Huckabee blasts Rove, 'elitist' GOP establishment.

It really does seem as if the Tea Party movement could tear the Republican Party apart.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee today broadened the assault on the Republican Party establishment — and former Bush adviser Karl Rove in particular — levied recently by Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, blasting the "elitism" and "country club attitude exhibited by Rove and others who dismissed Delaware Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell.

"I was very disappointed in some, particularly Karl and others, who were so dismissive of Christine O'Donnell," Huckabee told Aaron Klein on the latter's WABC radio show Sunday. "Unfortunately, there is an elitism within the Republican establishment," Huckabee told Klein. "And it's one of the reasons the Republicans have not been able to solidify not only the tea party movement but solidify conservatives across America."

"It's about, again, to be blunt, the kind of country club attitude that we're not sure there are certain people we really want as members of the club and we're not going to vote them in. And we don't mind showing up to events to put up signs and making phone calls and going door to door making those pesky little trips that we don't like to do, but we really don't want them dining with us in the main dining room," he said.

And there's a delicious irony in seeing the Republican Party being accused of the kind of elitism which they usually love to level at the Democrats.

The Republican Party use the term elitist as a way of avoiding discussion of just how barren their ideas are. It's a curious form of anti-intellectualism which allows George W. Bush to run for the presidency and makes it, somehow, bad form to question his lack of intellectual curiosity.

Some in that party are now turning the charge on each other.

Of course, the Republicans are right to question the suitability of Christine O'Donnell to stand as their party's representative. But - and the irony here is dripping in huge drops - they should have expected that someone like Huckabee might take the lessons learned at their own knee and accuse them of the very crimes which they are so fond of accusing others of when they question whether or not a candidate is suitable for high office.

Those people living in glass houses are now watching their own side throw stones at them. It really couldn't happen to more deserving people.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Huckabee, Christine O'Donnell, Karl Rove

New Rules.

It's always a treat to listen to Bill Maher on a Sunday morning. He's very funny.

Tags: Bill Maher, Tea party protests

Sharron Angle defends her race-baiting ad: 'I'm not sure those were Latinos,' and 'Some of you look a little more Asian to me'.

She's a crazy person, so I make no apology for not understanding what she's going on about most of the time. Here, she addresses the Hispanic Student Union and tells them:

"So that’s what we want is a secure and sovereign nation and, you know, I don’t know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me. I don’t know that. What we know, what we know about ourselves is that we are a melting pot in this country. My grandchildren are evidence of that. I’m evidence of that. I’ve been called the first Asian legislator in our Nevada State Assembly."

Why would anyone call Sharron Angle "the first Asian legislator" in the Nevada State Assembly?

What the Hell is this crazy woman talking about? She is trying to back away from her negative portrayal of Latinos in this ad, and her defence amounts to, (a) "I don't think they were Latinos" and (b) "What's the difference between Latinos and Asians anyway as we are all a huge melting pot?"

Tags: Sharron Angle, Latinos, Asians

Christine O'Donnell flounders and errs in debate.

It really is no wonder that so many of the new breed of Tea Party/Republican candidates avoid being interviewed by anyone other than Fox News. When they are removed from that partisan environment their ignorance becomes almost painful to witness.

Republican candidate Christine O'Donnell's lack of political experience was exposed last night in a nationally-televised debate with her Democratic candidate.

Although she escaped from the 90-minute debate without a major gaffe, she was repeatedly caught floundering and stumbling in her answers on domestic, foreign and economic policy.

In one of several incidents reminiscent of Sarah Palin's embarrassing television interview with CBS during the 2008 White House race, O'Donnell looked blank when asked to name a recent Supreme Court she disagreed with. "There are lots," she said but admitted she could not recall any of them. She added she would put them up on her website today.

I'm sure she will put them up on her website today, once someone tells her who they are.

I am obviously only reading about this debate - I haven't actually watched it - but what I am reading makes it sound like a car crash.

With such a commanding lead, Coons, a dull candidate, had been expected to play it safe and avoid being overly critical of O'Donnell. But he quickly dispensed with that strategy and accused her as holding "extreme positions" and accused her of lying about him.

She in turn called him a Marxist, in part because of a self-portrait when he was a student and partly because she said he favoured higher taxes.

It was a rare public appearance by her, having largely kept out of the public eye after being mauled by the media in the immediate aftermath of her primary win, in particular her admission that she dabbled in witchcraft as a youth.

When the witchcraft issue came up during the debate, she said that the election "should not be about comments I made on a comedy show a decade and half ago". Asked why she had made a political ad that started with the statement 'I am not a witch', she replied: "To put it to rest, to put it behind me."

On conservative views on sex she advocated in the 1990s, she said: "While I have made statements, my faith has matured."

Pressed on whether she still believed that evolution is a myth, she insisted: "What I believe is not relevant."

So, she thinks that it's unfair to bring up things which she said "a decade and a half ago", whilst calling Coons a Marxist because of a self portrait from his student days. That's hardly consistent.

And it's a bad day when any person running for high office is reduced to stating, "What I believe is not relevant."

Really? Then why should we elect her? I have always thought that we elected people precisely because of what they believed. That they described the kind of society which they wanted to live in - and create - and that we embraced or rejected their world view. She appears to be turning that whole notion on it's head.

We have seen this with several of the Tea Party/Republican candidates. The minute they are put under any kind of scrutiny, they simply fall apart.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Christine O'Donnell, Tea Party protests, Republicans

English Defence League forges links with America's Tea Party.

The Guardian are today writing about links which they have established between The English Defence League, a far-right grouping aimed at combating the "Islamification" of British cities, and the Tea Party movement in the United States.

An Observer investigation has established that the EDL has made contact with anti-jihad groups within the Tea Party organisation and has invited a senior US rabbi and Tea Party activist to London this month. Rabbi Nachum Shifren, a regular speaker at Tea Party conventions, will speak about Sharia law and also discuss funding issues.

The league has also developed links with Pamela Geller, who was influential in the protests against plans to build an Islamic cultural centre near Ground Zero. Geller, darling of the Tea Party's growing anti-Islamic wing, is advocating an alliance with the EDL. The executive director of the Stop Islamisation of America organisation, she recently met EDL leaders in New York and has defended the group's actions, despite a recent violent march in Bradford.

Geller, who denies being anti-Muslim, said in one of her blogs: "I share the EDL's goals… We need to encourage rational, reasonable groups that oppose the Islamisation of the west."

Jon Cruddas on The English Defence League:

They bring together a dangerous cocktail of football hooligans, far-right activists and pub racists.

And yet these are the very people who some in the Tea party movement are seeking to align themselves with. These people are far right thugs, more dangerous than the BNP, united in their hatred of all things Muslim.

And yet Pamela Geller is seeking a coalition with these people.

Devin Burghart, vice-president of the Kansas-based Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, said: "Geller is acting as the bridge between the EDL and the Tea Party. She plays an important role in bringing Islamophobia into the Tea Party. Her stature has increased substantially inside the Tea Party ranks after the Ground Zero mosque controversy. She has gained a lot of credibility with that stuff."

If you can judge people by the company they keep, then Geller is giving an awful lot away by seeking an alliance with the English Defence League. The EDL have been described by David Cameron as "dreadful people".

Journalist Matthew Taylor, who followed activists earlier this year for an exposé in the Guardian, said the group acts as a "lightning rod for people with a range of grievances who appear to be coalescing around a rampant Islamophobia."

"At each demonstration I attended, I was confronted by casual – often brutal – racism, a widespread hatred of Muslims and often the threat of violence," he wrote.

Obviously, the entire Tea Party movement can't be defined by who Geller seeks to align them with, but those people who are with the Tea Party movement for reasons other than Islamophobic ones, should fear the path Geller is taking them on.

She is seeking to align them with England's extreme far right wing nutcases.

Burghart says anti-Islamic tendencies have become far more marked in the grassroots organisation: "As we move farther and farther away from the Tea Party origins, that were ostensibly around debt and bail-outs, social issues like Islamophobia are replacing that anger, that vigour. The idea that there is a war between Islam and the west is becoming commonplace."

Another Tea Party-associated grouping, the International Civil Liberties Alliance, which campaigns against Sharia law, confirmed that EDL leaders have made "contacts with members of important organisations within the American counter-jihad movement". A statement said: "It seems now that America and Europe are acting as one, and united we can never fail."

The movement was never about one thing, which is why it was always so hard to pin down what these people actually wanted. Geller is making it much more specific. It's now about opposing the Islamification of the US and Europe.

Only 2% of America's population are Muslim, which gives one some idea of how ridiculous Geller's fears actually are. She fears that such a minuscule portion of the population might actually impose Sharia law on the whole of the United States. And, in order to prevent this thing - which has no chance of ever happening - she is prepared to get into bed with the English defence League.

That's shocking.

Click here for full article.

Tags: English Defence League, Pamela Geller, Tea Party movement

Christine O'Donnell: Evolution is a myth.

Bill Maher has released another clip revealing the views of Christine O'Donnell.

O’DONNELL: You know what, evolution is a myth. And even Darwin himself –

MAHER: Evolution is a myth?!? Have you ever looked at a monkey!

O’DONNELL: Well then, why they — why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?

How can someone who thinks this way be elected to the US Senate? She thinks the fact that monkeys don't turn into humans in front of her eyes is proof that Darwin's theory is wrong? That's staggering.

Tags: Christine O'Donnell, mid terms 2010, republicans, tea party protesters

'Pledge To America' sees Republicans vow to cut role of government.

Could the Republican Party be any dumber or treat the American public with more disdain than they are currently doing?

The Republican party has launched a mid-term election manifesto designed to play on voter anger at big government and what is seen by many as a Congress corrupted by corporate money and vested interests.

With the Republicans poised to take control of the House of Representatives and to cut the size of the Democrats' majority in the Senate in November, A Pledge To America makes dozens of commitments including slashing taxes, severely cutting government spending and repealing Barack Obama's health reform law.

The Republicans would also scrap the economic stimulus programme that the Democrats say saved the US from a far more severe recession. But at the heart of the document, which is modelled on the party's "Contract with America", which helped it to win control of the House in 1994, is an attempt to portray the Republicans as being radically against big government.

Leaving aside the fact that this is simply a clumsy rehashing of Gingrich's Contract with America, what they are essentially offering is more of the same. They are offering the exact same policies which led to this mess in the first place.

If it proves nothing else, this "Pledge" proves that the Republicans have learnt nothing from the financial collapse or from their own defeat in 2008.

They are bringing the same cards to the table and asking that we should all expect a different result when they play them.

"In a self-governing society the only bulwark against the power of the state is the consent of the governed, and regarding the policies of the current government, the governed do not consent," the pledge says.

"An arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites makes decisions, issues mandates and enacts laws without accepting or requesting the input of the many."

It's simply bunkum. Since when do the people who lost the election get to speak out for "the governed"? And when did this bunch of millionaire, corporate lobby representatives, imagine that they, themselves, are not actually "elites"?

Just how naive do they imagine that people are?

The saddest thing is that I know that some Americans will swallow this junk.

"The American people are speaking out, demanding that we realign our country's compass with its founding principles and apply those principles to solve our common problems for the common good."

Yeah, serious problems like making sure that America's richest citizens don't see their taxes raised. These are the problems which actually concern these people. Even as they imagine that they are speaking on behalf of "the governed".

Even as they have the balls to refer to others as "elites".

Why do so many working class Americans fall for this bullshit? Surely the fact that they are standing in hardware store doesn't fool anyone into believing that this group of rich right wingers represent working class Americans?

Click here for full article.

Tags: "Pledge to America", Republicans, mid terms 2010

CNN's Cooper: O'Donnell "appears to be closely following the tweeted advice of Sarah Palin" by avoiding media questions.

I said yesterday:

And you can bet, if she re-enters the Fox fold, that her financial misdeeds will be deemed too petty to discuss.

And, of course, Hannity didn't ask the question everyone wanted asked.

So now O'Donnell will join Sharon Angle, Rand Paul and Sarah Palin in seeking elected office whilst refusing to allow their views to come under any meaningful form of scrutiny.

It's shameful.

Tags: Christine O'Donnell, Republicans, Fox News

Watchdog: Christine O'Donnell "Clearly a Criminal".

Christine O'Donnell used thousands of dollars of her campaign money to pay her own personal expenses in a way which a watchdog group has stated was clearly criminal.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, today filed a pair of complaints concerning Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell's use of more than $20,000 in campaign funds for personal expenses.

"Christine O'Donnell is clearly a criminal, and like any crook she should be prosecuted," CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan said in a release. "Ms. O'Donnell has spent years embezzling money from her campaign to cover her personal expenses. Republicans and Democrats don't agree on much these days, but both sides should agree on one point: thieves belong in jail not the United States Senate."

I honestly expect that this will make her even more popular amongst the Tea Party protesters, despite their supposed love of fiscal responsibility, as this will play right into their sense of victim-hood.

They will claim that O'Donnell is being picked on by a Liberal "elite" terrified of her message.

The Washington Post published an interview she gave in 2006 in which she is quoted as saying homosexuals suffer from an "identity disorder".

But many Tea Party activists and conservative Republicans appear unconcerned, either because they back her views or because they see her as a victim of an onslaught by the liberal US media.

Leaving aside her appalling views, which are common enough amongst some Christian groups, the fact that her own campaign finance adviser resigned because she was taking money for mileage expenses at a time when she did not even own a car should be enough to ring the alarm bells of even the most committed Tea Party supporter.

But it won't. Their support for her will now become tribal, and they will find a way to defend her no matter how much proof of financial misdeeds are unearthed. That is simply what they do.

They have an uncanny ability to filter information which is unpleasant to them to the point where, as far as they are concerned, it simply doesn't exist. It's all part of "a liberal plot" as far as they are concerned, and Fox News will usually be quick to reaffirm those prejudices. However, the fact that she now finds herself running away from Fox News interviews is presenting them with a problem.

And even O'Reilly is issuing not so subtle threats to her to get on-board.



He is letting it be known that he has clips of "crazy stuff that she has said on my show. But I'm not going to play it yet."

In other words, he will if she doesn't play ball. It will be interesting to see what the Tea Party loons will do should Fox News turn against their candidate.

But that's a long shot. I expect Fox will be selling her in the future in the same way in which they have sold her in the past. As long as she plays along. And you can bet, if she re-enters the Fox fold, that her financial misdeeds will be deemed too petty to discuss.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Christine O'Donnell, Fox News, campaign finance

Reliable Sources' Tina Brown calls out "demagogue" Beck's "racist" and "extremely inflammatory" rhetoric.

Tina Brown gets Beck in one: "A Tea Party hypocrite."

Tags: Tina Brown, Glenn Beck, Tea Party protesters

Rove: O'Donnell should explain 'dabbling' in witchcraft.

The infighting in the Republican party continues. Watch how some right wingers have now turned on Rove:

The usual DC dirtbags aren't going to direct the path for the GOP in the immediate future, not if there's going to be a future for the party. Now, Rove is nothing more than a DC talking head few people give a damn about.

The base of the party are with the Tea Party nut cases and suddenly they think Rove is "a DC talking head". It's a further example of how these right wingers simply deny all that they previously believed in.

I don't think the bulk of today's Republican base gives a damn what Karl Rove thinks.

The lunatics have taken over the asylum. And the Republicans deserve this. They tried to ride on the back of this Tea Party tiger and it ate them.

Tags: Karl Rove, O'Donnell, mid terms 2010

Obama Aides Weigh Bid to Tie the G.O.P. to the Tea Party.

The Democrats are forming a strategy for the mid terms.

President Obama’s political advisers, looking for ways to help Democrats and alter the course of the midterm elections in the final weeks, are considering a range of ideas, including national advertisements, to cast the Republican Party as all but taken over by Tea Party extremists, people involved in the discussion said.

White House and Congressional Democratic strategists are trying to energize dispirited Democratic voters over the coming six weeks, in hopes of limiting the party’s losses and keeping control of the House and Senate. The strategists see openings to exploit after a string of Tea Party successes split Republicans in a number of states, culminating last week with developments that scrambled Senate races in Delaware and Alaska.

“We need to get out the message that it’s now really dangerous to re-empower the Republican Party,” said one Democratic strategist who has spoken with White House advisers but requested anonymity to discuss private strategy talks.

The biggest problem here is that, bizarrely, the Tea Party protesters are seen as quite popular in the states.

However, with people like O'Donnell and Angle on the Republican ticket, it should be rather easy to paint the Republicans as having been taken over by Palin airheads who know nothing about politics and who are simply religious fanatics.

Democrats are divided. The party’s House and Senate campaign committees are resistant, not wanting to do anything that smacks of nationalizing the midterm elections when high unemployment and the drop in Mr. Obama’s popularity have made the climate so hostile to Democrats. Endangered Congressional candidates want any available money to go to their localized campaigns.

Late Sunday night, White House advisers denied that a national ad campaign was being planned. “There’s been no discussion of such a thing at the White House” or the Democratic National Committee, said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser.

Whether the argument is made locally or nationally, the Tea Party have made it very easy to portray certain Republican candidates as extremist. Their own rhetoric establishes that beyond any doubt.

The Republicans could well have expected great results come November, but the candidates which Palin and her Tea Party cronies have seen elected as contenders are seriously out of the loop. The Democrats need simply, whether nationally or locally, to make people aware of just who these nut cases are and what they believe in.

O’Donnell led a campaign against masturbation, claiming it is a form of adultery. In a 90s era discussion on MTV, O’Donnell said, “The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can’t masturbate without lust.” [Huffington Post, 9/2/10]

O’Donnell doesn’t understand why gays get ‘upset’ when called ‘deviant.’ Asked if she could “understand why gays might be upset?” by someone calling homosexuality a “deviant sexual orientation,” O’Donnell replied, “Absolutely not. I cannot understand.” [Hannity & Colmes, 6/26/00]

O’Donnell believes there is ‘just as much, if not more, evidence’ supporting creationism than evolution. “Now too many people are blindly accepting evolution as fact. But when you get down to the hard evidence, it’s merely a theory. … Well, creationism, in essence, is believing that the world began as the Bible in Genesis says, that God created the Earth in six days, six 24-hour periods. And there is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting that.” [New York Magazine, 9/15/10]

O’Donnell is so fervently pro-truth that she wouldn’t lie to Nazis looking for Jews in her home. Appearing on Political Incorrect with Bill Maher, O’Donnell explained the importance of truth-telling, refusing to even entertain the notion of lying when a gust asked if she would tell the truth Nazis looking for Jews hiding in her home. “I believe if I were in that situation, God would provide a way to do the right thing righteously. I believe that! … You never have to practice deception” [ThinkProgress, 9/15/10]

As I say, their own words condemn them. The Democrats simply have to get them out there.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Republicans, Democrats, mid terms 2010, Angle, O'Donnell

Christine O'Donnell: 'I Dabbled into Witchcraft' but 'I Never Joined a Coven'.

The insanity of some of the Tea party nominees appears to know no bounds. Here, Christine O'Donnell admits that she has taken part in witchcraft.

O'DONNELL: I dabbled into witchcraft, I never joined a coven. But I did. I did. [...]

I didn't join a coven. I didn't join a coven, let's get this straight. [...]

But that's exactly why...because... because I dabbled in witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I'm not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do. [...]

One of my first dates was with a witch was on a satanic altar and I didn't know it and there was a little blood there and stuff like that. [...]

We went to a movie and then like had a little midnight picnic on a satanic altar.

And Bill Maher says he has even more of this lunacy:

I'm just saying Christine, it's like the hostage crisis. Every week you don't show up, I'm going to throw another body out.

I think it's actually terrifying that people like this are being elected as candidates for high office. But, like Sarah Palin, it will be considered "elitist", or we'll be suffering from Palin/O'Donnell Derangement Syndrome if anyone points out that these are the beliefs of deranged people.

And yet, these are the kinds of candidates seriously being put forward by the Tea Party. They deserve to be laughed off the ticket.



Here's the exchange Maher alludes to between her and Eddie Izzard. The exchange comes at 0.57. She believes that if the Nazis came to her door during WWII, and she was hiding Jews, she wouldn't need to lie as God would come her aid.

My favourite piece of her insanity is towards the end where she tries to make a link between taking the bible out of schools and the fact that there are now shootings in schools. This woman is seriously harebrained.

UPDATE:



There's even more... She's using campaign money for things she shouldn't. And she's doing this after the campaign is over.

Tags: Palin, O'Donnell, Tea Party protesters, Republicans

The Bush Belly Sneetches.

This is from Driftglass. I'm reprinting it in it's entirety as it's so wonderful. I take no credit for this. I'm just a cut and paster of someone else's brilliance.

Now, the Bush-Belly Sneetches were backers of Bush,

The Plain-Belly Sneetches thought Bush was a Tush.
The Bushs weren’t so big; they were really quite small.
You would think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all.
But because they backed Bush, all the Bush-Bellied Sneetches would brag,
“Plain-Bellies are nothing but Commies in Drag!”


"They hate our Great Nation," The Bush-Bellies said.

They're Marxist white-flaggers who want us all dead!
They hate our Dear Leader! They hate our Great Troops!
They mindlessly hate everything, those Socialist poops!
It's their lack of Bush-Bellies that gives them away
They're America-haters! And probably Gay!"

For years this went on, this faux-patriot shucking
(As they conveniently forgot years of Clinton rat-fucking).
They marched and they cheered and sang lots of brave tunes,
About how great Bush was, and how Lefties were Loons.
There was no need to be careful or watch their own words.
They would now win forever, swore the Blossom of Turds.

But the day finally came when Bush began looking crummy
And that was NOT a good day to have Bush on your tummy.
His policies were failing, his economy crashed;
He had left the Great Nation quite thoroughly trashed.
His lies were all melting like snow in a stove
And no one could stop it, not even his Rove.

This made Bush-Belly Sneetches look like ignorant tools
And their Bush-Belly screeching sound like the ranting of fools.
First the Senate fell down, then the House fell down too
(And if that weren't enough to make Bush-Bellies boo-hoo
In two thousand and eight the very worstest blow came
When they lost to a Negro with a strange Muslim name!)

The Bush-Belly Sneetches became very confused.
How could they fail? Had they merely been used?
Fox had told them for years they were righteous and shrewd;
That the Plain-Belly Sneetches were stupid and crude.
Now their Bush-Belly tats made them look shithouse-rat-nuts
Their own words had damned them, no "ands", "ifs" or "buts".


And then out of the West came their own gin-soaked Moses
Who swore all their shame could be turned into roses.
His name was Sylvester "Dick Armey" McBean

Inventor of the Fabulous, Tea-Baggulous Bush-Off Machine.

For the price of their souls and a couple of bucks

The Bush-Bellies could now buy some nips and some tucks.


From the Bush-Off Machine they tumbled like fresh laundered sheets

Screaming about deficits! Taxes! And those awful elites!
They had never liked Bush, no not even a little...
...they shrieked from mouths flecked with Patriot Spittle.
They'd never voted for him, nor swallowed his dirt.



You don't believe me? Just look at my shirt!


"They hate our Great Nation," The Tea-Bellies said.
"These Marxist death-panelists who want us all dead!

They hate our Great Founders! They hate Sarah Palin!
They hate all good things and they're why we're failin'!
It's their lack of Tea-Bellies that gives them away
They're America-haters! And probably Gay!"

They marched and they cheered and sang lots of brave tunes,
About how great Beck was, and how Lefties were Loons.
For one thing, of course, had remained just the same
The Left and their schemes were always to blame.
Because there is no need to be careful or watch what you say

When your past is as squashy as modelling clay.

It really is the same shit in a different shirt.

Click here for source.

Tags: Republicans, Tea party protesters

O'Reilly says Rove has a duty to be "honest" on Fox; Perino responds by touting $50M Rove raised for Republicans.

Perino avoids saying that she would feel comfortable campaigning for O'Donnell whilst reminding Fox viewers that Karl Rove has raised over $50 million for the Republican cause.

The tensions which the Tea Party movement is causing within Republican ranks is starting to creak it's way into the open.

Tags: O'Donnell, Rove, Perino, Bill O'Reilly

Sarah Palin's Iowa speech backs Tea Party over Republican elites.

I seriously find it painful to watch this woman talking. It's such an explosion of clichés.

Happy Constitution Day. Do you love your freedom? Are you proud to be an American?...

It is just so great to be with patriots here today....

Of course, she had the usual attacks on Liberals and the "lamestream media", but she appeared to hold special contempt for Republicans who were not fully on board with the Tea Party agenda.

She warned the GOP that it was "time for unity now", whilst warning them that they didn't know what they were doing and asking them to unite or get out of her way.

"We can't blow it, GOP, but we won't wait for that political playbook to be handed to us from on high from the political elites. We won't do that... It may take some renegades to get us there. It may take folks shaping things up to get us there."

As the Guardian put it, it was "a typically spirited speech that didn't so much torture the English language as waterboard it beyond the point of submission".

Palin called for Republican party unity but – perhaps buoyed by recent successes for the Tea Party in Delaware and Alaska – she also took a few swipes at her own party. In one particularly overwrought passage, Palin said:

"It's been made absolutely clear that those who hold these, I think, common-sense and pretty mainstream positions, who are attacked, unfortunately, some destructive false shots don't just come from the far left, and that's what I'll admit to learning in these last couple of years.

"But those in the liberal media: you're worse for using, in that lamestream media, those unsubstantiated untrue hits, it's not fair to our country, it's not fair to the electorate, it's not fair to our democracy, and it is not fair to our troops willing to sacrifice all for our freedoms, journalists, ok?"

She imagines that she holds "common-sense and mainstream positions", whilst asking "Karl" to "come here to Iowa", an acknowledgement that some Tea Party candidates are too extreme even for Rove to celebrate their candidacy.

She then slipped into hyperbole by insisting that, come January, America is going to see the largest tax rise in it's history. But she didn't stop there.

These moms and pops will have to lay off workers. We are warned it means families will lose health insurance, losing homes; more and more families having to go on welfare. They are having to rely on government then, being more beholden to the federal government. And this is a vicious cycle and it makes you wonder. Ask yourself, do you think these failed policies are purposeful?

You see, in Palin's world, the Democrats want the electorate to be dependent on hand outs.

She then repeated Reagan's cliché that "government is not the solution, government is the problem." and depicted Obama's search for peace in the Middle East as picking a fight with Israel "over housing policy", reducing settlement building on the West Bank to the level of a zoning dispute.

She then had the gall to state, "That's not foreign policy, that's just foolish". She's calling others "foolish" whilst repeating her recent cry for "a little refudiation now and then".

This woman thinks her stupidity can be celebrated the less she is ashamed of it. Why else would she be reminding us of times when she has mangled the English language? Tortured it into submission.

It was a painfully clichéd speech, yet one which warned people like Karl Rove to get out of the way of her and the Tea Party movement.

She clearly thinks that now is the time for the Tea Party movement to make huge political gains, although some of the people they have elected as candidates make many of us think that they have blown it before the election has even begun in earnest.

So there she stands, the bland leading the bland. Enjoying her moment in the sun. Although, come November, like Icarus, I think the Tea Party will discover that they have flown far too close to it.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Palin, Tea party protesters

Hold The Front Page: Fox Lies.

It's a joke. Mike Castle is shocked that Fox News told lies about him in order to ensure the election of Christine O'Donnell. Now, what he says is perfectly true, but that's what these people have been doing for years.

Has he only just realised that Fox lies?

Tags: Republicans, Tea Party protesters, Mike Castle, Christine O'Donnell

Right-wing media turn on Rove for "trashing" O'Donnell.

I said yesterday that I was struck by the fact that Rove and Hannity were on opposite sides of the fence when it came to O'Donnell's victory. Now, the right wing have turned on Rove - never thought I'd live to see the day that this happened - and are dubbing him "an effete sore loser".

Malkin: "Rove came across as an effete sore loser." In a September 14 post, Malkin wrote that Rove "trash[ed]" O'Donnell during the Hannity segment and he "[m]ight as well have been [Keith] Olbermann on MSNBC." Malkin later wrote that "Rove came across as an effete sore loser instead of the supposedly brilliant and grounded GOP strategist that he's supposed to be." Malkin, citing The Freedomist blog, also wrote that "Rove had met with Delaware 9/12-ers and Tea Party folks to try and convince them to back the 'more electable' candidate."

Warner Todd Huston: "The Veracity of Karl Rove's Political Analysis is Suddenly Suspect." In a September 14 Gateway Pundit post titled, "The Veracity of Karl Rove's Political Analysis is Suddenly Suspect," Huston cited the Freedomist post and wrote: "Rove is certainly entitled to his opinion and if he truly believes that O'Donnell cannot win in the general, then he should feel free to say so and we should accept it as such. But in this case we have a problem believing that Rove's analysis is simply his honest opinion when we find out from The Freedomist that Rove was trying to cut a pre-primary deal to help Mike Castle to win the primary." Huston further wrote that "Fox News should require Rove to answer to this charge":

Fox News should require Rove to answer to this charge. If he really did act as a helpmate for Rep. Mike Castle this damages Rove's veracity as an analyst. He has just made himself suspect. You can't be both a political player and an autonomous, disinterested analyst. Will Fox suspend Rove over this? They certainly should if he really did work to help Castle, in any case.

Dan Riehl: "Fox Should Suspend Rove And Investigate." In a September 14 post on his blog, Dan Riehl called Rove's comments "disgraceful" and also cited the Freedomist post to claim that "Fox should suspend him and investigate" and that "it seems impossible to trust Rove as an objective analyst." From Riehl's post:

Michelle Malkin has a very solid reaction to Karl Rove's disgraceful behavior on Fox News tonight. That is not why Fox should suspend him and investigate. According to this report, Rove was working behind the scenes on behalf of the Castle campaign to negotiate a deal that would have led to some Delaware Tea Party groups not supporting Christine O'Donnell, while giving Mike Castle a pass.

Especially given his comments on Fox News tonight, until this is resolved, it seems impossible to trust Rove as an objective analyst. In terms of the conservative movement, we should not simply ignore him, but proactively work to undermine Rove in whatever ways we can, given his obvious willingness to undermine us.

And I really love the notion that Rove's impartiality is "suddenly suspect". On what planet was he ever suspected of impartiality in the first place?

Tags: Karl Rove, Sean Hannity, Fox News, Tea party

All In "Good Fun".

Tea Party candidate Carl Paladino has been sending these images out via email.

“To me it’s just humor,” Paladino said. “I’m not racist and have never related Obama’s color to my political taste for him.”

“I’m not ethnic sensitive to ethnic humor,” he continued. “dago, spic, polack whatever we hear the humor every day.”

To portray the President of the United States as a pimp, rather than as the Harvard educated lawyer that he is, is racist. Whether Paladino thinks it is or not. There is nothing I can think of in Obama's policies which one could fairly say reminded one of a pimp. One is, therefore, left with his skin colour.

Why else would anyone make that comparison?

Tags: Carl Paladino, Tea party candidate, Republicans

The Right and "name calling".

Why is it that right wingers, rather than engage in arguments, always accuse their opponents of name calling?

Krauthammer:

-- Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

-- Disgust and alarm with the federal government's unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.

-- Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

-- Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

Perhaps Krauthammer's time would be better spent by telling us why so few black faces appear at these Tea Party rallies? Do black citizens not care about taxation as much as white citizens? Aren't they equally concerned with intrusiveness and debt?

And the charge of Islamophobia is proven by the fact that so many Republicans have decided that they are at war with Islam rather than al Qaeda.

Krauthammer knows that the charges are largely correct, but he - and others at Fox - are deliberately playing on the economic fears people have as a result of the financial meltdown which occurred under the last Republican administration's watch. It's very easy in such a climate to scare people even more and direct their fear and frustrations towards other ethnic groups who are "having it easy".

To see this, one only has to turn on Fox News and listen to the stories they have been concentrating on recently to catch the mood of whites being disenfranchised and too much power slipping towards other communities:

[B]lack people preventing them from voting (New Black Panthers), stealing their elections (ACORN), and treating them unequally (Shirley Sherrod and Eric Holder's Justice Department); Muslims who want to conquer their country and celebrate over their Christian corpses (the Triumphalist Ground Zero Mosque); invading, marauding Latino armies coming to steal their property and rape their women while their Marxist allies in Government (led by a black Muslim President) disarm the white victims.

Virtually every story which gets Fox riled up seems to have race somewhere in it's theme. Every story seems to be about power moving towards blacks and away from whites. And this, we are asked to believe, has nothing to do with the fact that the US has just elected it's first ever black president. Nor is it remotely significant that most of these people who take to the streets in protest at Tea Party events and want "to take back" their country are over 45 and white.

Matt Tiabbi:

What we’re watching is a calculated campaign to demonize blacks, Mexicans, and gays and convince a plurality of economically-depressed white voters that they are under imminent legal and perhaps even physical attack by a conspiracy of leftist nonwhites. They’re telling these people that their government is illegitimate and criminal and unironically urging secession and revolution.

The Fox/Rush/Savage crowd in the last 18 months has taken the anti-Muslim fervor that launched a phony war in Iraq, carried George Bush to re-election, and pushed through the Patriot Act, and re-directed that anger at a domestic nonwhite enemy. In doing so they’ve achieved a perfect storm of political cross-purposes: they’ve almost completely succeeded in distracting the public from the real causes of their economic misfortune (i.e. Wall Street corruption), they’ve re-energized a Republican party that was devastated by eight years of Bush-era corruption and incompetence, and, as usual, they’ve made Rupert Murdoch a shitload of money.

But don't call them out on it. That's name calling.

Tags: Tea Party protests, Glenn Beck, Krauthammer