Obama Comes Out... For Gay Marriage

The "evolving" is finally over. He tells ABC News "same sex marriage should be legal."

A Tale of Two Republicans

Respected conservative Republican Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) gets defeated in his primary by a tea party/plutocrat candidate, and now comes this scrap of shite from Ponch (!) McPhee, a treasonous dirtbag in Virginia:

"[W]e shall not have any coarse [sic] but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November," McPhee writes. "This Republic cannot survive for 4 more years underneath this political socialist ideologue."

What makes this more than the usual inbred right-wing Cooter tippy-tapping in his underwear is the fact that said McPhee is editor of the Greene County Republican Committee newsletter, in which this appeared. (Would that be the Secret Service knocking on your door, "Ponch?") Really, though, considering the hateful, insane bile that has been pumped out of hundreds of radio stations and Fox "News" every day for decades, it's no wonder that the McPhees of the world prosper, while the Dick Lugars get unceremoniously canned.

(Image: Ponch ("Paunch?") McPhee, Greene County, VA, Rethuglican shiteletter editor - Hackwhackers' approximation)

Willard Saves The Auto Industry, Part Deux

The Obama campaign has the goods on Mendacious Mitt:

Mid-Week Musical Interlude

Jonathan Plowright plays Debussy (h/t P.E.C.) and Ella sings/scats Irving Berlin. Can't get much better than that!

Santorum "Endorses" Willard -- By E-Mail

Failed wingnut presidential candidate Rick "Frothy Mix" Santorum (go ahead and Google Santorum one last time just for the heck of it!) has finally "endorsed" inevitable Rethug nominee and pathological liar Willard "Etch-A-Sketch" Romney... by email...at 11:00 p.m. Way to stand up, Frothy! Couldn't get the paper boy to toss it on one of Willard's driveways at 5 a.m.?

Although, to be fair, it must have taken all he had for Frothy Mix to keep the gag reflex in check while pretending to embrace the loathsome creature we all know as Willard. So, in not-so-fond retrospect, we offer this video tribute (via badlipreading.com) with some of the more cogent things Frothy Mix had to say during his campaign:

Thank You For Saving The Auto Industry, Willard!

Shake that Etch-A-Sketch! Shake it, Willard! In an interview with Cleveland TV station WEWS, pathological liar and presumptive Rethuglican nominee Willard "Etch-A-Sketch" Romney again claimed he helped save the auto industry. "I'll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry has come back," Romney asserted. Here's a brief summary to remind anyone suffering from memory loss where Etch-A-Sketch really stood on the auto industry recovery:

"Since penning a 2008 op-ed calling for letting Detroit go bankrupt, Romney has desperately tried to spin the eventual auto rescue as his idea, ignoring that he doubled down on his original op-ed by writing in February, 'The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.'

"Romney’s plan for a bankruptcy devoid of government financing has been blasted by auto industry insiders and reporters as 'truly reckless, detached from reality, and dishonest.' 'Romney’s take just doesn’t square with the facts as I lived them,' said Yahoo! Autos reporter Justin Hyde. The Economist wrote that Romney 'conveniently ignores' history with his position on the rescue.

"Even Republicans who have endorsed Romney disagree with his take on the auto rescue. 'There was no one that could have picked up those pieces other than the federal government,' said Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI). But Romney keeps trying to spin the rescue as a success for himself, rather than a case in which he got the policy exactly wrong."

We look forward to Willard rightfully taking credit for other successes, such as D-Day, the moon landing, the polio vaccine and, of course, killing Osama bin Laden (then we won't be able to say "Bin Laden's Dead, and General Motors is Alive -- Obama-Biden 2012!").

Onion Headline of the Week

This is mostly for Washington Redskins fans (we're not really, ever since Li'l Danny Snyder took over), from The Onion about the past and future Redskins quarterbacks:

Rex Grossman Happy To Take An Afternoon To Teach Robert Griffin III Everything He Knows

This headline also has potential application in politics. For example:

Willard Romney Happy To Take A Minute To Teach President Obama Everything He Knows About Job Creation

It's Why We Call Them Rethugs - Crackpots and Cowards Edition

Check out the erudite woman who suggests President Obama has been "operating outside the structure of the Constitution" and should be tried for treason (with the approval of the crowd of half-wits), and Willard "Etch-A-Sketch" Romney's silly non-response (surprisingly, he didn't start quoting "America the Beautiful"). Does he challenge the loon's statement, or will this be another profile in cowardice? Let's see.

Rethugs and Their Media Enablers

There was an interesting Kaplan Daily book review of the Thomas Mann/ Norman Ornstein book, "It's Even Worse Than It Looks", yesterday (no link). Written by Kaplan Daily Associate Editor Robert G. Kaiser, the review mostly concurred in Mann's and Ornstein's accurate contention that the Rethuglican Party has, through its extremism, become "the problem" in modern American politics. (We ran this snippet by Mann and Ornstein from a piece which was published in last Sunday's Kaplan Daily.) Given his role at the Kaplan Daily (o.k., Washington Post), could we view this admission by Kaiser as a hopeful sign that the "mainstream media" is finally noting what has been going on with the right wing in this country for the past 30 years:

"Mann and Ornstein rightly blame the news media for doing a mediocre job covering the most important political story of the last three decades: the transformation of the Republican Party. They are critical of the conventions of mainstream journalism that lead to the evenhandedness they have now abandoned themselves. They see a 'reflexive tendency of many in the mainstream press to use false equivalence to explain outcomes,' when Republican obstructionism and Republican rejection of science and basic facts have no Democratic equivalents. It’s much easier to write stories “that convey an impression that the two sides are equally implicated.”

O.K., Mr. Kaiser. Now that you've agreed that the media, by not doing its job competently, is complicit in the Rethug's ability to get away with promoting the most extremist positions -- and lying 24/7 to the American people -- what are you going to do about it in your capacity at the Post?

Hollande Beats Sarkozy: Vive la France!

Socialist Francois Hollande beat Nicolas "La Petite Merde" Sarkozy to become the new President of France today, signaling that the days of using the failed austerity approach to solving European economic woes are numbered. Formidable! Jubilant crowds in Paris greeted the election results:



Now if the Germans could just boot Frau Merkel...

(Photo: AP/Francois Mori)

Anti-Putin Protests in Russia

In Moscow today, approximately 20,000 Russians protested the return of Vladimir Putin to the Russian Presidency. Here are a few images from the protest:




(Top: REUTERS/Denis Sinyakov; bottom: REUTERS/Yuri Maltsev)

Rethuglican War on Women - Arizona Edition

The spotlight this week on the Rethuglican war on women focuses on Arizona and its questionably sane Governor, Jan "I See Headless Bodies in the Desert!" Brewer. The Romney-endorsing, female Quisling Brewer just signed a Rethuglican bill to cut Planned Parenthood access to taxpayer funding that's funneled through the state. Planned Parenthood, which is contemplating a legal challenge, says this will affect preventive health care and family planning services for as many as 20,000 women in Arizona. It's instructive to note that Rethuglican Governors and Rethuglican-controlled state legislatures have been leading the charge back to the past on issues of women's health (wave your magic wand, Virginia!), which is just one reason why progressives need to do better in state and local elections (or as Charles Pierce puts it, "...electing the unqualified and the half-bright simply because they say the things that you also hear on your radio for 12 hours a day is not a recipe for moving the country forward.")

UPDATE: Which, of course, is not to say the Rethugs aren't trying to push back time on the national level. Misogynist assholes.

Tweet of the Day

Rom says unemp shld be 4%. I was Sec of Lab last time it was 4%. We got there by raising taxes on rich and investing in ed and infrstructre.

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) May 5, 2012

Quote of the Day

As we keep noticing, they're just not that into you, Mittens.

"If Mitt Romney can be pushed around, intimidated, coerced, co-opted by a conservative radio talk show host in Middle America, then how is he going to stand up to the Chinese? How is he going to stand up to Putin? How is he going to stand up to North Korea if he can be pushed around by a yokel like me? I don’t think Romney is realizing the doubts that this begins to raise about his leadership." -- Bryan "Yokel" Fischer, spokesman for the right-wing, homophobic American Family Association, after Willard "Etch-a-Sketch" Romney buckled into Fischer's (and other right-wing homophobes') demand that the campaign fire national security adviser and openly gay Richard Grenell. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, to coin a phrase.

On the Obama Campaign Kickoff

As President Obama kicks off his reelection campaign in Ohio and Virginia, Charles P. Pierce looks at the political landscape that Rethugs and an often too-conciliatory President Obama created:

"There was too much conciliation, too much presumed good faith, a continuation of the haughty disdain for what raw, bloody partisan politics can achieve that we saw in the last campaign. There was too much reaching out, too much pre-emptive compromise, too much thumb-sucking about the 'shellacking' in 2010, and not enough of grasping the American people by the shoulders and shaking them, saying, 'Do you see what you've done? Allen Fking West?' There has been a lot of argument over the past three years about the limitation of the 'bully pulpit' given the nature of the way things work in our government, and most of it is valid. But there is an educational component to the presidency, too, and part of that component is to remind the people that extended tantrums are not self-government, that electing the unqualified and the half-bright simply because they say the things that you also hear on your radio for 12 hours a day is not a recipe for moving the country forward. The partnership in government didn't 'break down.' The Republicans broke it and then walked away from the splinters. Period. There was nowhere near enough of that kind of talk over the past three years."

Pierce goes on to say why he's sanguine about whether President Obama and his team have finally learned a lesson, but too late.