Perturbed by the GOP’s current push for new laws making it more difficult for the young, elderly, poor, and minorities to reach the ballot box? This classic, extremely blunt speech by über-influential conservative Paul Weyrich (founder of the Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority, and American Legislative Exchange Council) goes a long way in explaining:
It’s sort of a tradition that unhip Republicans use iconic American music without permission and then very publicly are humilated by the artists who created the music. Randall Roberts reports on Paul Ryan’s humiliation at the hands of Dee Snider for the LA Times:
Pretty soon, the only songs Mitt Romney and Paul Ryanmight be able to play will be the collected works of Hank Williams Jr. and Ted Nugent, at least judging by a statement Dee Snider made Wednesday morning.
After learning that Republican vice presidential hopeful Ryan had been warming up crowds with “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” the lead singer of Twisted Sister requested that the song be pulled from Ryan’s playlist.
This comes after Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello wrote an editorial denouncing Ryan after learning that the candidate was a Rage fan; and after L.A. band Silversun Pickups decried Ryan’s campaign for using their “Panic Switch.”
Twisted Sister’s 1984 hair metal song, which has sold more than 8 million copies, is one of the heartiest workout anthems of that decade.
Picture: "Yerpo" (CC)
From the author of a fictional world where seasons can last for years, a critique of tactics employed in our present world … where an election season can last for decades:
“I would be remiss if I do not at least make passing mention of how depressed, disgusted, and, yes, angry I’ve become as I watch the ongoing attempts at voter suppression in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Iowa, and other states where Republicans and their Teabagger allies control key seats of power,” George R.R. Martin wrote on his blog on Saturday.
“It is one thing to attempt to win elections,” he continued. “But trying to do so by denying the most basic and important right of any American citizen to hundreds and thousands of people, on entirely spurious grounds… that goes beyond reprehensible. That is despicable.”
Martin was referring to Republican efforts to pass laws that require a photo ID for voting, efforts that research shows suppresses the votes of poor, elderly, young and minority voters despite the fact that few cases of voter fraud have been documented.
Mitt Romney’s newly minted November running mate Paul Ryan is known for a radical right wing outlook — at the core of his agenda is the slashing of taxes for the rich, ending Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and any sort of sort of social safety net as we know them, and gutting all functions of the federal government with the exception of the military. But just how extreme is he? Via the FiveThirtyEight blog at the New York Times, statistics wiz Nate Silver explains that by a large margin, Ryan holds the most far-from-center voting record of any Congressperson to run for vice president in at least a hundred years, if not ever:
Based on his Congressional voting record, the statistical system DW-Nominate evaluates him as being roughly as conservative as Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. (The statistic does not provide scores for governors and other vice-presidential nominees who never served in Congress.)
By this measure, in fact, which rates members of the House and Senate throughout different time periods on a common ideology scale, Mr.
Is the future of states such as Mississippi — which offers startlingly low life expectancy, sky high rates of poverty and disease, and minimal government regulation and protection — as laissez faire tax havens for rich expatriates? Via Yahoo! News:
France’s new Socialist leader President Francois Hollande plans to slap a tax of 75 percent on all income in excess of a million euros, and territories with lower rates are hoping for a cash exodus. Now the US state of Mississippi is making a bid to recruit wealthy exiles.
Haley Barbour [is the] former governor of Mississippi, a southern US state that was in part founded by French settlers on territory at one point controlled by the French empire. “I wonder if we Barbour boys ought to set up a business to attract wealthy Frenchmen and successful businesses from France to Mississippi,” he mused, in an article for the website of the US magazine Foreign Policy.
It may not be surprising, but it’s nice to hear stated under oath, particularly with Republicans at the moment attempting to roll out anti-voter legislation all across the country. Via the Tampa Bay Times:
In a wide-ranging deposition that spanned two days in late May, former Florida Republican Party chairman Jim Greer denounced some party officials as liars and “whack-a-do, right-wing crazies” as he described turmoil in the months before his resignation. Greer said some GOP leaders were meeting to discuss ways they could suppress black votes while others were constantly scheming against each other.
On voter suppression, Greer said he had just completed a December 2009 meeting with party general counsel Jason Gonzalez, political consultant Jim Rimes and Eric Eikenberg, Crist’s chief of staff, when questions arose about fundraising. “I was upset because the political consultants and staff were talking about voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting. It had been one of those days,” he said.
Chris Mooney writes at AlterNet:
Let’s face it: We liberals and progressives are absolutely outraged by partisan misinformation. Lies about “death panels.” People seriously thinking that President Obama is a Muslim, not born in the United States. Climate-change denial. Debt ceiling denial. These things drive us crazy, in large part because we can’t comprehend how such intellectual abominations could possibly exist.
And not only are we enraged by lies and misinformation; we want to refute them—to argue, argue, argue about why we’re right and Republicans are wrong. Indeed, we often act as though right-wing misinformation’s defeat is nigh, if we could only make people wiser and more educated (just like us) and get them the medicine that is correct information.
No less than President Obama’s science adviser John Holdren (a man whom I greatly admire, but disagree with in this instance) has stated, when asked how to get Republicans in Congress to accept our mainstream scientific understanding of climate change, that it’s an “education problem.”
But the facts, the scientific data, say otherwise.
So you think Fox News is the pinnacle of propagandic conservative pandering? Then you ain’t seen CainTV.
Michael Musto of the Village Voice is outraged that anyone in the gay community would even consider voting for Mitt Romney:
Ever since the conservative gay group GOProud backed Mitt Romney for President last week–albeit by a very slim margin–the epithets and insults have been hurling at them like taunts at a gay kid.
But this time, the outrage is justified.
I always thought that any gay who backs a candidate that doesn’t support equal rights must have some very scary death wish…
He goes on to say that these Gay Republicans (once profiled in the disinformation documentary of that name) are like Jewish Nazis, Black Klan members, women who campaign for Rush Limbaugh, etc…… Read the rest
Via We Are Change:
Luke Rudkowski from We Are Change and Abby Martin from Media Roots confront Rand Paul on endorsing the Goldman Sachs flip-flopping war-mongering Bilderberg puppet, Mitt Romney
