Reply With QuoteIt's just mindblowing to me that the GOP can dig this country's grave and we'll still vote for them to dump the dirt on us.Originally Posted by Ray G.
Ah, so that's why she looks like she wants a little red button to annihilate everyone in the room.
My Mind's Eye
It's just mindblowing to me that the GOP can dig this country's grave and we'll still vote for them to dump the dirt on us.
My Mind's Eye
Right-thinking people won't vote Republican.
...Is that supposed to be a pun? Because I'm sure it's Right-thinking people that ONLY vote Republican
My Mind's Eye
Look, I’m not saying either side is in the right, but leave the third reich out of the comparisons
Conservatives Liken Dems’ Bill Banning Citizenship Tax-Dodging To Nazis, Soviets
Yes, Let’s all listen to Donald TrumpNew Democratic-led legislation aimed at penalizing those who would renounce their U.S. citizenship to dodge taxes has provoked fiery criticism from influential conservatives and is putting Republican leaders in a politically precarious situation.
Inspired by the actions of Eduardo Saverin, the Facebook co-founder who renounced his citizenship ahead of a large tax payment associated with the company’s much-ballyhooed initial public offering, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Bob Casey (D-PA) unveiled a bill Thursday to force such tax-dodgers to pay a 30 percent tax rate on all future U.S. investments and ban them from ever setting foot in the country again.
Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist compared it to the actions of Nazi Germany.
“I think Schumer can probably find the legislation to do this. It existed in Germany in the 1930s and Rhodesia in the ’70s and in South Africa as well,” Norquist said, as quoted by The Hill. “He probably just plagiarized it and translated it from the original German.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial board derided the legislation as “Soviet-style exit taxes” that resemble “what oppressive and demagogic regimes do, and it’s humiliating to see U.S. Senators posture in such fashion.”
The Journal argued that the proposed Ex-PATRIOT Act would turn away the best and the brightest, bashing Schumer and Casey as “a pair of envy specialists” who are trying to “score political points by punishing the fleeing rich.”
Rush Limbaugh lamented, “It’s this whole class envy thing rearing its head again.”
“[The] president’s out there demonizing successful people every day, targeting successful people every day, running a presidential campaign based on class warfare, trying to get the 99% of the country who are not in the top 1% to hate the 1%, to literally despise ‘em,” the radio host told his millions of listeners Friday.
The election-year context is important because tax fairness is a central theme for Democrats. They have fueled the issue by criticizing presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, for paying a lower tax rate than most middle-class Americans.
The Schumer-Casey legislation is an easy opportunity for Democrats to return to that broad theme and challenge Republicans to oppose punishing wealthy Americans who renounce their citizenship to duck their legal obligations. The intensity of conservative opposition to the senators’ legislation reflects how deep-rooted this belief is on the right.
“Expatriates like Saverin cannot continue to receive the benefits of doing business in the United States without any tax responsibility,” Schumer said upon unveiling the bill. “Citizenship is not for sale. The despicable trend that Saverin exhibits must be stopped dead in its tracks.”
That message has left the nation’s most powerful Republican singing a different tune than the right-wing base he is typically careful not to cross.
“This is absolutely outrageous … that somebody would renounce their citizenship to avoid paying taxes,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday. The speaker didn’t rule out supporting the Democrats’ bill but pointed out that moves like Saverin’s are “already against the law.”
“I’m not sure it’s necessary,” Boehner said of the so-called Ex-PATRIOT Act. “If it’s necessary, I — sure, I would support it.”
Top Romney Surrogate Trump: Campaign Should ‘Go After Obama’ On Rev. Wright
That makes sense. Wait, no it doesn’tLast week, Mitt Romney distanced his campaign from third-party efforts to use Rev. Jeremiah Wright against President Obama. But this morning his campaign’s top surrogate advised the Massachusetts governor to dredge up the old racially-tained narrative. “[I]f I were Mitt and Mitt is a very honorable guy, he stopped the Reverend Wright ads and he was, you know, sort of opposed to them,” Donald Trump said during an appearance on Fox & Friends. ”I’d let him go at it,” he added, “if it’s going to be game on, let it be game on. Go after Obama”:
The reality star is building his political stature as a top surrogate for Romney and is “gaining juice and respectability in national politics.” Trump has recorded robo-calls ahead of key primary battles, participated in “a ton of talk radio for Romney in Michigan, Arizona and Ohio,” received personal “thank you” shout outs from Ann Romney during campaign victory speeches, and even hosted a birthday fundraiser for the couple.
RNC Chairman Says Republican Proposal For $10 Million Of Race-Baiting Anti-Obama Attack Ads Is Obama’s Fault
Neither side should want thisIn an interview on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley this morning, host Crowley asked RNC Chairman Reince Priebus about a widely-denounced proposal for a pro-Mitt Romney outside group to run millions of dollars in race-baiting attack ads highlighting controversial statement’s by President Obama’s former pastor.
Rather than denounce the proposal or the dangers of having a small group of rich outside donors and corporations free to spend as much as they want to influence elections, Priebus blamed Obama.
After lamenting that Romney and his party had to spend a day and a half dealing with the fallout from the Super PAC proposal, Priebus told Crowley:
I know how it works. It’s the Democrats and Barack Obama that want the story out there. He wants the story to play out in the media, because for every day that [Obama adviser] David Axelrod and this President don’t have to talk about their broken promises when it comes to jobs, the debt, and the deficit — the more time they can talk about hypotheticals that may or may not come true — is a day they want to win on. So, look, this president’s got a bigger problem and his problem is no matter what he puts out there, no matter what distractions he puts out there, he can’t change the truth and escape the reality of where we are in this American economy. And it’s no good.
It was, of course, actually a Republican strategist with a long history of race-baiting ads who proposed these attack ads for a Super PAC led by a billionaire determined to defeat President Obama’s re-election.
And it was Mitt Romney who, back in February, made similar attacks on President Obama saying: “I don’t know what is worse, him listening to Rev. Wright or him saying that we must be a less Christian nation.” When asked this week about the comments, Romney told reporters “I’m not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was.” This, of course, the same Romney who repudiated the Super PAC proposal as “character assassination.”
Congressmen seek to ‘legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences’
I don’t think you understand what values areBuzzFeed reports that Rep. Mark Thornberry (R-TX) and Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) have inserted a provision into the latest defense authorization bill that would “‘strike the current ban on domestic dissemination’ of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the Pentagon.” The proposal would “give sweeping powers to the State Department and Pentagon to push television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the U.S. public.”
Top Right-Wing Group: Minority Births Are ‘Not A Good Thing’ Because They ‘Don’t Share American Values’
Hawaii responds to Arizona InanityYesterday, the New York Times reported on new census data which showed, for the first time, that non-white births made up over 50 percent of all births in the United States last year.
It marked an important milestone, indicative of a changing United States that has long been considered the world’s melting pot. Or, if you’re the conservative, Phyllis Schlafly-backed Eagle Forum, it’s a clarion call that America is in grave danger of being overrun by uneducated, un-American brown people:
It is not a good thing. The immigrants do not share American values, so it is a good bet that they will not be voting Republican when they start voting in large numbers.
[...]
Instead, the USA is being transformed by immigrants who do not share those values, and who have high rates of illiteracy, illegitimacy, and gang crime, and they will vote Democrat when the Democrats promise them more food stamps.
Setting aside for a minute the offensive way in which the Eagle Forum dismisses all of “the immigrants” as thoughtless criminals, it’s telling that The Eagle Forum views this as simply a political problem. The Eagle Forum’s political allies have long insisted on treating immigrants as second-class citizens, and rather than pivot their policy proposals to better accommodate the nation’s shifting demographics, the group seems instead to want to curb minorities’ procreation.
The Eagle Forum doesn’t dwell on the fringes of the conservative movement either. The group still wields considerable influence in conservative circles, and has achieved more than a few legislative victories, like derailing the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and staunchly opposing bills aimed at protecting a women’s right to choose.
The post goes on to accuse immigrants — and, for reasons passing understanding, The New York Times for reporting on this — of seeking to “destroy the American family,” arguing that immigrants do not share American values. Of course, this is hardly the first time The Eagle Foundation has pushed xenophobia.
Ken Bennett, Arizona Secretary Of State, Gets Response From Hawaii On Obama Birth Certificate Request
Yet more anti-abortion RidiculousnessArizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett has reportedly received a response from the state of Hawaii regarding his request for verification that President Obama was born in the United States.
According to KTVK in Phoenix, the Hawaii attorney general's office told Bennett that he must take a number of steps, including proving that the confirmation is necessary to update his office's records, in order to receive the verification.
Bennett, in a radio interview last week, said he had petitioned the Aloha State to verify the existence of the president's long-form birth certificate, which the White House released last spring. According to Bennett, the request was made on behalf of over 1,200 Arizonans who had emailed him with concerns over Obama's eligibility for office.
Bennett further fanned the flames of birther rumors by threatening to keep Obama off his state's ballot if Hawaii failed to comply.
"I'm not a birther. I believe the president was born in Hawaii -- or at least I hope he was," Bennett said. "But my responsibility as secretary of state is to make sure that the ballots in Arizona are correct and that those people whose names are on the ballot have met the qualifications for the office they are seeking."
Although birther conspiracy theories have had something of a resurgence in recent months, the movement peaked prior to the White House's official birth certificate release last year. In 2010, Hawaii received so many requests for copies of the document that the state's governor, Linda Lingle, signed a bill allowing state officials to ignore the constant inquiries.
The state's current governor, Neil Abercrombie, has also expressed exasperation with birthers.
Oklahoma Students Shown A Movie Comparing Abortion To The Holocaust
Franks Equates Abortion With Animal Cruelty At Anti-Abortion Bill HearingStudents at a public Oklahoma high school were given copies of a movie that compares abortion to the Holocaust after a local family asked the principal if they could distribute the DVDs to students, according to a local TV station. The movie begins with images of Hitler and concentration camps before making a comparison between the Holocaust and abortion.
The principal agreed to hand out the anti-abortion film, titled 180, if students obtained parental consent first, but the copies were handed out before parents were notified. One parent told Fox 23 heard about it from her stepdaughter:
“She said that she had seen a DVD in school that basically said that if you have an abortion then you are no better than the Nazis and you will go to hell,” says concerned parent, Marty Angus.
Angus was furious after his stepdaughter came home and told him she had seen it in class.
“She said well, we went to our lockers on break and there was a note that said come pick up your free DVD,” says Angus.
Officials confiscated the movies after realizing how graphic the movie was, but two classrooms saw it first. “I thought it was graphic and a clear violation between church and state and it was just awful to be shown to a high school student,” Marty Angus, whose stepdaughter saw the movie in class, told Fox 23.
The Christian ministry Living Waters produced the movie. When it was released in 2011, the Anti-Defamation League called the fillm “one of the most offensive and outrageous abuses of the memory of the Holocaust we have seen in years.”
Still With the control bullRep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) held a hearing on congressional Republicans’ most recent attempt to limit access to abortion services in the District of Columbia. The bill would prevent doctors from performing abortions after 20 weeks in D.C., based on the contested idea that a fetus can feel pain at that point. Franks, whose district is about 2,300 miles away from D.C., prevented Del. Eleanor Norton (D), D.C.’s only congressional representative, from testifying about the bill that would impact her constituents.
During the subcommittee hearing, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) criticized his GOP colleagues for blocking Norton from testifying alongside the Democrats’ witness, Christy Zink, a D.C. resident who “told of having an abortion at 21 weeks after tests showed the fetus had life-threatening brain anomalies.”
But Franks said late-term abortions were “the greatest human rights atrocity in the United States today,” calling the practice “inhumane.” And when he questioned a doctor who described an abortion procedure after 20 weeks, Franks compared the 20-week ban to animal cruelty statutes:
FRANKS: I find it tremendous — I don’t even want to use the word irony, just a break from human compassion that while we would do the right thing and prevent those things from happening…to animals, but not to human babies.
Women’s access to abortion care in D.C. has been under fire. In December, House Republicans forced a ban on funding for abortion services in D.C. to avoid a government shutdown and even prevented the city from using local taxes to pay for abortion care, reinstating a 13-year ban on abortion funding in D.C. that President Obama overturned in 2009.
But by using a medical procedure as a political football, Franks is necessary health care for women like Zink who want to decide with their doctors what is best for them — without input from Republican politicians.
Last February, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) came under intense criticism when he would not allow Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke to testify in support of an Obama administration rule requiring employers to provide birth control without additional cost sharing.
Missouri Legislature Approves Bill Allowing Employers To Deny Access To Birth Control
Accommodation didn’t workMissouri legislators passed a bill Friday that allows employers or health insurance providers to stop offering coverage for contraception, abortion, or sterilization if doing so violates their religious or moral convictions. The bill now goes to Gov. Jay Nixon (D), who has not said whether he supports the legislation.
The measure mirrors a federal restriction proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) that has not progressed in Congress and is designed to push back against the Obama administration’s rule requiring contraception coverage to be included in insurance plans at no additional cost.
While some Democrats opposed the anti-contraception bill, it passed the Senate 28-6 and the House 105-33:
The bill states that no employer or health plan provider can be compelled to provide coverage _ or be penalized for refusing to cover _ abortion, contraception or sterilization if those items run contrary to their religious or moral convictions. The bill also gives the state attorney general grounds to sue other governmental officials or entities that infringe on the rights granted in the legislation.
“This bill is about religious freedom and moral convictions,” said Rep. Sandy Crawford, R-Buffalo. “This is about sending a message to the federal government that we don’t like things rammed down our throat.”
But state Rep. Stacey Newman (D) said the bill endangering women’s access to health care was more of an attack on “women’s reproductive choices” than a message to the federal government. “This is wrong and I dare you to go home and talk to your daughters … and say, ‘Look, what we’re going to say is that your employers’ religious beliefs matter more than your own,’” Newman told colleagues.
In 2006, 53 percent of pregnancies in Missouri were unintended, 61 percent of which resulted in live births and 25 percent resulted in induced abortions. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 65 percent of births that were unintended were publicly funded, compared to 50 percent of all births and 37 percent of intended pregnancies.
Notre Dame Suing Obama Administration Over Birth Control Mandate
Dozens of Roman Catholic dioceses, schools and other institutions sued the Obama administration Monday over a government mandate requiring most employers to provide birth control coverage as part of their employee health plans.
The lawsuits filed in federal courts around the country represent the largest push against the mandate since President Barack Obama announced the policy in January. Among those suing are the University of Notre Dame, the Archdioceses of Washington, New York and Michigan, and the Catholic University of America.
"We have tried negotiation with the administration and legislation with the Congress, and we'll keep at it, but there's still no fix," said New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "Time is running out, and our valuable ministries and fundamental rights hang in the balance, so we have to resort to the courts now."
The U.S. Health and Human Services Department adopted the rule to improve health care for women. Last year, an advisory panel from the Institute of Medicine, which advises the federal government, recommended including birth control on the list of covered services, partly because it promotes maternal and child health by allowing women to space their pregnancies.
However, faith leaders from across religious traditions protested, saying the mandate violates religious freedom. The original rule includes a religious exemption that allows houses of worship to opt-out of the mandate, but keeps the requirement in place for religiously affiliated charities.
In response to the political furor, Obama offered to soften the rule so that insurers would pay for birth control instead of religious groups. However, the bishops and others have said that the accommodation doesn't go far enough.
Health and Human Services spokeswoman Erin Shields said Monday that the department does not comment on pending litigation.
Notre Dame's president, the Rev. John Jenkins, said in a statement that the school decided to sue "after much deliberation, discussion and efforts to find a solution acceptable to the various parties." The university argued that the mandate violates religious freedom by requiring many religiously affiliated hospitals, schools and charities to comply.
"We do not seek to impose our religious beliefs on others," Jenkins said. "We simply ask that the government not impose its values on the university when those values conflict with our religious teachings."
Other religious colleges and institutions have already filed federal suit over the mandate, but observers had been closely watching for Notre Dame's next step.
The university, among the best-known Catholic schools in the country, has indicated past willingness to work with President Barack Obama, despite their differences with him on abortion and other issues. Notre Dame came under unprecedented criticism from U.S. bishops and others in 2009 for inviting Obama, who supports abortion rights, as commencement speaker and presenting him with an honorary law degree.
People think I have got the power cause I've got the monkeys. Nope. I've got the power because I'll let the monkeys loose...
GIFSoup
They are actually just saying that white Republicans are the only real Americans. Any veneer of civility is gone now.
No matter how many times they say that fetuses can feel pain at 20 weeks, it's never going to be true.
...except for any employee or student who happens not to be a strict Catholic.
I don't like the constant Hitler/Nazi comparisons we hear everywhere these days, but I think I'm safe in saying that this particular piece of shit indeed thinks just like a Nazi.
Assholes like this can't die off quickly enough for me.
Scum of the Earth.
Sites that may or may not interest you..
And it's things like this that scare me off from Christianity (I think Christ has to be ashamed at a large number of people that claim to follow his teachings at this point) and led me to write that "Death Warrant for the GOP" editorial, because crazy shits like this are the ones payrolling the GOP. Them and corporate lobbyists.
My Mind's Eye
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