Projection – It’s Not Just For Movies Anymore

The Obama campaign is working aggressively to counteract the blitzkrieg of voter suppression laws enacted by NeoConfederate legislatures across the country; Kay over at Balloon Juice has a great writeup detailing those efforts.  As I noted there, for all the bleating the GOP does about voter fraud, they sure seem to keep getting caught with their own hands in the cookie jar.  Let’s review:

• Paul Schurick – former campaign manager for then-Maryland governor Robert Ehrlich Jr., Schurick was convicted of deliberately trying to suppress the black vote via a robocall.
• Charlie White – won the election for Indiana Secretary of state, only to be removed from office after it was discovered that he wasn’t even eligible to seek the office. Eventually convicted of six felonies including voter fraud, perjury, and theft.
• Ken Blackwell – former Ohio Secretary of State, Blackwell notoriously delayed the counting of provisional ballots during the 2004 presidential race; also used several arcane policies to invalidate otherwise legal registrations.
• Charles Summers Jr. – sent intimidating letters to lawfully registered student voters after state GOP chairman Charlie Webster demanded a “voter fraud” investigation of those same students.

The list goes on, and on, and on.

Next time a GOPper starts ranting about voter fraud, remind him/her where it’s actually coming from.

The Only Sane Response

Sometimes, the best way to deal with the reality-bending, fear-mongering, paranoia-inducing lunacy coming from the NeoConfederates is to openly and aggressively mock it:

I can hear their heads exploding from my house!

Tell It Like It Is

It finally happened.  I didn’t think I’d live long enough to see it, but somebody finally, in a major paper, took a blowtorch to “Both Sides Do It!”:

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

Not only did they lay the bulk of the blame where it belongs, they also called out their own (emphasis mine):

“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization.

…a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.

Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?

Also, stop lending legitimacy to Senate filibusters by treating a 60-vote hurdle as routine. The framers certainly didn’t intend it to be. Report individual senators’ abusive use of holds and identify every time the minority party uses a filibuster to kill a bill or nomination with majority support.

Norman Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann thoroughly expose the myths masquerading as fact that have dominated press coverage of both the GOP and our politics as a whole.  One may wish that they had spoken up sooner, or that others would show the same recognition of reality, but for a start (and let us hope it is indeed a start and not a one-off), this isn’t bad.

They Are Who We Thought They Were, Obstructionist Edition

Author Robert Draper’s new book puts the last nail in the coffin of  the “..but Obama refused to work with the Republicans!” smokescreen laid down by the NeoConfederates and their enablers in the FerengiMedia™.  I ran across this post:

WASHINGTON D.C. — As President Barack Obama was celebrating his inauguration at various balls, top Republican lawmakers and strategists were conjuring up ways to submarine his presidency at a private dinner in Washington, D.C.

The event — which provides a telling revelation for how quickly the post-election climate soured — serves as the prologue of Robert Draper’s much-discussed and heavily-reported new book, “Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives.”

According to Draper, the guest list that night (which was just over 15 people in total) included Republican Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Paul Ryan (Wis.), Pete Sessions (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) and Dan Lungren (Calif.), along with Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Ensign (Nev.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.). The non-lawmakers present included Newt Gingrich, several years removed from his presidential campaign, and Frank Luntz, the long-time Republican wordsmith. Notably absent were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) — who, Draper writes, had an acrimonious relationship with Luntz.

For several hours in the Caucus Room (a high-end D.C. establishment), the book says they plotted out ways to not just win back political power, but to also put the brakes on Obama’s legislative platform.

“If you act like you’re the minority, you’re going to stay in the minority,” Draper quotes McCarthy as saying. “We’ve gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign.”

From this second forward, anyone pimping the compromise line on behalf of these sociopaths should be treated like the co-conspirators they are.

UPDATE: New video from LOD (h/t rikyrah):

Hope the “middle” is paying attention this time…

Hitting All The Right Notes

This is made up of 100% pure awesome:

OOOOOOOHHHH YEAAAAAAAHHHH!