Smug indifference wrapped in Bible verse

I have never met the man, but I feel sure I can say -- with great confidence -- that Kevin Cramer (R-ND) is a fucking asshole.

The bartender who caught Mittens telling the truth

Scott Prouty can likely look forward to weeks and months of hell on wheels -- there is nothing so frightening as a conservative scorned.

So, if you can, go here.

Meanwhile, Republican young white southern gentlemen outreach to minorities continues apace.

No more fun in the monkeyhouse?

The moneyed interests have grown tired of bankrolling a party consisting primarily of glue huffing, misogynistic creationists.  Or rather, tired of bankrolling glue huffing, misogynistic creationists that, of late, are losing elections the powers that be had thought bought and paid for.

The group, the Conservative Victory Project, is intended to counter other organizations that have helped defeat establishment Republican candidates over the last two election cycles. It is the most robust attempt yet by Republicans to impose a new sense of discipline on the party, particularly in primary races. 

“There is a broad concern about having blown a significant number of races because the wrong candidates were selected,” said Steven J. Law, the president of American Crossroads, the “super PAC” creating the new project. “We don’t view ourselves as being in the incumbent protection business, but we want to pick the most conservative candidate who can win.” 

The effort would put a new twist on the Republican-vs.-Republican warfare that has consumed the party’s primary races in recent years. In effect, the establishment is taking steps to fight back against Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations that have wielded significant influence in backing candidates who ultimately lost seats to Democrats in the general election. 

And, oh noes, Steve King, a rapologist as well as other crazy, is likely to be their first target.

Trouble is, as the good Doctor Pierce would say, the GOP elders no longer control the conservative Id, and that is the closest thing the Republican party has to both authenticity and intellectual ferment.

Return of the 3/5ths clause

The thirteenth amendment eliminated the "3/5ths compromise" in the U.S. Constitution.  A group of Republican state legislators in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Virginia appear to want to bring it back.

Republican lawmakers in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin are considering whether to abandon the winner-take-all approach to awarding Electoral College votes and replace it with a proportional allocation.

That change would heavily favor Republican presidential candidates — tilting the voting power away from cities and toward rural areas — and make it more likely that the candidate with the fewest votes over all would win a larger share of electoral votes.

One day I will have to visit the evil lair where they come up with these schemes. They pump them out like a factory. Voter suppression didn’t work in November, and it may even have backfired in some states, so they just devised another devilish plan.

Pete Lund, a Republican state representative in Michigan, “plans to reintroduce legislation that would award all but two of Michigan’s 16 Electoral College votes according to congressional district results,” said an article Friday in The Detroit News.

The paper continued, “The remaining two would go to the candidate winning the statewide majority.”

Lund, who proposed a similar bill in 2012, made Republicans’ intentions completely clear, saying, according to the article: “It got no traction last year. There were people convinced Romney was going to win and this might take (electoral) votes from him.” 

[...]

Paul Bibeau, who writes “a blog of dark humor” from Virginia, points out a numerical oddity about the effects of the Virginia law that turns out, upon reflection, to be more stinging than funny: “This bill counts an Obama voter as 3/5 of a person.”

That is because, as Talking Points Memo says, “Obama voters would have received almost exactly 3/5 of the electoral vote compared to their actual population — 30.7 percent of the electoral vote over 51 percent of the popular vote.” 

 The Republican brand, Millions Disenfranchised™.

Eric Cantor, proud scion of the South

Wow.  Just.  Wow.

Kicking one of their own to the proverbial curb

Nothing like paying lip service to a former party leader (and the party's presidential nominee), then insulting him when he leaves the chamber because of fears of the UN's black helicopters. 

WASHINGTON — Former Senator Bob Dole of Kansas sat slightly slumped in his wheelchair on the Senate floor on Tuesday, staring intently as Senator John Kerry gave his most impassioned speech all year, in defense of a United Nations treaty that would ban discrimination against people with disabilities. 

Senators from both parties went to greet Mr. Dole, leaning in to hear his wispy reply, as he sat in support of the treaty, which would require that people with disabilities have the same general rights as those without disabilities. Several members took the unusual step of voting aye while seated at their desks, out of respect for Mr. Dole, 89, a Republican who was the majority leader. 

Then, after Mr. Dole’s wife, Elizabeth, rolled him off the floor, Republicans quietly voted down the treaty that the ailing Mr. Dole, recently released from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, so longed to see passed. 

A majority of Republicans who voted against the treaty, which was modeled on the Americans With Disabilities Act, said they feared that it would infringe on American sovereignty. 

 A two-thirds majority was needed to ratify the treaty, which, far from infringing on American soverignty, would have required other countries to provide the same protections to the disabled that the U.S. already provides.  But, no matter.

And what would a post on Republican Senators be without a nod to their sublime hypocrisy.

Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas praised the treaty in a news release with Mr. McCain in May but voted against it. Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi voted yes at the beginning of the roll call vote and then switched his vote to no. Calls to the offices of Mr. Moran and Mr. Cochran were not returned. 

 Worst people in the world.

If there was any doubt about Romney's esteemed character...

You know, after the interminable GOP primary and the brutal general election, I didn't think anything Mitt Romney said could leave me slack jawed anymore, but he's out done himself in defeat.

In a conference call with fund-raisers and donors to his campaign, Mr. Romney said Wednesday afternoon that the president had followed the “old playbook” of using targeted initiatives to woo specific interest groups — “especially the African-American community, the Hispanic community and young people.”

“In each case, they were very generous in what they gave to those groups,” Mr. Romney said, contrasting Mr. Obama’s strategy to his own of “talking about big issues for the whole country: military strategy, foreign policy, a strong economy, creating jobs and so forth.”

Mr. Romney’s comments in the 20-minute conference call came after his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, told WISC-TV in Madison on Monday that their loss was a result of Mr. Obama’s strength in “urban areas,” an analysis that did not account for Mr. Obama’s victories in more rural states like Iowa and New Hampshire or the decrease in the number of votes for the president relative to 2008 in critical urban counties in Ohio.

“With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest was a big gift,” Mr. Romney said. “Free contraceptives were very big with young, college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people. They turned out in large numbers, a larger share in this election even than in 2008.”

Free contraceptives got Obama the lady vote. Yes, that must have been it (oddly, I had heard it was going to cost him the Catholic vote).  And, believe it or not, Romney had more to say.

Apparently, the gifts Romney proposed to give to plutocrats was not a good electoral strategy for him. 

Man, we dodged a bullet...again.

There are no boundaries

Shameless.

They went to the unusual length of arranging a focus group to test anti-Obama films. Conducted by Frank Luntz, the well-known Republican research analyst, a 30-person focus group looked at three choices: Dinesh D’Souza’s “2016: Obama’s America,” which theorizes that the president’s political beliefs were shaped by the radical “anticolonial” views of his Kenyan father; “The Hope and the Change,” a softer critique of the president that features interviews with disaffected former Obama supporters; and “Dreams From My Real Father,” which posits the implausible theory that the president’s real father is Mr. Davis, and that Mr. Davis indoctrinated him with Marxist views early on. 

And also.  Douchebags.

The film is the work of Joel Gilbert, whose previous claims include having tracked down Elvis Presley in the witness protection program and discovering that Paul McCartney is in fact dead. 

Sen. Cornyn declares that Obama is "dividing the country"

Similarly, LBJ was dividing the country with passage of the Civil Rights Act.

"People have died for the Voting Rights Act"

Credit where credit is due -- AP edition

I'm beginning to think that the "false equivalence" meme is having its effect.  To wit:

GOP blocks Senate debate on Dem student loan bill

 Go, AP, go.

A very unserious man, or, Lord of the Flies

Kevin Drum is correct -- Paul Ryan's plan is not "brave" or "serious."  In fact his plan is not a budget plan at all, it's a political one.  Whether he hopes to be on the Romneybot 2.0 ticket or has higher aspirations for national office, his annual hat tip to the wealthy and defense contractors is intended to position himself as the green-eye shade wearing, intellectual leader of the Republican party.

And I can pretty much clear things up for Ezra Klein.

As I said at the top; I don't take this as evidence that Paul Ryan wants to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. I take it as evidence that, given the set of commitments Republicans have made to their base, he didn't really have a choice. It was the only way to make his numbers work.

No, it's not evidence that Ryan wants to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, because his plan will not balance the budget.  Ever.   But it does signal to conservative voters that he, like Mitt Romney, doesn't "care about the poor."  Whereas, not long ago we had a Republican candidate that ran on "compassionate conservatism," we now have Republican leadership who push each other out of the  way to preeningly exhibit their disdaining of the poor (and the young) bona fides.

But they're Democrats

Linda Greenhouse compares last week's Sandra Fluke "kerfuffle" with Lucy Ledbetter's tale from four years ago, who became a darling of the Obama campaign and a Democratic congressional cause.  But she suggests Democrats be careful not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by overplaying what looks like a strong hand.

If you think my concern is unfounded, here’s a little experiment. Go to YouTube and listen to Loretta Lynn sing “The Pill.” The song was a country music hit for her back in 1975, a feminist anthem in its message if not in its rustic imagery:

“You wined me and dined me when I was your girl
Promised if I’d be your wife you’d show me the world
But all I’ve seen of this old world is a bed and a doctor bill
I’m tearing down your brooder house ‘cause now I’ve got the pill.” 

Listen to the song, and don’t miss the line: “This incubator is overused because you’ve kept it filled.” Listen, and ask yourself whether this song would get air time on a commercial station today. I wouldn’t bet on it.

She's got a point.

They are wrong

Gosh, if only we could elect a truly progressive president.

Oh...wait...

Obama, worst monster in American history

As America (well, a few hundred likely Republican voters and a handful of others) watched four wealthy white men debate the horrors of contraception, they heard Willard Mitt Romney fail history (again).

You could almost hear the smiles coming from Obama campaign headquarters in Chicago. In the 21st century, four far-right white wealthy guys, all of whom think they should be president, spent 15 minutes in a nationally-televised debate talking about access to birth control.

The GOP candidates might as well have put a banner over their heads reading, "Independents, please don't consider voting for us."

But it was Mitt Romney's response to the question that amazed me. "I don't think we've seen in the history of this country the kind of attack on religious conscience, religious freedom, religious tolerance that we've seen under Barack Obama," the former governor said.

The picture is called "The Battle of Nauvoo," depicting attacks by the good citizens of that Illinois city on the Mormon population of the town.  This took place following the assassination of Joseph Smith, the LDS founder, in nearby Carthage, Missouri.  All done with the tacit approval of the governor of the state. The attacks ultimately led entire Mormon population to wagon train to the salt lake.

It's hard to know what Willard Mitt Romney is at this point.   He's not this guy -- too old to get out of Nauvoo in time.

I can has control of your body, gals

At one point did the notion that denying health benefits to women would be a winning political strategy for the Republican party?

Let’s take a look at Thursday, February 16, 2012, the day Washington fell into a time-warp.

• On Capitol Hill, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) held hearings on contraception and religious freedom that produced the now-famous picture of a table full of men called to weigh in on access to contraceptives. Democrats wanted a woman — a Georgetown law student with a friend who lost an ovary because the university doesn’t cover birth control — to say her piece at the hearing, but Issa wouldn’t let her on the panel. He said she wasn’t “appropriate or qualified” to discuss the topic at hand.
Jaws dropped in the women’s rights community.

“She didn’t have the right credentials?” NOW President Terry O’Neill scoffed. “I’m thinking to myself, ‘Buddy, you and your little panel over there don’t have the right anatomy to talk about birth control.’”
• Politico published a story about a right wing firestorm that had been burning for days: Did the young women who attended this year’s CPAC wear skirts that were too short?

[...]

• Foster Friess, the billionaire backer of Rick Santorum’s campaign, became an instant celebrity when he went on Andrea Mitchell’s MSNBC show and said, “Back in my day, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”

 Then there's the state legislature in Virginia who just passed a law legalizing rape against women who want to have an abortion.

Dahlia Lithwick puts paid to the new Virginia law that requires women seeking to exercise their constitutional right to an abortion to have a probe stuck up in them so that they will be shamed like the sluts they are before God and the various meddling members of the House Of Delegates who believe that a woman's place is in all those movies they watch for five minutres (or less) in their hotel rooms at the annual god-botherer's convention in Atlantic City. Anyway, Lithwick comes up with a real gem amid the muck:

Virginia Democrat Del. David Englin, who opposes the bill, has said Gilbert's statement "is in line with previous Republican comments on the issue," recalling one conversation with a GOP lawmaker who told him that women had already made the decision to be "vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant." (I confirmed with Englin that this quote was accurate.)

Yes, and anyone who has had their earlobes pierced already has made the decision that, one day, the law would require them to have a tenpenny nail driven into their eye.

 Like, I said, I don't know when they decided that this would be a winning political argument, but I encourage their war on sex and naughty parts.

Some tasty values

Jesse Singal, subbing at the Political Animal beat, explains why the GOP simply can't resist The Imp of the Perverse.

Obviously, questions of whether and how and why the the Republican Party and the many independent actors that constitute it attempt to exhume certain “values” issues are complicated and multifaceted, especially during primary season.

But on some fundamental level, there have to be a lot of otherwise levelheaded people in the GOP who, when faced with the prospect of wading back into these waters, can’t help but react the same way Homer Simpson did to the Good Morning Burger. As long as you don’t take the time to actually understand public opinion and how it is changing, these issues just look so good, so tasty, so loaded with the rich creamery butter of cultural panic.

Swift boat rising

Charles Pearce wonders where the "serious Republicans were in 2004.

In 2004, as part of the general campaign to re-elect George W. Bush, there was an organized campaign to cast doubt upon — and, ultimately, to smear recklessly — the undeniable heroism shown by Democratic candidate John Kerry during his time as a Naval officer in Vietnam. Entire books were written promoting this slander. Prominent pundits — most notably, the execrable Michelle Malkin's visit to Hardball — went on television to mainstream vicious nonsense. At the Republican National Convention, delegates wore cute little Purple Heart band-aids to mock Kerry's wounds. The whole thing was despicable, and that's being enormously kind.

Make no mistake. Swift Boatism is different from birtherism only in two ways. First, the target is obviously different. But, second, and most important, there was serious money behind Swift Boatism and there is little behind birtherism. (In Republican campaigns, the difference between an "issue" and a "distraction" is whether the Koch Brothers have busted out the checkbook yet.) And those are the only two differences between the two. They are equally nasty. They are equally truthless calumnies. They are equally the product of the fevered hive mind of the conservative Republican base.

"Serious Republicans" have been slinging this shit for half a century. Calling birtherism a "distraction" now is a typical Republican habit of denying the facts of their very existence.

Via Balloon Juice.

Texas is sick

Rick Perry and his hatred for "Obamacare" looks inviting.

Other doctors tell of uninsured children dying from vaccine-preventable diseases such as influenza and hepatitis A, and patients being admitted into the emergency room for uncontrolled asthma and diabetes. Doctors here routinely see untreated infections of the ear, sinus, or tooth spreading to the brain, requiring surgery, and bone infections that result in permanent disability.

“This is an everyday occurrence,’’ said Dr. Claire Bocchini, another Houston pediatrician who specializes in infectious diseases and is president of Doctors for Change.

As underfunded as the state’s health safety net has been, conditions stand to worsen. In the last legislative session that ended in May, the state cut two thirds of the funding for women’s health clinics and underfunded Medicaid by almost $4 billion, in addition to cutting hospital reimbursements. This follows other health cuts in the Perry years.

Perry vetoed a bill in 2001 that would have expanded Medicaid services and added cancer screenings such as Pap smears to women’s health services. In 2003, Texas tightened the eligibility requirements for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and as a result, 237,000 children were kicked off its rolls, said Garnet Coleman, a Democratic state representative from Houston who has served in the Texas Legislature for 20 years and is a member of the House Public Health Committee.

The Perry campaign declined a request to interview the governor, saying Perry would work to free states from federal mandates and empower them to come up with their own solutions.

Catherine Frazier, a campaign spokeswoman, said that because there are so many Texas children eligible for Medicaid who are not enrolled, Perry - rather than widen eligibility to more low-income families - focused on increasing funding for public awareness campaigns to encourage the neediest parents to enroll their children.

“The governor has made considerable effort throughout his tenure to make insurance more affordable so people can afford to purchase it if they choose to,’’ Frazier said. “His goal is to create an environment of independence from the government, not dependence.’’

In a recent debate, Perry said conditions would be better in Texas if the federal government had granted the state a waiver, which would have allowed it to redirect Medicaid money into subsidies for private or employer-based insurance. The Bush administration never approved the 2008 request.

The burden of the Texas health care crisis falls largely on the working poor. Most of the state’s uninsured adults have jobs and are US citizens or legal residents, according to the nonpartisan Center for Public Policy Priorities. Working adults account for nearly two out of three uninsured Texans between ages 19 and 64, though most of them make less than $25,000 a year.

An example is Joyce Jones, a 60-year-old yoga instructor earning $20,000 a year who said she cannot afford private health insurance because she has Parkinson’s disease, a preexisting condition that would increase her premiums.

Jones has maxed out three of her credit cards paying for health care and has more than $30,000 in credit card debt. She is in the process of signing up for a high-deductible plan for people with preexisting conditions, made possible through the new federal health overhaul law - “Obamacare,’’ as Perry and other GOP candidates call it.

Which would be boo'd by audiences at Republican debates.

Another Republican shields his children from their mother

I don't want to say she thinks Carl Lewis -- the greatest Olympic athlete of all time -- is "uppity," but...well...yes, I will.

Burlington County Republican Chairman Bill Layton acknowledged Monday that Pat Delany stepped down from the Assembly this month because of his wife's missive to Lewis' campaign.

The Delanys are white. Lewis is black.

Jennifer Delany's email said, "Imagine having dark skin and name recognition and the nerve to think that equalled knowing something about politics."

Layton says Pat Delany decided to leave office to shield his children from "a hurtful and embarrassing public spectacle involving their mother." Delaney says he's sorry.

"Sorry" for what, he did not say, apparently.

UPDATED: Thanks "Tom"