“It’s about time we got a First Lady who looks like a First Lady…”

NPR

VP Biden: “This is not your father’s Republican party. This is a different brand.”

Lawrence Jackson

****

Fight the hate – donate:

a4alice * Alycee * BWD * CollegeKay * Cookemom * DonnaDem4Obama

Hgerhard * HZ * Judith Fardig * Mae Who Love Our CIC

Marlz * Meta * Pamela *prettyfoot58 * proudmemberofglobalzero * Rita * Theo67 * The Obama Diary

‘failed missives to the almighty’

Texas Governor Rick Perry prays during “The Response,” an event billed as a call to prayer for a nation in crisis, at Reliant stadium in Houston August 6

BurntOrangeReport: The biggest gathering in Houston yesterday should tell America all it needs to know about Rick Perry. I’m not talking about the estimated 30,000 individuals who visited Reliant Stadium yesterday for The Response, a event endorsed by religious extremists and known hate-mongers.

I’m talking about the 100,000 Texans who waited in line for free school supplies, immunizations, fresh produce, and school uniforms….

While our three-term governor was busy self-promoting to evangelical Christians in preparation to announce his bid for President, the actual people he governs were attempting to mitigate the damage he’s done to regular working Texas families just trying to get by. While Perry’s faithful lined up to break their fast with hot dogs and nachos, his constituents stood in the 90+ degree heat for bags of fruit and vegetables.

… Where are the gasping media reports of over 100,000 Texans waiting in the hot sun for school supplies and food? Where are the statistics about how Texas has some of the highest rates nationally of poverty and food insecurity in all of the breathless coverage of Rick Perry’s ‘Texas Miracle’? Where was the caravan of reporters from news outlets across America, interviewing the victims, rather than the worshipers, of the Perry administration? I suppose it’s nice that The Response had an almost four-fold increase in turnout for a day of prayer over the expected 8,000, but it’s horrifying that a charitable event for families of Texas schoolchildren should also see such a tremendous increase in turnout.

After all, needy families are about as common in Texas as failed missives to the Almighty are at Reliant Stadium.

Am I crazy and naive to wish that those 30,000 in attendance at Reliant had spent their time yesterday actually clothing the poor, feeding the hungry, or visiting the sick, rather than just praying for the free market to fix it for them?

Because while Rick Perry was ministering to the flock at the football stadium, it sure looks like a whole lot more of the “least of these brothers and sisters” were waiting in line for school supplies yesterday, not waiting in line to sway and pray…..

Full post here

Thank you Kasai

cain & unable

Herman Cain’s Iowa Director, Tina Goff, told TheIowaRepublican.com that she has submitted her resignation and is no longer working for the campaign.

…. Kevin Hall has also left the campaign. Hall served as Cain’s Straw Poll coordinator.

…Goff stated that she resigned because the Cain campaign refused to make a serious effort in Iowa, the home of the First-in-the-Nation caucuses.

With just 43 days to the Iowa Straw Poll, Cain’s campaign here in Iowa and nationally seems to be unraveling. Cain lost his New Hampshire director, Matt Murphy, who was his only staffer in that state, earlier this week.

Jim Zeiler, a Cain regional director who had been to Iowa and was helping with the campaign’s Straw Poll plans, has also left the campaign.

***

Thank you Proud – I’m heartbroken too 😆

meet mr bachmann

Think Progress: When trying to figure out where presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) gets her stringent, anti-gay views, you only have to look as far as her husband. Dr. Marcus Bachmann, who has described himself as his wife’s “strategist,” runs a Christian-based counseling center in Minnesota that has been rumored to offer reparative treatment for those looking to “ungay” themselves….

….After seeing her husband’s virulent remarks, it’s no surprise then that Michele Bachmann has fiercely disparaged the gay community and has announced she’s in favor of an anti-gay marriage amendment on the campaign trail. What’s the most terrifying isn’t what Dr. Bachmann said, but the threat that the United States could elect a president who believes that homosexuality can be disciplined out of someone.

More here and more at Raw Story

Thank you Claire and Loriah

nutroots

I was just reading a report on today’s Netroots gathering and I’m now wiping coffee spray from my monitor. Seriously, it was that funny.

The panel for one of today’s discussions featured – ready for this? – three ‘Nutroots’: Dan Choi, John Aravosis and Jane Hamsher. The ‘Look At Me’ brigade!

So much hate, fakery and narcissism at one table!

Choi, bless him, is still recovering from the crushing disappointment of President Obama fulfilling his promise to end DADT, a development that robbed him of his media star status – no one really wants to hear his rants any more, his 15 minutes of fame are up.

When an Organizing for America volunteer stood up and asked him to support the President in 2012, Choi ripped up an OFA flyer he had been given and threw it in the man’s face.

Classy!

It renewed his hero status with the Nutroots people who pollute Netroots, though, so that was nice.

America Blog’s Aravosis? You know, the guy who’s equally devastated by the President’s record of achievement on gay rights – because his ‘Obama is a Homophobe!’ rants have just become embarrassing.

Firebaggerlake’s Hamsher? What can you say about this creature? It’s five years since she let her mask slip when she posted that photoshopped picture of Joe Lieberman as a ‘black’ man on Huffington Post, in a sneering attempt to describe his efforts to “woo African American voters”. The photo was promptly removed, and she offered a ‘sorry if you were offended’ apology. And still the professional left regard her as a progressive!

Also on the panel was immigration reform supporter Felipe Matos who attacked the President for not passing the DREAM Act. Err? Could someone let this guy know how American democracy works? Hint: the President wants the DREAM Act passed, the Senate rejected it.

“One way to ensure Democrats do not take progressive votes for granted is to stop voting for Democrats,” said Choi.

How about President Bachmann, Dan? (“We need to have profound compassion for people who are dealing with the very real issue of sexual dysfunction in their life and sexual identity disorders.”) Or any of the Republican candidates?

Good luck with that.

Hey, thanks for the laughs, Nutroots!

The headline on Arianna Huffy’s site tonight …. no wonder she admires Dan so much, they’re both self-promoting right-wing fakes, posing as ‘progressives’. See you in 2012 😉

‘an ugly strain of racism’

****

There’s a great post at The Atlantic here about the issue – thank you Hank.

***

The day America took leave of its senses

Rupert Cornwell (UK Independent): Has there ever been a more absurdly surreal moment, even in US politics, that unchallengeable theatre of the absurd and the surreal? One moment, we were watching a property magnate, with one eye on the presidency, the other on his reality TV show ratings, and puffed up like a bullfrog, rejoicing on an airport tarmac in New Hampshire that America’s President of two years had finally made public his birth certificate.

The next, America’s TV networks interrupted their schedules to cut to the White House, where that self-same President appeared to confirm the momentous fact: not that Barack Obama had indeed been born, but that the happy event indeed took place, as no sane person has ever doubted, on the unimpeachably American soil of Hawaii, one August evening in 1961…..

…..Of late, however, America has seemed to be taking leave of its senses … At moments like yesterday, you could believe that everyone’s gone nutty.

Full article here

what can you say?

A comment left on the blog today, in response to that Texas interview with the President, by a Linda Van de Riet from Missouri.

There’s also, coincidentally, a Linda Van de Riet on the Missouri Jefferson County Republican Central Committee. A relation, maybe?

You know, these people will be consumed by their own hate one day. Hopefully.

PS Another coincidence! There’s a Linda Van de Riet from Missouri on Facebook:

I see she’s ‘interested’ in God. But not in His teachings, it seems.

****

Blackman reminded me of this rally in the comments – wow, that day must really have pained Ms Van de Riet:

Sen. Barack Obama waves as he arrives at a rally of 100,000 supporters in St. Louis, Mo., Saturday, Oct. 18, 2008

****

Theo67: I’m grateful to see this nonsense from these types, because it reminds me how desperate this fight is for those who seek goodness and light. There are many who are wallowing in darkness, consumed by hate, and deceiving themselves that they are somehow fighting a “godly” fight – yet, as evidenced by this woman, the hate just spews forth from them – telling us the real story. We can never let these creatures win. This is not just a political fight. It’s much more than that, and I think it’s a battle that’s been raging for a long time.

I’m encouraged when I think of those who had to put their very lives in harm’s way, and those who still do in places far away, simply to gain the rights of being treated like human beings. Watching clips from the Civil Rights struggle, the clips from those fighting for their freedom now in the Middle East… if all we have to do is read nasty words from these lost individuals, then we have it so much easier. It does take a little away from your spirit each time you’re confronted with this stuff, but we can replenish our spirits quite easily because of … the many billions of people around the world who are not consumed by hate.

****

Thank you Theo

a congenitally untrustworthy columnist?

When writers like Steve Benen, Ezra Klein and Steve Kornacki are critical of the President it’s hard not to take notice – they do, after all, have a record of being objective with no suspect agendas.

But then you read someone like The New Republic’s editor-in-chief Martin Peretz and all you can do is laugh. In his latest diatribe, posted today, he describes the President’s approach to the Middle East as “scandalous” and his attitude to Israel as “hostile indifference”.

“What is curious about Obama’s infatuation with Arab societies (and with non-Arab Muslim societies, too) is that he knows just about nothing about them,” Peretz pants.

It’s always interesting to look at the track record of people who spew dishonest hysteria like this. And in Peretz’s case it’s some track record….

Wiki: Over the course of his career, Peretz has drawn criticism from some fellow commentators … for making comments they considered bigoted, particularly towards Arabs and Muslims.

He has written (among other things) that “Arab society is hidebound and backward” and that the Druze are “congenitally untrustworthy”.

The website Peretz Dossier has compiled an encyclopedia of the most ridiculous and inflammatory things Peretz writes about Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis….

On September 4, 2010, Peretz drew media attention and controversy when he posted an editorial which concluded: “But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims…. so, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof denounced Peretz’s comments, asking: “Is it possible to imagine the same kind of casual slur tossed off about blacks or Jews?”

When criticized, Peretz insisted “Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims” was “a statement of fact, not of value”.

Two weeks later Peretz apologized: “…..I allowed emotion to run way ahead of reason, and feelings to trample arguments.”

The Atlantic’s James Fallows: “Peretz … beloved by many students and respected by some magazine colleagues, but broadly considered in his 70s to be a bigot.”

***

So, short of President Obama agreeing to nuke the Palestinians, his approach to the Middle East will, in Peretz’s eyes, always be “scandalous”. How ‘fair and balanced’!