The Democrat Thread

[Balta1701]

Yep

 

http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2010/07/on...obama_last.html

God I hate prime time press conferences.

[bmags]

i'd take Angle taking questions from nevada democratic congress.

[Balta1701]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

[Quin]

your nevada teapartyin senator candidate

http://www.mynews4.com/story.php?id=23466

 

Ah, gotta love it.

 

"Questions? No, that would involve being upfront and stuff, and you know who was upfront with his political views? HITLER."

 

Lewis Black/Glenn Beck creating the 1 Degree of Hitler is the greatest thing ever.

[HuskyCaucasian]

GOP Rep. And TN-GOV Candidate Wamp: States Might Have To 'Consider Separation From This Government'

 

Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN), who is running in a heated three-way Republican primary for governor of Tennessee, has a dire warning about the new health care reform law: If a new Congress and president aren't elected in order to repeal the bill, states might just have to secede.

 

"I hope that the American people will go to the ballot box in 2010 and 2012 so that states are not forced to consider separation from this government," said Wamp, who has also promised to refuse to implement the law at the state level if he is elected, in an interview with the Hotline.

 

Wamp also praised Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) -- who has also floated the idea of secession -- for leading the fight against the health care bill. "Patriots like Rick Perry have talked about these issues because the federal government is putting us in an untenable position at the state level," said Wamp.

 

The Hotline asked Wamp's GOP primary opponents whether they are opposed to secession. A spokesman for Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam answered, "Yeah," while Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey blasted "Rep. Wamp's trademark over-the-top temperament and overheated, sometimes crazy rhetoric."

 

Gotta love election season over-the-top rhetoric.

[lostfan]

This is hilarious. I'm going to use this next time someone starts trying to paint me into a corner with manufactured stereotypes. The writer left out the part about the baby-killing though.

 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/7/23/88...th-a-Republican

 

Hey, Dick, thanks for sending me the email telling me all about Obama refusing to sign any congratulatory letters for Eagle Scouts and Gold Girl Scouts. I didn’t know about that one. That Snopes guy says it ain’t so, but you know how all the Snopeses lie. Anyway, you asked if I was still a liberal after all the travesties that have happened, so I figured I might as well jump the snark or whatever and tell you the whole plan right up front. You’ve been getting it piece by piece on Fox anyway, so what the hell, here’s the stuff we liberals are up to and I’m going to put it all in one place so it will make sense, you betcha’. Just read below.

 

Flyfish100's diary :: ::

The first thing we’re going to do is take away all your guns. I don’t know what we’re going to do with them, since most of us liberals don’t like guns all that much. I suppose we could melt them down into plowshares, but that sounds like a lot of work and you know how liberals feel about work. Anyway, we’re going to take away all your guns so there won’t be any trouble when our Death Panels come after you when you reach 65. You already know that Social Security is being paid out now by only three workers for one retiree and if we don’t use our Death Panels, everybody would live longer and then the actuarial guys say we’ll run out of money in 2049 instead of 2050 like we planned. Anyway, be nice to the Death Panel guys because they have a hard job, especially when they’re coming for their own grandmothers.

 

The next thing we’re going to do is take away all your birth certificates. Hell, if our president doesn’t have one, then no one else needs one either. That way it will make our immigration policy easier. I know it comes dangerously close to being a Republican ideal and all, but we figure if no one has a birth certificate, then the only ones who will get jobs will be those who want to work, not just those who own stuff. Those guys who own stuff are going to be taxed into oblivion so we can pay for the free healthcare we’re going to give to all the illegal immigrants who don’t have birth certificates. If you want to keep your insurance you’ll get to go to Cook County Hospital or some big place like that where they’re used to dealing with paperwork, but everybody else will have to be satisfied with Johns Hopkins or one of the Mayo places where there won’t be any paperwork, only health care.

 

After we fix the birth and health and death thing, we’re going to go after religion. We’re not going after all religions, just the Christian ones. The way we liberals figure it, the Christian ones have gotten too soft with all the televangels raking in the money and starting up tax-free corporations ands that “C” Street House and all, so we think it would be a good idea to help the Christian religions grow strong by persecuting them a lot the way the Romans got them to grow so fast. It will be a little tricky since so many liberals are secretly Christian, but we think we can pull it off. We’re going to ban Christmas and church basement pot-lucks and we’ll make sure the churches grow real fast by outlawing all women ministers and only allowing signs in secret. If this plan works, we can export it to the Middle East and use it on the Jews. God will thank us later.

 

Next, we’re going to fix education. After all, some of us think that’s where we got the word “liberal.” Others think it came from “library,” but it doesn’t matter. Instead of funding schools and deciding what’s important in education and nurturing natural talent and all, we’re going to start by giving kids lots more tests rather than trying to teach them anything. That way we’ll make them feel really stupid so we can train them to do what we want, mainly just learn how to play nice. Maybe that’s what we should do with all the guns we took away – put them in schools so some kids can learn how to play nice. Anyway, as liberals, we only care about creative stuff like music and dance and art, so the way to turn out great musicians and dancers and artists is to ban them in all schools, kind of like the way rock and roll works. I mean, look at how rock and roll grew when it was banned. The other thing we’re going to do to fix schools is make everybody join a union, including the kids. Liberals like unions, even though they’re the most god-awful things to try to control and bend to our liberal wills, seeing as how everybody gets to vote on stuff, but we think requiring unions is worth a shot (pun intended). The last thing we’re going to do to fix education is declare all schools private and give every kid a voucher for $42.00 he can use any way he wants on his education. This may sound like a Republican idea, but it’s one of our sneaky liberal ones. After we give each kid $42.00, we going to use the rest of our budget changing all the signs on all schools from “Public” to “Private.” We know there will still be good schools and bad schools depending on where a kid lives and nothing else will change including all the stuff that gets in the way of learning, but as liberals, we want their parents to think they’re giving their children a good, private education, and the $42.00 will make the kids happy because that’s all that matters to liberals.

 

As liberals, we’re still upset that you guys killed ACORN, which was part of our perfect plan to get everybody registered to vote, so we’re going to do a new plan. We’re calling it NUT JOB, and the only way you can register to vote is if you’re an ex-con, an illegal immigrant, or some minority without a birth certificate. How else can we liberals keep control of the country unless all our votes come from felons, illegals, and minorities? Hell, even Fox News knows that. We should thank those nice folks for helping us develop this aspect of our liberal plan.

 

Finally, as liberals, we hate all corporations with the possible exception of Apple. Since the Supreme Court has decided that all corporations are persons, we’re going to require them to do everything a person does. As liberals, we want everyone holding hands, so every corporation is going to be paired up with another corporation. For example, every power company is going to be paired up with a waste management company so they’ll have to learn how to play nice. Every mining company will be paired up with a private hospital or a life insurance company. Every credit card corporation will be paired up with a divorce court. (In ten years, we plan to make every court a nicety-nice family so courts will actually be just like persons as well.) Every car company will be paired up with a modeling agency so they can sell more cars. As liberals, we just want to save time and effort. Then we’re going to put a stranglehold on every business by regulating it to death. We’re going to pass really draconian measures like “You evil businessmen can’t run plants that blow up, especially in the middle of an ocean.” Here’s another one. “You can’t make products that make people sick.” Here’s my favorite anti-corporation rule to choke businesses. “We’re not going to allow you to run a business that steals money from people, gambles it away on bad bets, and then asks the government to fix you back up again.” THAT ought to really strangle business. After 65 years maximum, every corporation will be done in by one of our Death Panels the same as all persons, and its assets will go into our liberal coffers to give each kid a voucher for $42.00 to use on his education. Voila, a balanced budget, and you said it couldn’t be done.

 

Anyway, this is the whole liberal plan. It was pretty much secret until Fox News came along, but now I figured I might as well leak the whole thing at once. Say hello to Molly Ivins when you see her after the Death Panel comes, won’t you? God, I miss that woman. I wish she were here now.

Edited July 23, 2010 by lostfan

[Quin]

GOP Rep. And TN-GOV Candidate Wamp: States Might Have To 'Consider Separation From This Government'

 

 

 

Gotta love election season over-the-top rhetoric.

 

Do it. I want to see them just try it and realize what a cluster**** they'd be in.

 

 

This is hilarious. I'm going to use this next time someone starts trying to paint me into a corner with manufactured stereotypes. The writer left out the part about the baby-killing though.

 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/7/23/88...th-a-Republican

 

[Balta1701]

Do it. I want to see them just try it and realize what a cluster**** they'd be in.

Kap would have his wish. I'd finally be out of his country.

[Balta1701]

Evil things that desecrate the memory of 9/11: Muslims anywhere near the WTC site.

 

Wonderful things near that site that deserve our loyalty: strip clubs

[Quin]

Evil things that desecrate the memory of 9/11: Muslims anywhere near the WTC site.

 

Wonderful things near that site that deserve our loyalty: strip clubs

 

Uhm, what's more patriotic than boobs?

[Balta1701]

RNC to hold California fundraising event with confirmed guests: Michael Steele, Brian Sandoval, Dana Rohrabacher, Abel Maldonado, Steve Forbes, Wally Herger, David Marmer, Damon Dun, Jeff Denham, and Andrew Breitbart.

 

It opens on Thursday August 12th. The welcome reception features Andrew Breitbart and RNC Chairman Michael Steele.

[bmags]

that oughta be pretty rad.

[Balta1701]

that oughta be pretty rad.

I can't wait for the videos.

[Balta1701]

There are 3 candidates for the Republican side running for Governor in TN. In the past week, one has hit the Rick Perry secession note (and then backed off after called on it). Another today called Islam a cult.

[Balta1701]

As I've been noting here, the real takeaway from the Shirley Sherrod mess is this: Not all partisan media are created equal. Right wing media are willing to engage in tactics that simply have no equivalent on the left -- even if mainstream news orgs and commentators keep taking refuge behind the notion that "both sides do it."

 

Now The Times's Brian Stelter has weighed in with a stand-alone piece that raises questions about what the Sherrod tale has done to the credibility of Breitbart and others on the right.

 

Some will think that Stelter's story doesn't go far enough. It asserts, for instance, that it is an "open question" whether conservative media have suffered a hit to their credibility. But I'll take it. It's a stand-alone story in the Paper of Record that's focused squarely on what this tale tells us about right wing media, with no nonsense about how "both sides" do it.

 

What's notable about this story is how few other outlets have done the same. And as a result, one of the most important aspects of the Sherrod mess is going almost entirely ignored: The vast difference it highlighted between media on both sides.

 

To make this point one more time, it's true that "both sides," to one degree or another, let their ideological and political preferences dictate some editorial decisions, such as what stories to pursue, how to approach them, who to interview, etc. But what's underappreciated is the degree to which the Breitbart-Fox axis goes far beyond this, openly employing techniques of political opposition researchers and operatives to drive the media narrative.

 

This simply has no equivalent on the left. The leading lefty media organizations have teams of reporters who -- even if they are to some degree ideologically motivated -- work to determine whether their material is accurate, fair, and generally based in reality before sharing it with readers and viewers. They just don't push info -- with no regard to whether it's true or not -- for the sole purpose of having maximum political impact. Period.

Link

[Quin]

There are 3 candidates for the Republican side running for Governor in TN. In the past week, one has hit the Rick Perry secession note (and then backed off after called on it). Another today called Islam a cult.

 

 

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Can we start implementing IQ tests in elections?

 

And do these people know that Christianity technically started out as a Jewish cult?

[lostfan]

Link

In the last year or so I've done a lot of reading on this subject and yeah, there just really is no equivalent anywhere of the right-wing press (and there's nothing as effective, either). It's not really just about Fox although that's the most visible thing that everybody knows. Left-wing blogs do have a tendency to be an echo chamber, you might have somebody on Slate linking to Salon or a Huffington Post article linking to a New York Times article, and only occasionally linking to a right-wing blog except to say "lol omg look how wrong these guys are" but otherwise uses mainstream sources. Right-wing blogs and info sources in general are like an entire ecosystem, they have obviously Fox News, radio, a bunch of books, a network of blogs that link to each other, places like Newsmax, an entire factory for talking heads where guys like Hannity, Beck, etc. come from, and so on. All this is just as "mainstream" as any media is today, because the truth is it's fractured and people just self-select where they want their news from anymore so the question of "bias" is really kind of irrelevant. They have as much ability to influence/change the news cycle as any enemy-of-Richard-Nixon media cartel in the 70s ever did. And on the left? There's what, MSNBC which really only has Fox-style liberal commentary in its prime time lineup with Olbermann and Maddow, but is maybe half as successful, and that's about it? Someone name me an openly liberal commentator and I can probably name 3 conservative media figures, that are more successful to boot.

 

So, yeah, anyone who writes it off as a "both sides" thing doesn't really know what they're talking about and can be dismissed out of hand.

Edited July 26, 2010 by lostfan

[kapkomet]

That's just it, commentary and news are supposed to be two different things. But whatever, this will get nauseating in a hurry if we go down that route for the seventyeith bizzillionth time.

[lostfan]

*removes gun from kap's head*

[southsider2k5]

In the last year or so I've done a lot of reading on this subject and yeah, there just really is no equivalent anywhere of the right-wing press (and there's nothing as effective, either). It's not really just about Fox although that's the most visible thing that everybody knows. Left-wing blogs do have a tendency to be an echo chamber, you might have somebody on Slate linking to Salon or a Huffington Post article linking to a New York Times article, and only occasionally linking to a right-wing blog except to say "lol omg look how wrong these guys are" but otherwise uses mainstream sources. Right-wing blogs and info sources in general are like an entire ecosystem, they have obviously Fox News, radio, a bunch of books, a network of blogs that link to each other, places like Newsmax, an entire factory for talking heads where guys like Hannity, Beck, etc. come from, and so on. All this is just as "mainstream" as any media is today, because the truth is it's fractured and people just self-select where they want their news from anymore so the question of "bias" is really kind of irrelevant. They have as much ability to influence/change the news cycle as any enemy-of-Richard-Nixon media cartel in the 70s ever did. And on the left? There's what, MSNBC which really only has Fox-style liberal commentary in its prime time lineup with Olbermann and Maddow, but is maybe half as successful, and that's about it? Someone name me an openly liberal commentator and I can probably name 3 conservative media figures, that are more successful to boot.

 

So, yeah, anyone who writes it off as a "both sides" thing doesn't really know what they're talking about and can be dismissed out of hand.

 

Right, because its not like Dan Rather and CBS pulled a stunt like this...

[lostfan]

That really doesn't have much to do with the paragraph I wrote (neither does Kap's response, no surprise there though). There is a fundamental difference between how the "regular" media (the "liberal media" if you will, to the extent that such a thing even exists or is relevant) and the conservative media (a HUGELY successful industry that somewhat ironically relies on the people that use it not really acknowledging it exists) work.

[Rex Kickass]

Right, because its not like Dan Rather and CBS pulled a stunt like this...

 

Dan Rather lost his job. Breitbart will probably get a book deal.

[Balta1701]

Right, because its not like Dan Rather and CBS pulled a stunt like this...

That was the one counterexample I thought of...but even though they did a crappy, crappy job of it...they actually did take some steps to try to authenticate the documents they had before running with them. They took their documents to a "handwriting expert" (who turned out not to be one). They took their documents to a staffer who worked with the person that supposedly originally produced them, and that staffer said the guy in question "agreed with the sentiments in those memos" but she couldn't specifically vouch for the authenticity of them.

 

That's a hell of a lot more than Breitbart/Fox did.

[Balta1701]

By the way, I never knew that Brian Urlacher was a neo Nazi.

[bmags]

That was the one counterexample I thought of...but even though they did a crappy, crappy job of it...they actually did take some steps to try to authenticate the documents they had before running with them. They took their documents to a "handwriting expert" (who turned out not to be one). They took their documents to a staffer who worked with the person that supposedly originally produced them, and that staffer said the guy in question "agreed with the sentiments in those memos" but she couldn't specifically vouch for the authenticity of them.

 

That's a hell of a lot more than Breitbart/Fox did.

 

also their entire production dept. got the boot. When Breitbart does that...

 

edit: it should be mentioned that people WERE raising concerns in the CBS editorial dept. and were being ignored. That producer deserved to get the boot.

Edited July 27, 2010 by bmags