Archive for the ‘Sarah Palin’ tag
Activists arrested for feeding homeless, Facebook for Ayn Rand fans, thank you notes from tiny Rebels
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Food Not Bombs activists arrested in Orlando for feeding the homeless, Facebook for Ayn Rand fans, Sarah Palin’s fans try to edit Wikipedia to match her wrong history lesson, Florida Senator claims politicians shouldn’t go to jail because it might cause overcrowding, thank you notes from new tiny Rebels, and how Goldman Sachs lost Gaddafi’s money.
Jamie will be in Pittsburgh at 222 Ornsby July 1st! Come out and say hello!
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The L.A. Chronicles, Tunisian revolution, blood libel, and the ‘liberal’ blogosphere
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Allison and Jamie are back from L.A., and bear tales of Lewis Black, boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard, and more. Also, Tunisia is on fire, Sarah Palin makes another stupid statement, and an interesting critique of the “liberal” blogosphere. Big thanks to all the Godless Maniacs who came out to see Jamie’s solo show. You guys rock!
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A ‘cautionary tale’
My, my, my. The things Republicans will say off-the-record.
A senior Republican senator, speaking anonymously in order to freely discuss the tragedy, told POLITICO that the Giffords shooting should be taken as a “cautionary tale” by Republicans.
“There is a need for some reflection here – what is too far now?” said the senator. “What was too far when Oklahoma City happened is accepted now. There’s been a desensitizing. These town halls and cable TV and talk radio, everybody’s trying to outdo each other.”
This is cute:
“Speaking anonymously in order to freely discuss the tragedy.”
Uh-huh.
The brave armchair generals calling for Julian Assange’s criminalization
Here is the list of the patriotic warriors who have criminalized Julian Assange
1. Candice Miller, Congresswoman
She wants to shut down the site:
“Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are criminals whose actions support terrorists and criminal regimes around the world. It is now long past time for our government to shut WikiLeaks down”
http://candicemiller.house.g ov/2010/12/it-is- past-time-to-shut- down-wikileaks.shtml
2. Jonah Goldberg Journalist
“Kill Julian Assange” Jonah Goldberg is an editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
http://www.salon.com/ news/politics/ war_room/ 2010/10/29/ jonah_goldberg_kill_j ulian_assange
3. Christian Whiton Journalist
Here are some of the things the U.S. could do: 1. Indict Mr. Assange and his colleagues for espionage, regardless of whether he is presently in a U.S. jurisdiction, and ask our allies to do the same. 2. Explore opportunities for the president to designate WikiLeaks and its officers as enemy combatants, paving the way for non-judicial actions against them.
3. Freeze the assets of the WikiLeaks organization and its supporters, and sanction financial organizations working with this terrorist-enabling organization so they cannot clear transactions denominated in U.S. dollars.
4. Bill O’Reilly FOX NEWS, Journalist
“Whoever leaked all those State Department documents to the WikiLeaks website is a traitor and should be executed or put in prison for life,” Bill O’Reilly said.
http://www.tvsquad.com/ 2010/11/30/bill- oreilly-calls-tor-the- execution-of- wikileakers-video/
5. Sarah Palin Member of the Republican Party, former candidate
“Hunt down the WikiLeaks chief like Taliban” “He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaida and Taliban leaders?”
6. Mike Huckabee Politician
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is the host of the number one rated weekend hit “HUCKABEE” on the Fox News Channel
“Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason, and I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty,” the Republican said in an interview.
He added that the latest batch of Wikileaks put American lives “at risk.”
http://www.thestatecolumn. com/articles/mike- huckabee-calls-for- execution-of-julian- assange/
8. Prof. Tom Flanagan
Thomas Flanagan is a political scientist at the University of Calgary and a conservative political activist. He played an important role in helping Stephen Harper become Prime Minister of Canada. On 30th November 2010 in a comment to a Canadian television news anchor Evan Solomon of the CBC News Network on live TV, Tom Flanagan called for the assassination of Wikileaks director Julian Assange, suggesting that President Obama should put a contract out on Assange’s life or send out a drone to kill him. Although news anchor Solomon afforded Flanagan the opportunity to retract his statement, Flanagan continued to say that he would not be unhappy if Assange “disappeared.”
http://poli.ucalgary.ca/ profiles/thomas- flanagan
Incitement:
9. Rep. Peter King
Congressman, republican, he wants wikileaks listed as a terrorist organization and freeze assets
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45667.html
10. Tony Shaffer
Tony Shaffer of the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer, told Fox News that he would like to see military action against Assange: “I would look at this very much as a military issue. With potentially military action against him and his organization.” (While the Obama administration no longer uses the term “enemy combatant,” it claims (PDF) the authority to “detain” someone who has provided “substantial support” to enemies of the United States.)
11. Rick Santorum
Rick Santorum, former Pennsylvania Senato
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20023941-38.html#ixzz16z2Hq5U2
12. Congressmen Peter King
King Supports Reported U.S. Prosecution Efforts of WikiLeaks Founder, calls to designate WikiLeaks as a Foreign Terrorist Organization
“I am calling on the attorney general and supporting his efforts to fully prosecute WikiLeaks and its founder for violating the Espionage Act,
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45667.html#ixzz174QHMFxM
“WikiLeaks presents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States. I strongly urge you to work within the Administration to use every offensive capability of the U.S. government to prevent further damaging releases by WikiLeaks.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45667.html
13. Congressmen Dan Lugren
“WikiLeaks appears to meet the legal criteria” of a U.S.- designated terrorist organization, King wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reviewed by CNET. He added: “WikiLeaks presents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.”
14. Jeffrey T. Kuhner Journalist The Washington Times
Kuhner: Assasinate Assange
15, Virginia Foxx, Rep. U.S. Senate
“WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s talk about transparency is just so much hot air. It is clear that his agenda is decidedly slanted towards tearing apart U.S. foreign relations and eroding our national security. He is a criminal, nothing more.”
“The federal government must use every means possible to bring Mr. Assange and any other perpetrators of this data breach to justice. Their irresponsible and possibly treasonous behavior has put the lives of our men and women serving abroad in new danger. They must be held accountable for their actions.”
http://foxx.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=55§iontree=54,55&itemid=1570
16. Senator Kit Bond, Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee
“It is critical that the perpetrator who betrayed his country be brought to justice for this deliberate treason that jeopardizes our national security.
17. Sen, Joe Liberman Send Brown and Sen Ensigt
Senator Joe Liberman from Conneticut is even promoting ammendments to the Espionage act to prosecute Wikileaks
“Julian Assange and his cronies, in their effort to hinder our war efforts, are creating a hit list for our enemies by publishing the names of our human intelligence sources,” said Ensign. “Our sources are bravely risking their lives when they stand up against the tyranny of al-Qaeda, the Taliban and murderous regimes, and I simply will not stand idly by as they become death targets because of Julian Assange. Let me be very clear, WikiLeaks is not a whistleblower website and Assange is not a journalist.”
19. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY)
“This man has put his own ego above the safety of millions of innocents,” Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement. “He should be extradited, tried for espionage, and given the most severe penalty possible.”
20. Marc Thiessen
“Wikileaks must be stopped”
Assange is a non-U.S. citizen operating outside the territory of the United States. This means the government has a wide range of options for dealing with him. It can employ not only law enforcement but also intelligence and military assets to bring Assange to justice and put his criminal syndicate out of business. The first step is for the Justice Department to indict Assange. Such an indictment could be sealed to prevent him from knowing that the United States is seeking his arrest. The United States should then work with its international law enforcement partners to apprehend and extradite him.
https://www.washingtonpost. com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/02/AR2010080202627.html
h/t Greg Mitchell
The violence and lies post-reform medley
Image by AFP via Daylife
The most frequent dissent I received in response to my post about Tea Party bigotry is that racist teabaggers are a small part of the Republican Party, and they do not represent the party at large.
But there has been a shocking lack of condemnation on the part of Republican leadership in the wake of these vicious and bigoted attacks on Democratic lawmakers. Not only has there been a lack of castigation, but in some cases, Republican leadership have encouraged this emotive climate.
Color of Change called upon Republican leadership to stop inciting and supporting hate, citing that the RNC endorsed the rallies in which teabaggers carried signs that announced “Obama’s Plan: White Slavery,” “The American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama’s Oven,” and “Guns Tomorrow.”
When reports of the signs surfaced, Michael Steele did nothing to distance his party from the fear-mongering. In fact, he embraced the radicals by saying he’d be “out there with the tea partiers” if — ya’ know — he wasn’t already chairman of the RNC.
Color of Change adds that Republican governors — far from denouncing their radical fringe — wanted to instead plan a “Tea Party 2.0.”
This behavior escalated over the summer.
Tea Party's bigotry is a birthmark, not a tattoo
Image by bsryan via Flickr
The very public implosion of the Republican base into a tribe of frothing-at-the-mouth racist, homophobic militants has been so extensively documented that it has inspired former Conservative bloggers like John Cole and Andrew Sullivan to renounce and/or heavily modify their political ideologies.
Through it all, the claim from party leadership and beltway insiders has been that the Republican Party has newly fractured into two extremist sects: the Neo-Conservatives, hellbent on world domination, and the Tea Party militants, who refuse to recognize a Democratic and/or black president, and who truly believe feminists, blacks, gays, Hispanics, the poor, and the unions (the dangerous — yet strangely amorphous — “Them” Glenn Beck always whips out when a specific enemy isn’t readily available) are encircling the suburbs.
The Tea Party base has been described as a new phenomenon — a surprising turn of events that no one could have ever, ever predicted. Most recently, a spokesman for Astroturf Inc. FreedomWorks, quoted his boss, Dick Armey:
Iowa Tea Party movement less popular than pot, aliens, and Socialism
Image via Wikipedia
Unsurprisingly, the media covered Sarah Palin’s address at the Tea Party convention in Nashville with unprecedented levels of enthusiasm for a fringe political movement. To be sure, if hundreds of radical leftists gathered for a meet n’ greet, CNN would not show up to document the event.
Yet, there were the mainstream media’s cameras to capture every crazy second of Palin sharing the same stage with Joseph Farah, a man who promotes the birth certificate conspiracy theory and hates gay people, except the cameras seemed to miss Farah’s fruitcake moment in the spotlight, and instead focused almost exclusively on Palin’s cheat notes.
Eric Boehlert offers a hypothetical to illustrate the media’s unique relationship with the right:
Kabuki Theater presents: The Great Bipartisan Summit
Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr
Finally. In the words of Modo, our president “came down from the mountaintop,” and has decided to get bipartisan with this whole healthcare dealy.
President Obama said Sunday that he would convene a half-day bipartisan health care session at the White House to be televised live this month, a high-profile gambit that will allow Americans to watch as Democrats and Republicans try to break their political impasse.
If you’re experiencing a strong sense of deja vu, it’s because we’ve been here before.
March, 2009: The president gathered some 120 people representing varying facets of the industry — from doctors to patients to health insurers to the drug industry — along with lawmakers to discuss ways to reform the U.S. health system.
It is true that Republicans are determined to act as obstructionists. They have no plan. Actually, their plan is de-plan. My favorite example of this is the note Sarah Palin wrote on her hand for her big Tea Party speech. Palin originally wrote “budget,” then crossed it out and wrote “cuts.” That pretty much sums up the Republican Party right now. They have no plans for governance, but they do have slogans that are both myopic and superficial like “down with government” and “tax cuts for everybody!” Ask Colorado Springs how that will end.
Does it matter Americans have rejected Sarah Palin?
Image via Wikipedia
A new CBS News poll finds that a large majority of Americans say they do not want former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to run for president.
Specifically, 71 percent say they do not want the former Republican vice presidential nominee to run for president, while 21 percent say they do want her to run.
When the results are split out by party, 56 percent of Republicans say they do not want her to seek the office and 30 percent do. Meanwhile, 88 percent of Democrats do not want her to run. Among independents, 65 percent do not want her to run and 25 percent do.
- via Poll: Most Don’t Want Sarah Palin to Run for President (h/t Atrios)
I wonder if something like this even matters anymore. Sure, a majority of Republicans and Democrats agree (and when was the last time there was bipartisan support like this for anything?) that Sarah Palin should not — for the love of God — run for President.
But do they really mean it? And can the little people be trusted to make these big decisions?
Sarah Palin and the unsavory 'minority type thing'
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
In another recent unsurprising, though glorious, moment of ignorance, former Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin said the speculation regarding President Obama’s birth certificate (the “birther movement”) was a “fair question.”
Speaking of fair questions, someone should ask Palin about this doozy (h/t Digby):
Palin, though notoriously ill-travelled outside the United States, did journey far to the first of the four colleges she attended, in Hawaii. She and a friend who went with her lasted only one semester. “Hawaii was a little too perfect,” Palin writes. “Perpetual sunshine isn’t necessarily conducive to serious academics for eighteen-year-old Alaska girls.” Perhaps not. But Palin’s father, Chuck Heath, gave a different account to Conroy and Walshe. According to him, the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: “They were a minority type thing and it wasn’t glamorous, so she came home.”
Big-ups to Isaac Chotiner at TNR for first snagging this in a New Yorker review of Going Rogue and another book about Sarah Palin called Sarah From Alaska by Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe.
Is it any wonder that a woman, who has a problem with the “minority type thing,” would also view our first black president as a dangerous foreigner?
