Complaints About the Republican Party IV

[Winslow]

You mean besides Bill Clinton?

Bill was heavy, but he wasn't obese and ugly.

And Christie chafes with me all the time with the outrageous bull shit he says. I think he is the darling of the party because he is an angry white man.

[7thangel]

You mean besides Bill Clinton?

there's a massive weight difference between the two (no pun intended)

[Nick Soapdish]

You mean besides Bill Clinton?

Yeah, appearance doesn't matter a whole lot. Being a good speaker is a lot more important than looks.

[Winslow]

there's a massive weight difference between the two (no pun intended)

1992 Bill Clinton was relatively fit and handsome as well.

There has been some pundits trying to argue his weight makes him more of an "everyman" type of candidate. Even so, the guy suffers from the same thing as Gingrich, he is a divisive ass hole that has no appeal to the middle.

[7thangel]

N.H. gop show the people that they're compassionate conservatives

New Hampshire Republicans Propose Bills That Prevent Police From Protecting Domestic Abuse Victims

Since the 1970s, New Hampshire police have operated under a progressive policy for handling domestic violence cases that has saved countless lives. Under current law the presumption is that an arrest will be made when police observe evidence of abuse. They have a large degree of discretion and don’t need to witness the assault firsthand or obtain a legal warrant before they can separate the alleged attacker from his victim.

All that will change if Republicans get their way. The state’s GOP legislators are pushing two bills that will reverse a half century of progress, the Concord Monitor reports:

Domestic violence is no longer taken lightly legally or by society. That’s the way it should be, but two bills under consideration by this most unusual of legislatures, would undo that progress and put lives in danger. Both deserve a speedy defeat.

House Bill 1581 would turn the clock back 40 years to an age when a police officer could not make an arrest in a domestic violence case without first getting a warrant unless he or she actually witnessed the crime. That’s an exceedingly dangerous change. Consider the following scenario, one outlined for lawmakers by retired Henniker police chief Tim Russell:

An officer is called to a home where she sees clear evidence that an assault has occurred. The furniture is overturned, the children are sobbing, and the face of the woman of the house is bruised and bleeding. It’s obvious who the assailant was, but the officer arrived after the assault occurred. It’s a small department, and no one else on the force is available to keep the peace until the officer finds a judge or justice of the peace to issue a warrant. The officer leaves, and the abuser renews his attack with even more ferocity, punishing his victim for having called for help. [...]

It’s impossible to say how many lives the policy, in place since the 1970s, has saved or how many injuries it’s prevented. If they adopt House Bill 1581, lawmakers might find out, but the price paid could be extraordinarily high.

The other bill Republicans have proposed, HB 1608, limits judges’ ability to order the arrest of someone who has violated a domestic violence restraining order by contacting or abusing the person named in the order. It would also prevent judges from ordering defendants to surrender their weapons or block them from buying guns.

Police say the bill stops them from intervening to protect victims. For instance, they would be stripped of their power to arrest someone who is threatening to use violence against a victim or child. It’s unclear why New Hampshire Republicans have set their sights on repealing protections for abuse victims when promised to focus on economic priorities.

[worstblogever]

He didn't have much of a chance to begin with. The American public is not going to elect a dumpy, fat guy president in the age of television.

It would be worth seeing him sweat buckets under the lights of a national debate. Compared to Nixon vs. JFK, I think Chris Christie would be making his own gravy.

[Loren]

Jan Brewer, who despite appears is reportedly Governor of Arizona and not a deranged homeless person, is claiming the letter she handed President Obama during their recent confrontation is not a state document subject to dsiclosure laws because she handwrote it.

(I hear she brought her own crayons from home and everything.)

link

One doesn't need much imagination to see how excluding handwritten documents from public disclosure laws would create all manner of ugly incentives for government officials.

[Spike-X]

This latest moment, which amounts to her trying to get the name of the book out there where she claims she had a terse meeting with the president (which she was originally interviewed right after it happened and described it as "cordial). She's trying to get Sarah Palin style book money. And it's both pathetic, and transparent.

It also seems to be working; apparently sales of her book have risen quite a bit since The Incident.

[Spike-X]

N.H. gop show the people that they're compassionate conservatives

New Hampshire Republicans Propose Bills That Prevent Police From Protecting Domestic Abuse Victims

It’s unclear why New Hampshire Republicans have set their sights on repealing protections for abuse victims

I dunno, I think it's pretty clear by now to anyone who's been paying attention that Republicans hate women.

[Monty_Cristo]

I dunno, I think it's pretty clear by now to anyone who's been paying attention that Republicans hate women.

yet they love child birth

[Chris Lang]

I dunno, I think it's pretty clear by now to anyone who's been paying attention that Republicans hate women.

Well, the ones behind that bill, probably. But I wouldn't say misogyny is a requirement for getting into the Republican party. That would be ludicrous.

Anyway, House Bill 1581 is stupid and shouldn't even be seriously considered.

[the4thpip]

A Republican lawmaker from North Carolina is seeking a return to the days of public hanging, according to WRAL-TV.

Rep. Larry Pittman delivered an email this week to every member of the state’s General Assembly, describing that hangings needed to be reinstated as a “deterrent to crime,” including those who provide abortions.

“We need to make the death penalty a real deterrent again by actually carrying it out,” Pittman wrote. “Every appeal that can be made should have to be made at one time, not in a serial manner. If murderers (and I would include abortionists, rapists, and kidnappers, as well) are actually executed, it will at least have the deterrent effect upon them. For my money, we should go back to public hangings, which would be more of a deterrent to others, as well.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/2...ion-providers/

[7thangel]

from alicublog:

CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS. Charles Murray, best known for his book Niggers are Stupid (sorry, The Bell Curve), has a new one out called Kinder, Küche, Kirche 2.0 (sorry, Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010). We saw last week his promotional essay at the Wall Street Journal, which posited an America desperately class-riven but insisted it had nothing to do with money, and prescribed that upper-middle-class people show a good example and a constant wagging finger to their lower-class brethren, who had fallen into the unfortunate habit of making illicit babies and such like.

Well, Murray's been making the rounds, as has a quiz from his book which is supposed to tell you "How Thick Is Your Bubble" -- that is, how isolated you are from the real down-home white America that Murray thinks needs redemption. Among the questions: "Have you ever had a close friend who was an evangelical Christian?" "How many times in the last year have you eaten at one of the following restaurant chains? Applebee’s, Waffle House," etc., and "Have you ever watched an Oprah, Dr. Phil, or Judge Judy show all the way through?"

Nonetheless I scored 63, as many of the questions had to do with low birth, manual labor, cheap beer, and stupid shit on TV and at the multiplexes, notwithstanding that I have become over the years a hoity-toity scribbler. But so what? Murray explains:

To my knowledge, sociologists haven’t gotten around to asking upper-middle-class Americans how much they know about their fellow citizens, so once again I must ask you to serve as a source of evidence by comparing your own experience to my generalizations. This time, I have a twenty-five-question quiz for you to take.

I hope it will serve two purposes: first, to calibrate the extent of your own ignorance (if any); second, to give you a framework for thinking about the ignorance that may be common in your professional or personal circles, even if it doesn’t apply to you.

Even if it doesn't apply to me? This sounds like an invitation to consider myself possessed of special knowledge, and thus prepared for the lower-class reclamation work Murray has in mind. But this wisdom might also prepare me to exploit the shit out of my former class-comrades by appealing to their tastes and prejudices with an ad campaign or a political candidacy or some other such wallet-extracting device. Richard Nixon and Jimmy Swaggart would have scored very high on this test.

[...]

from TBogg

I’m Looking At The Boy In The Bubble

Roy has an interesting post up about how Charles “Coloreds Is Dumb” Murray has moved on from explaining why white people are superior to the dusky races and how now Murray is trying to instigate Whitey class war by pointing out that chain-smokin’ cheap-beer-drinkin’ NASCAR-watchin’ God-botherin’ lunchpail-totin’ gone-fishin’ crap-TV zombies are real Americans and those who don’t do any of those things are effete communist space aliens who have invaded America because Mars Needs Arugula. Or something like that.

Roy, his own badself, took Murray’s How Thick Is Your Bubble pop quiz to gauge whether he is a real ‘Murican or just some snotty East Coast book-larnin’ elitist.

[snip]

Fortunately for Roy, by rolling up that impressive 63 (A first- generation middle-class person with working-class parents and average television and moviegoing habits. Range: 42–100. Typical: 66), he won’t be rounded up by the Tea Party Freedom Troopers of Liberty & Jesus (following a dramatic yet slow speed Rascal chase) and placed in a reeducation camp where he will be whacked unconscious with a SlimJim due to his inability to make the connection between the number 3 and Dale Earnhardt Sr. (may American Jesus bless his terminated Terminator soul).

I, on the other hand, will not be so lucky.

Intrigued to find out how white, salt of the Earth, middle-class American I am perceived to be by Murray (what with his plainspoken flyover country Harvard & MIT ways) I took The Bubble Challenge and, well, …. 21.

It would appear that I am Cornel West.

The saving graces that kept me from getting a zero thereby condemning me to a life of solitary confinement, or worse … sent to Indiana (shudder!), was the fact that I own a pick-up truck, I knew who Jimmie Johnson was (mainly because he owns a Chevy dealership in San Diego), I lettered in two sports in high school, I’ve been to Dennys, I have some dumb friends, and I’ve seen a few dumb movies (probably with my dumb friends). Oh, and I knew what Branson was (White Trash Mecca, y’all).

[...]

You would think that Murray’s book is an attempt to get through to the elitists (particularly the CEO’s and presidential advisers) to maybe possibly spend some time in sober reflection about how to make these basic amenities once again attainable and then make it happen. It certainly sounds that way. Well, no. Not at all. Murray’s prescription, as outlined by upper-class twat Niall Ferguson, is for the high achievers/low scorers to tell everyone to pull up those saggy pants, comb your hair, quit making bastard babies, straighten up and fly right:

[...]

[worstblogever]

It also seems to be working; apparently sales of her book have risen quite a bit since The Incident.

Let it not be said that people who buy books like this are nothing, if not gullible. I cringe every time I see stacks of Glenn Beck's book in my local grocery store.

Anyway, in other GOP d***baggery news:

Haley Barbour, before leaving office, pardoned hundreds of criminals. Four times his predecessors, in spite of his shortened term. Several who were up on murder charges (four of whom worked for him at the governor's mansion), and a few DUI cases, including a guy who just so happens to be Brett Favre's brother. And an attempted sexual predator, who was often a guest of Barbour and his wife, at the governor's mansion.

Shock of shocks, though, there's a pattern of nearly all of the people pardoned of being rich, and white.

Yet in a state with the highest poverty rate in the nation, where nearly 70 percent of convicts are black, official redemption appears to have been attained disproportionately by white people and the well connected.

In some of the appeals for clemency, personal connections to Mr. Barbour were unabashedly made. “Maggi and I wanted to begin by thanking you and Marsha for a lovely and special lunch at the Mansion last Tuesday,” began a letter to the governor by a family friend of Doug Hindman, one pardon applicant. “It was very interesting to see the historical quilt upstairs.”

Mr. Hindman, the son of a cardiologist from Jackson, was arrested in 2006 after exchanging hundreds of sexually explicit messages with an undercover officer posing as an under-age girl.

[LtMarvel]

Let it not be said that people who buy books like this are nothing, if not gullible. I cringe every time I see stacks of Glenn Beck's book in my local grocery store.

You might like this story then: Following a Rams game, my wife and I went to a Border's store on its final days (was to close 2 or 3 days later). One of the cheapest bargains was a Sarah Palin hardcover, reduced to a dollar. There were just over a dozen copies. The manager would announce over the store's intercom the great bargains. One of the suggestions she had was the Palin book. And if you were too embarrassed to be seen carrying that book, you could also buy the store's last poster, on sale for 75 cents to wrap it with.

I told that story on a St. Louis message board, and someone responded that his sister worked at that store and said that the store didn't sell a single copy of Palin's book at that dollar price.