party meetings are generally well attended and the enthusiasm is high.
So we shall see how far this momentum will now carry them going forward. They are taking aim at school boards, city councils and township trustees. Not to mention many of the appointed positions on county boards. The had a couple of stinging defeats in the last year in a couple of high profile situations, but those might well be exceptions now that they have the ability to pull the levers and direct the resources and finances at the county level.
This could well turn out to be a case where the complacency of the Old Guard really comes back to bite our county in the ass. Would not be at all surprised to see a few moderate Republicans walking through the door of our Democratic Party Headquarters.
Any idea that this movement is somehow weakening is simply wishful thinking.
Only Nixon could go to China.
Only the Tea Party could destroy the Republican party.
#1 Strategy: Ratfucking.
Why is it liberals with lots of cash don’t get serious about being a liberal. How easy is it to ratfuck crazy people? Very easy. I’d be running a “Tea Party” candidate in every House/Senate race across the country. I’d be turning up the volume, taking those fliers with crazy all over them and sending them everywhere.
Seriously. They’ve been selling rope for decades now. Let’s use it.
are they fighting back from within the party? or if they join the dems does that help defeat them?
I haven’t had the opportunity to speak with anyone in the county GOP about the environment within their Party since this takeover. It will be interesting to see how things develop, especially between now and November.
They took over the Idaho GOP recently and more recently they lost it in an election. Then all hell broke out at their convention when the teabaggers refused to seat the newly elected members who would have deprived the teabaggers of their majority.
sounds like Mississippi type happenings
That Idaho Republican Party convention story is incredible.
“Chaos and division have plagued Idaho’s GOP ever since the state convention ended in a meltdown several weeks ago. For the first time in nearly 60 years, Republicans failed to elect a new chairman or pass a single platform amendment.”
I think the funniest part of the story is that Rep. Raul Labrador had just announced that he was running for House Majority Leader when he went back home for his State Party convention. He and his people had spent weeks trying to broker agreements among the factions within the party, and he was in the room when the whole thing came crashing to the ground quite spectacularly. Wants to lead the Party in Congress, and can’t even lead the Party in his tiny State.
Here’s the latest, from yesterday:
“BOISE, Idaho — The last remaining paid staffer at the Idaho Republican Party has left, leaving embattled state chairman Barry Peterson alone at the helm.
Financial director Mary Tipps Smith says she left her position Wednesday after about a month on the job. She says she was the last paid staffer at Idaho’s Grand Old Party.
Her departure follows former Executive Director Trevor Thorpe’s resignation. Thorpe left the party immediately after the conclusion of the failed state convention…
Peterson immediately hung up when contacted by The Associated Press Thursday morning.”
http://www.rgj.com/story/news/politics/2014/06/26/last-paid-idaho-republican-party-staffer-leaves/11
418573/
fascinating; and for all of those invoking Godwin in connection with the teaparty, it’s interesting that they aren’t as much interested in winning their agenda as they are in taking over a major party (I write this in support of those invoking Godwin).
As if they they were following the “disruptive innovation” model that is apparently quite the thing to do these days in business as Jill Lapore competently dissects as the NewYorker in: The Disruptive Machine.
Of course, the reality is that formula sort of sucks at much of anything other than how to lose a bunch of money and destroy some good operations.
Highly recommend Lapore’s article.
It is crucial to note, as you do, that your round-up of “hijinks” actually involves multiple instances of law breaking by Repubs and Tea Partiers all across the nation. When added to the almost unbelievable level of executive lawbreaking undertaken by the “conservative” Bushco, it can be seen quite clearly that we are now dealing with a nationwide criminal organization that likely will stop at nothing to maintain and expand its power. Today’s “conservatives” increasingly see no need to comply with the law.
There were journalists who bravely followed and exposed the massive lawbreaking of the Hitler movement as it worked its way to power, whose leader they deemed not a politician, but a “political criminal”. These journalists were all killed when Hitler came to power.
The rhetoric of the American “conservative” white male today is very frequently violent and brutal, as any perusal of their tweets makes clear. They celebrate guns and gun “rights” and personal armories. They fantasize about political revolutions and “watering the tree of liberty”, as though even murder is condonable if one does it for “love” of country…or folk.
Their current leaders have no qualms about lawbreaking in order to obtain power and defeat opponents, gaming elections and suppressing voting. The evidence is that their movement is already engaging in widespread lawbreaking. Unlike the German newspapers of the Thirties, no American journalist is going to point out that this is increasingly a movement of political criminals.
How long before murder is committed in the name of “saving” the nation from lib’ruls or “restoring” it? Is there any doubt that when such violence comes it will be defended, rationalized and justified by the useless corporate media that ensures that the dots are never connected?
The country is in very deep trouble. And elections did not save Weimar Germany.
<blockquote>The rhetoric of the American "conservative" white male today is very frequently violent and brutal… They celebrate guns and gun "rights" and personal armories. They fantasize about political revolutions and "watering the tree of liberty", as though even murder is condonable if one does it for "love" of country…or folk. </blockquote>
Sounds like 1854-1860. Been reading <I>Battle Cry of Freedom</i> again, and have been repeatedly struck by the echoes.
Agreed 100% and I’m glad other people are starting to see it.
The Republican party is nothing but a front for oligarchs who want to overthrow the government and bring back feudalism. Period.
They aren’t interested in governing, and they aren’t interested in upholding laws. They are only interested in wealth and power.
Laws are specifically designed to control wealth and power. And for Republicans, the government is the problem.
Republican voters are fascist-enablers. Republican politicians are often fascists themselves, or fascist-enablers who are just actors for whomever…Kochs, Adelsons, Bushs, etc.
Don’t think that any conservative/Republican who sounds sane isn’t a fascist or an enabler. They’re just the clever ones.
Vote accordingly.
Case in point: here in MT, we have a state official titled Commissioner of Political Practices (COPP — appropriate, no?). The current office-holder is named Jonathan Motl. He has done all of us who actually care about democracy an immense service by assiduously investigating allegations of illegal coordination between ‘conservative’ GOPers’ campaigns and ‘dark money’ groups funding attacks on self-styled ‘Responsible Republican’ incumbents for not being insane enough — in violation of MT election laws. To be crystal clear: most, perhaps all, of the complaints to his office that Motl has investigated and issued findings for have come from GOPers accusing other GOPers of violations of state law. In several cases, Motl’s recommendation to a state court has been to remove from office, or from the ballot (depending on whether they are current officeholders or current candidates), individuals he concluded from his investigation had violated state election laws.
One such individual is named Art Wittich, current wingnut state Senate President and current candidate for the state House, who accuses Motl of political partisanship.
That should be sufficient background to reprise my comment to an article in the local fishwrap about all that, which quoted Wittich’s whining:
It seems that the Republican Party strategy is shifting from the bullshit firehouse to a repertory of middle school pranks and fraternity railroad tactics. A pathetic loss of the sense of what politics is about.
In other news, Speaker Pro Tem Stam of the NC House got himself in a bit of hot water for terming pedophilia a “sexual orientation” (used to be a slam dunk for Republicans)–to the point that Thom Tillis issued a statement that was a waffle.
Santorumism seems to be dying bit-by-bit even in North Carolina.
Are the wingnut Republicans in Virginia so loopy that they will “stand their ground” outside medical clinics to prevent people from using their Obamacare?
I don’t know if it’s a sexual “orientation” but there is certainly a difference between pedophiles and child abusers. And pedophiles in general cannot help their attraction.
Of course it’s currently deemed a “mental disorder,” but so was homosexuality as far as the American Psychiatric Association was concerned until 1973.
Compassion for Pedophiles
Call it what you will but since, by definition, there cannot be mutual consent when one of the parties is a minor, do not expect the country to ever “lighten up” about such things.
I don’t expect it to happen any time soon, especially not overnight, but the research is staggeringly absent. We just don’t understand it at all. Rather we just would rather shun them from society and lock them away…and that’s not something I favor either.
It also begs the question of what is and is not a minor, and where the age of consent should be; the age of consent until very recently was 14 in Canada, for example, although with a lot of exceptions (sex between 12 and 13 year olds for example is still legal). It’s 16 in some states, 18 in others.
All I’m saying is, pedophiles are not child abusers by definition, we should be increasing the research on the topic, and in the mean time we should be reaching out with compassion and help reduce child abuse; obviously incendiary language from Thom Tillis is meant to do the opposite, and in many ways is actively harmful to children by causing those who are pedophiles who have not acted on their attractions to go underground.
Pedophilia is a cultural disorder as much as a mental disorder. And our society/culture is a large part of the problem. Children are dressed up and made to be sex symbols all the time, and it is basically ignored.
The point was that Stam faced criticism to the point that Tillis had to waffle to avoid hurting his support with independent voters on the issue of gay rights. That sort of culture war talk used to be red meat talk for Jesse Helms Republicans.
Times are changing, it seems.
It’s worse than you think: a quick chi-squared minimization suggests that only 10% of those who answered both questions correctly did in fact know the right answers – 30% guessed twice and got lucky, just like the 28% who guess twice and got unlucky both times.
We have a serious problem with basic stupidity in this country.
You have a more sophisticated version of what I was going to point out. I noticed that the “Hard Pressed Skeptics” (i.e. non-ethnic working class, see this clever analysis on Balloon Juice) actually scored below chance – 23% when random guessing is 25%. Several other groups aren’t much better.
And yeah, by statistical analysis less than half actually know even in the politically active classes.
I wonder if we could make substantial progress just by teaching people who’s running the House?
I was struck by this:
How can one enjoy talking about politics with others that lack even the rudimentary knowledge of the political party currently controlling the House and Senate?
Isn’t this the crux of the problem? The entire problem?
Americans have the civic knowledge of a yellow bellied marmot. This civic stupidity leads – as stupidity often does – to civic cruelty.
I know quite a few conservatives who are kind and generous people with the world in front of their faces. They volunteer in schools to read to kids, give blood, bring dinners to people who are sick.
But once they have to see beyond their immediate experience, once they have to engage in abstract reasoning, then we enter the realm of Idiocracy.
Exactly this.
I bet those conservatives who aren’t total pieces of shit live in small towns compared to cities.
My tribe, right or wrong is a lot easier to avoid when you’re around tribe members. Which is why I think the hostility of conservatives in the suburbs is so high. They’re always seeing non-tribe members. Eww.
The problem is so many think that these are just to be laughed at, but if you study history. One would see a pattern that shows a very clear civil disrest. This type of thing occurred in both Germany and France. I am not the only one that has noticed this and the disrest is not just these acts by the GOPers.
Numerous Democratic Party members as well are experiencing crush blows from lack of employment,unemployment depleted, low paying replacement job,loss of house,car,unable to vote (Voter suppresion laws) and so on…
Even some of the 1% have taken notice.
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/06/my-fellow-zillionaires-i-see-pitchforks
The point is all the signs point to some type of uprising. If the vote no longer counts or is able to occur. The general public are losing hope in any form of change being able to happen is creating a large vacuum. That is being filled woith both anger and frustration. All that is needed now is a catalyst to get things rolling.
When people have lost all hope then they feel they have no hope, that is when a change is forced to happen. Look around do you see the majority of Americans bubbling over with enthusiasm or dispair?
There’s no instance of a mob of peasants ever storming a castle with a pitchfork in one hand, and a remote, or a game controller, in the other.
The last, and only, time, people in this country took up arms in numbers to overthrow an existing order was when the existing order bid fair to restrict their right to own, buy, sell, and exploit colored people.
You overestimate how many game controllers are out there. It doesn’t happen often, but Bastilles do fall.
I think you’re both right.
Non-violent people know there isn’t much to do, so they keep playing candy crush or need for speed 12.
Violent people know that the only thing they can do is be violent, so they take their guns and kill people.
I think Ray is right that people see things are fucked and beyond repair and are pissed off. Unfortunately, the game has been rigged enough so that the critical mass required to actually accomplish change is busy watching television and checking in from home on facebook to announce that they are watching television.
Bread and circuses are great at getting people to stop thinking.
Well, when more people are too poor to afford housing or computers or phones where they can play Candy Crush, then the ruling class better watch out! <sarcasm>
We came out of the Depression with the same Constitution — albeit interpreted slightly differently in places — and fundamental economic system that we had going in. So did Canada, France, the UK, and all of the smaller democracies in Europe.
The level of immiseration needed to trigger a revolution wasn’t reached, despite a U6 pushing 50% and a U3 of 25%.
The problem with ‘the worse, the better’ is ‘the worse’ is worse, much worse, than scarcely anybody living has seen, except immigrants (My mom was born in the year of the Crash — she’s 85.)
The only saving grace for Republicans is that most people don’t even know what they do, or what they’re supposed to do.
This is because we have a deeply dysfunctional press in our country, owned and controlled by huge corporations and filled with lazy, self-interested substitutes for journalists.
And it goes on and on, just like the polar vortex.
The tea bagger vote to give Obama 50 billion, to fight in Syria, will start something we have never seen before. If they cave without making the case….pitch forks?
I basically agree with Coulter about soccer.
Not that you are anti American if you like it but its a dumb sport and I hope immigrants who love it eventually have kids who don’t.
The dumbness of a sport is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it? Why is it important to you that future generations of immigrants turn away from soccer?
I’ve been a football fan my entire life, and even I could create a MUCH better case that American football is not just dumb, it’s stupid. A sport where some players who quit the sport in their teens suffer minor or major lifelong neurological health problems? Now THAT’s dumb. And stupid.
Football is also stupid. Exciting, but dumb. I don’t particularly love it either. I care because I think the passion soccer fans display is embarrassing and the cup itself has been shown to boost nationalism which has lots of negative potential. FIFA ia baducally a mafia. Besides soccer also has a lot of concussions, I’m not saying its as widespread as football but it seems to be worse than say baseball. Look at Brandi Chastain and concussions. By your criteria you just argued soccer is dumb and stupid.
Personally I find baseball and basketball flat out better so of course I want sports I favor to blossom.