Trouble For The Republican Party On Its Far Right Flank

There's a crackpot version of this video courtesy of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)


This isn't the kind of video meant to give right-wing ideologues a warm, fuzzy feeling. It's scary to think about what does though. Morning Joe may be ground zero in the non-Fox corporate media world's anti-Hillary jihad, but their Mark Halperin pointed out in a Bloomberg column yesterday that there are even more deranged Hillary-phobes than the ones he spends his mornings with. "A virulent strain of Clinton Derangement Syndrome," he wrote, "which scientists and Republicans thought had been wiped out at the end of the last century, is now inflicting millions of conservative Americans. Some Republicans so detest Hillary Clinton they are badly underestimating how likely she is, at this point in the campaign, to be America’s 45th president. Their denial is just as strong now as it was a month ago, before Clinton began a run of political victories that have enhanced her prospects, all while the roller derby/demolition derby that is the Republican nomination contest has continued to harm the GOP’s chances of winning back the White House... Republicans are erroneously convinced they can beat Clinton solely with talk of Benghazi, e-mails, and other controversies that have nothing to do with the economy and the real lives of real people. Nowhere does the Fox News-Rush Limbaugh echo chamber more hurt Republican chances of beating Clinton than in the politics of scandal and controversy. To paraphrase the famous line attributed to Pauline Kael: everyone who conservatives know think the Clintons should be in prison. The problem is that swing voters don’t share that view in sufficient numbers to actually warrant banking a victory on placing those arguments front and center. Kevin McCarthy’s acknowledgement that the Benghazi committee was set up to damage Clinton politically has not just polluted the select committee’s efforts; it also means that one of the most effectively tried-and-true Team Clinton defenses (that any controversy that swirls around her is a ginned up political attack because Republicans don’t want to talk about real issues) has got legs straight through next November."

Yeah... when the GOP is counting on their presumed opponent to spend election day in jail-- or are already bragging about impeaching her on Day-one of her presidency-- the party establishment might as well save themselves the trouble of fighting off Trump or Carson (as of this morning, leading Trump nationally, at least according to the new CBS poll) or Cruz and just let them have the worthless nomination.

Yesterday South Carolina closet case Lindsey Graham was on Morning Joe wondering how he could possibly be losing to the sociopaths running for the Republican nomination. "The number two guy [Carson] tried to kill somebody at 14 and the number one guy [Trump] is high energy and crazy as hell. How am I losing to these guys?"



Of course, Lindsey Graham isn't the only one noticing that the far right fringe has dragged his party off the rails. Yesterday, reporting for the Washington Post, Mike DeBonis was talking about the civil war starting up within the fringe. They're already going after each other, basically because the right-wing sell-outs gave Ryan a pass-- despite his horrible record of establishment corruption. They weren't far right enough for the psychopaths they helped give voice to over the last year or two!

“You should all be replaced,” a critic told Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.). Another called Rep. Raúl R. Labrador (R-Idaho), one of the most persistent thorns in Boehner’s side, “a RINO establishment lap dog” and “another go-along to get along phony who will GLADLY step on the throats of the Conservative electorate.”

...“Look, I imagine that there’s theoretically a chance that [we] all went from being radical extremist crazies to Washington sellouts in 12 hours,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), a Freedom Caucus leader. “But maybe a more likely narrative is that we really think that this is a good step for the conservative movement. And it’s up to us to try to explain that to people, and that’s what we’ve been doing.”

They would seem to have a lot of explaining to do.

The anger over Ryan’s ascent has been fueled by voices across the conservative media landscape. On the Internet, sites such as Breitbart.com and the Drudge Report have pumped out a steady stream of anti-Ryan stories casting doubt on his record, while such prominent commentators as Erick Erickson, Ann Coulter and Mickey Kaus have sharpened their teeth and urged conservatives to contact lawmakers and tell them to spurn Ryan.

Particularly brutal have been the syndicated talk-radio hosts who have helped foment the anti-establishment outrage that has kept Donald Trump atop the GOP presidential race and forced Jeb Bush, a well-financed mainstream conservative, to undertake a campaign shake-up.

Laura Ingraham last week called Ryan “basically John Boehner with better abs” and featured segment after segment attacking Ryan’s positions on trade and immigration. She also mocked his desire to spend his weekends with his family.

Another influential host, Mark Levin, lambasted Ryan as a creature of the establishment elite. “I think it’s time, ladies and gentlemen, to choose a speaker from outside the House of Representatives,” he told his audience Wednesday. “This is the best the Republican establishment can do; it’s just not good enough.”

And the biggest conservative talker of them all, Rush Limbaugh, on Thursday called Ryan a favorite of the Republican “donor class” and “the new Cantor”-- a reference to former House majority leader Eric Cantor, who was ousted last year in a GOP primary.

...[North Carolina extremist Mark] Meadows said Thursday that he and like-minded members were more concerned that Ryan might have made contradictory pledges to different groups while courting support last week. And he suggested that Ryan might be at risk of fraying the House GOP anew if he didn’t make a clearer statement before Thursday’s speaker vote.

“It’s important that a down payment be made in order to keep that supermajority intact,” he said.

A handful of House hard-liners, perhaps 10 to 15, remain proudly outside the pro-Ryan camp; most continue to back Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.), a backbencher who has emphasized procedural reforms.

“I don’t know what they’re thinking, really,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a Webster backer, said of the Freedom Caucus.

“If you’ve got problems with a man today, and the man tells you, ‘Tomorrow, I’ll be a different person’-- it doesn’t happen,” said Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.), who said he has received more than 100 calls over two days from constituents opposing Ryan.

Yes, I'm sure there are plenty of lunatics in the North Carolina suburbs of Wilmington, New Bern, Greenville and Elizabeth City and in Jacksonville and all along the state's coast. But if you really want to know what happens when right-wing ideologues and purists take over, just look to Kansas, where a neo-fascist senator, Sam Brownback, was elected governor and implemented all the policies the far right is always whining about. Kansas is one of the most Republican states in the country. After voting for FDR in 1932 and 1936, they abandoned him and the Democratic Party until Goldwater was nominated in 1964-- and never again since then. Their state Senate has 31 Republicans and 9 Democrats and the state House has 97 Republicans and 28 Democrats. Every state officer from Insurance Commissioner to Governor-- plus ever Member of Congress from Kansas-- is a Republican. Romney beat Obama 678,719 (60%) to 427,918 (38%). Of Kansas' 105 counties, Obama won just 2-- Wyandotte and Douglas. Gove, Sheridan, Scott and Rawlins counties gave him just 13% of their votes-- and Wallace county outdid them all, handing Romney an 90-9% victory over the president! But Kansans aren't happy as the real-life laboratory for far right theories of governance now. A new local poll from the Docking Institute shows that only 18% of the voters are happy with Brownback's performance and 61% of them rate his vaunted tax policies as either a "failure" or a "tremendous failure." The same percentage want him to expand Medicare and 84% oppose his insistence that colleges allow guns on campuses. In fact 82% of the voters now see through the GOP ruse that voters fraud is a significant enough problem to warrant the Secretary of State's war against voting and against democracy.

Like a similar poll conducted this spring, the fall poll portrays a much more moderate adult population than is reflected in the Legislature. That's likely due to the fact that the Fort Hays State poll surveys "adults," as opposed to "registered voters," or even "likely voters."

But the high level of dissatisfaction with Brownback and his policies may be important for Republican candidates running in the 2016 elections. They will likely have to ask themselves how closely they want to be identified with a governor who is personally unpopular, and who cannot run again himself because he is term limited.

Not surprisingly, the poll showed a wide partisan divide on most questions. But when it came to assessing Brownback, even among those who identified themselves as "strong Republicans," 45 percent said they were either somewhat or very dissatisfied with his performance. Only 9 percent said they were very satisfied.

Thirty-eight percent of "strong Republicans" said they believe his tax policies have failed to stimulate economic growth.

As we mentioned the other day, the GOP Establishment has its hands full with full-on crackpot and neo-fascist candidates wanting to run-- across the whole country-- as Republicans. The establishment is worrying that, as Politico put it yesterday, looney candidates like Sharon Angle "could again jeopardize the party's chances," not just for winning a specific seat, but for holding onto the Senate majority. And in Angle's case, "[t]he GOP in Nevada and Washington is trying to chase her out of another campaign."

Angle’s very public flirtation with a primary bid against Rep. Joe Heck, the party favorite to take on Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, is reviving Democratic dreams and Republican nightmares from the 2010 election. Angle — along with lackluster candidates Christine O’Donnell and Ken Buck — blew a winnable race for the GOP, and her name still causes eyerolls among Republicans of all stripes.

And now that Republicans finally control the Senate, they aren’t about to let Angle screw things up.

"[Heck] can win. It is about winning elections after all," said Texas Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, who chaired the National Republican Senatorial Committee during Angle’s run. Angle "had a shot and has been unsuccessful. So my money is with him."

...A divisive GOP food fight in Nevada would unquestioningly aid Democratic efforts to win the four or five Senate seats the party needs (depending on the result of the presidential election) to win back control of the chamber. Republicans already are defending seven seats in states President Barack Obama won in both presidential elections, six of which are very competitive.

Republicans view Nevada as much-needed insurance to preserve their majority. Democrats know that losing Nevada makes the math that much harder for a party that already has little margin for error... Still, some activists remain wary of Heck, who has lower ratings on scorecards from conservative groups-- even if those votes could help Heck in a general election in a blue-leaning state.

There Seems To Be A Trump Wing Of The GOP Starting To Field Its Own Senate Candidates-- Like Sharron Angle

Thank God I didn't throw out the Sharron Angle art

As if the Republicans didn't have enough bad luck countering their advantages over the lame and incompetent Democrats-- between the crackup in Congress and the crackup in the presidential race-- now they're facing the hideous prospect of another Sharron Angle race. Yes, she's back (maybe). This PS on a letter from two psychotic Nevada teabaggers, Republican state Senator Don Gustavson and Assemblyman Brent Jones:

We can do this. I support Don and Brent sending this letter to you asking for your support to run for U.S. Senate. Many of you have asked if I’m going to run in 2016, when in reality, you have the answer to this question. YOU are the one who will decide the future of our country. Your financial support for this effort will make the decision much, much easier. I’m praying for your continued support so we stop the radical transformation that is happening to our country today.

Sharron Angle

Not what the national or the state party want to hear. They have their safe Establishment candidate already, Rep. Joe Heck, who has worked hard to come across as a relatively mainstream conservative. That isn't what Angle's supporters are looking for though and there's every chance in the world she can beat him in the June 14th primary-- and then go on to lose to former Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto in the November general election.

In extolling Angle's virtues Senator Don Gustavson and Assemblyman Brent Jones immediately started talking about Trump and attacking other Republicans ("Republicans for Reid" and "blatant tax raising Republicans"). "The fact is Sharron Angle’s record is now the most conservative in Nevada in actual votes at the Nevada Legislature and as a leader in Nevada on the most important issues of our time," they bragged. "Like us, Sharron Angle is fighting each day to protect and defend the country we love, from being transformed into something we will not even recognize. We need you to join this fight to protect America from a very uncertain future. One important difference between Sharron and all the other candidates in the race for the U.S. Senate is her vocal opposition to the Commerce Tax, Nevada’s new income tax on businesses and the creation of the Nevada IRS in the 2015 Nevada Legislature. We both fought hard to defeat this new tax and Sharron publicly took a stance at the Nevada Legislature to oppose it. If we had more leaders like Sharron as elected officials opposing the Commerce Tax, it would not have passed earlier this year. You will remember, it was Sharron’s and Senator Don Gustavson’s leadership in 2003, along with thirteen other fearless legislators that defeated this type tax that session. We need a clear voice in Washington D.C. to stop government-gone-wild. Everyone agrees, including Sharron, that government does good things that we support. Unfortunately, some politicians use government to do things that hurt all of us and benefit themselves. That has to be stopped before it’s too late! We Need Sharron’s Clear Voice On These Issues!" And then they list the 6 issues that are appealing to the Trumpish base:

• The State of the Economy-- In 2010 Sharron said, “Government is waterboarding the economy.” Nevada is now #1 in home foreclosures, again. Politicians in both parties have been saying how much better things are, raising taxes, and handing out money to their friends (crony capitalism) instead of actually doing something to improve the economy.

• Reversing Government Healthcare-- The Affordable Care Act and the expansion of Medicare into the government run health care system known as Obamacare has been a failure based on the benchmarks of the people who created it. You can’t keep your doctor and it’s more expensive. Once again, Sharron is on the cutting edge helping us repeal the Nevada Obamacare Exchange.

• Common Core-- Sharron is leading on the issue of Student Data Privacy, testifying on the bills we introduced in the Nevada Legislature, and introducing the petition that is currently being circulated to amend the Nevada Constitution. Parents and their children are the owners of the data collected on them, not the government and the corporations they are selling it to.

• Securing the Border-- It’s still not done, and the United States is very vulnerable in many ways. Sharron has a consistent record of demanding border security first. When we in the state of Nevada discuss securing the border, we are concerned about two distinct issues. First the issue of foreign policy and national security. We have good existing laws that because they are not enforced allow a breach in government’s first Constitutional mandate which is to provide for the common defense. Second, border violators from other countries are committing violent crimes against Americans, dealing in drugs and human trafficking as well as undercutting our economy in the workplace. Our “domestic tranquility” is threatened on every side by this nonchalant attitude of elected officials at every level.

• Taxes And The Federal Reserve-- Sadly, over the past six years even with Republicans in the majority, we are no longer hearing about an audit of the Federal Reserve or simplifying our income tax structure to make it fairer and flatter for the middle class. No wonder this Presidential year voters are eager for “real change” candidates. Politicians on both sides of the aisle and at all levels of government, from the state to the federal, have failed to keep the conversation going, let alone deliver any meaningful change on the financial issues that impact us every day. Instead, incumbent politicians have not only maintained the status quo but they are now dealing with scandals, like the IRS targeting conservatives, the NSA collecting data on every American, and the VA neglecting our patriots wait under mountains of paperwork for earned and deserved medical treatment. We should be hearing daily from those in government advocating on these issues, but there is a deafening silence. No wonder the American voter is saying, “You’ve had your turn. It’s time for courageous voices to take over the reins of government.” It’s Sharron’s turn.

• Environmental Protection Agency-- The EPA is doing everything they can to make your electricity bills go up and declare federal ownership of any body of open water. The EPA is one of many unconstitutional out of control, over-reaching and expensive federal agencies. These agencies are like dinosaurs, destined for extinction under the right leadership.

The rest is mostly all the "send money" stuff you'd expect. This isn't going to be the only primary that features a relatively mainstream conservative against a crackpot wing-nut-- and in every single race the crackpot wing-nut is forcing the guy who desperately wanted to run in the general as a mainstream candidate far over to the right. David Jolly, for example, is running against Tea Party lunatic Ron DeSantis, announced, along with nearly a dozen crazed extremists from the so-called Freedom Caucus, that he will be voting for deranged crackpot Daniel Webster.

In Illinois, where Mark Kirk is sometimes the only Republican crossing the aisle to vote with the Democrats he has one Tea Party challenger already, Ron Wallace (not a real threat) and one rumbling about running, Hate Talk Radio host and neo-fascist former congressman, Joe Walsh. Walsh's line is that "Mark Kirk can't win and everyone knows it. He isn't capable of campaigning and he's forever lost grassroots conservatives. Governor Rauner and the Party establishment know he can't win, but have given up on keeping that seat. That's wrong. Having Kirk near the top of the ticket will hurt all Republican candidates on the ballot below him."

And, of course, in Arizona wing-nut circle there is endless rumbling about a challenge to John McCain. An over the top state senator, Kelli Ward, is already in, but not viewed as a real threat. A delusional Tea Party freak, Joanne Lopez-Cervantez, is running as an independent, which could conceivably help right-of-center faux-Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick beat McCain in the general. But the McCain-hating rightists' fondest hopes are to get either of two extremist congressmen, David Schweikert or Matt Salmon (who keeps saying "thanks but no thanks") but both seem too busy making the House ungovernable to stray into a tough election campaign).

In Ohio Melissa Strzala is running a low-key Know Nothing campaign on Facebook against Rob Portman, but isn't expected to get more than a handful of protest votes. Her platform seems to revolve around little more than primitive racism and deporting immigrants. She does have 2 Youtube videos though:

Is The Left Wing Of The Republican Party Trying To Keep Sharron Angle Out Of Congress? The Republican Party Has a Left Wing??

One of the GOP's most deranged high-profile perennial candidates, Nevada sociopath Sharron Angle, is running for office again, this time for the House seat being given up by Dean Heller so he can accept appointment to the Senate seat being given up by disgraced John Ensign. The Nevada Republican Party, would like to keep the second congressional district in their column-- and that shouldn't be a big task. It's basically all of the state except the Las Vegas metropolitan area and it is overwhelmingly red. There is one way the GOP could lose the seat: nominating a whackjob like Angle could give the Democrats a shot.

The way around that was to have Ensign resign, appoint Heller and then avoid a primary and just have the hierarchal Nevada GOP appoint the Republican nominee, namely Anyone-But-Sharron. She's figured that out and is fighting back in true take-no-prisoners form. She seems to be accusing Nevada's Republican Governor Brian Sandoval and the rest of the Republican Party Establishment of being "leftists." Of course, compared to Sharron Angle, even Mussolini and Franco would be leftists.

Over the weekend she sent out a fundraising e-mail warning her demented followers that "the left wing of the Republican Party" is trying to keep her out of Congress.

"Instead of more than a year to prepare, I must now raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in just weeks," Angle wrote Friday. "I must do this so we can set the agenda, not our opponents."

In the case of a special election, the nominees of both major parties either will be selected by the state party committees or there would be an open election. The state's GOP establishment prefers the former, which would likely freeze out Angle.

"Instead of an open process-- already they are behind closed doors, choosing one of their own to be the preferred candidate in the race," Angle said of Nevada's GOP establishment. "This is exactly why I am running and why I need your help-- to put an end to special interest politics!"

Angle also told supporters that she was unprepared to challenge Reid because he had more campaign cash and that that won't happen again. That's just another of her typical lies. Not only did fascist-oriented outside groups flood Nevada with advertising on her behalf, she actually outspent Reid!


Nevada Democrats are hoping that despite her ability to raise money, she manages to get into the race since her candidacy is probably the best chance they have for winning the seat.

Angle seems to be considering an independent run in the special election, potentially splitting the ticket, and giving a Democrat a chance to win the seat for the rural, sprawling district for the first time.

“She might. Angle could certainly do it,” Kirk Lippold, a Republican candidate for Heller’s seat in the upcoming 2012 contest and a former Navy commander, told the Huffington Post.

“Sharron Angle has run and run and run, and lost and lost and lost,” Lippold said, arguing that Angle’s prime motivation is self-promotion. Lippoled said Angle has both the means in her national donor base and the will to buck the state GOP.

That would pit a party-sanctioned candidate and Angle against one Democratic candidate in the special election sometime during the summer.

Insider Republicans do not like that scenario.

“Democrats see this as a potential pick-up opportunity if the Republicans are divided,” said University of Nevada-Las Vegas political scientist David Damore. He explained that while Democrats have never won the district, they have been doing better around Reno in recent years, and in the portion of the district near Las Vegas. “It’s still a tough haul, though,” Damore said.

There’s another scenario Republicans like even less: the Democratic Secretary of State and Attorney General interpret the never-before-used special election law to mean there must be a contest open to all comers-- a free-for-all that could favor Angle.

In addition to Lippold and Angle, other Republicans eyeing the race include Amoedi himself, Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, and Reno state Sen. Gary Brower.

“She’s the worst thing for the Republicans,” said Damore. “She’s got money, she’s got name recognition, she’s got a following."

Damore added that a likely low turnout in the summer election would be another boost for Angle.

“Her people are going to come out,” he said.

UPDATE: Looks Like The Republican Leftists Are Scared Of Ole Sharron

Yesterday, Nevada's Governor Brian Sandoval and Secretary of State, Ross Miller, announced that there won't be any backroom picking of primary candidates and instead there will be a wide-open, single-round, free-for-all special election to choose a replacement for Ensign (September 13). There's a chance, albeit a slim one, enough Republicans (besides Angle, state Sen. Greg Brower, Kirk Lippold, Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, Nevada GOP chair Mark Amodei) will jump in that it will lead to a Democratic win, unless the Dems blow it by running as many candidates. Already state Treasurer Kate Marshall and two former failed Ensign challengers, Jill Derby and Nancy Price, are saying they'll run.

Saying the decision on who to elect should rest with the people and not “politically elite powerbrokers,” Secretary of State Ross Miller announced today that the special election ballot for the 2nd Congressional District will be open to all candidates and not just nominees selected by the state’s political party.

“There’s only one critical question: how are those candidates picked? By the people of the state of Nevada or by a small group of powerful party officials,” Miller said. “We are announcing the ballot will be open to all qualified candidates.”

Why Did Ensign Really Resign?

No doubt you've heard by now that Nevada Republican John Ensign, formerly the 3rd highest ranking Republican in their caucus leadership has decided to stop clinging to his political career. After vowing he would stand for reelection next November, Ensign announced this week that he's not just not running but that he's actually resigning from his seat (effective May 3). The ranking Republican on the Senate Ethics Committee, Johnny Isakson (GA), who has been part of the devastating investigation into Ensign's serial corruption, said Ensign "made the appropriate decision."

It's ironic that earlier this year Ensign introduced a bill that would require all white collar criminals-- so presumably this will cover him-- to work 50 hours a week. Creating a national prison labor force has been a goal since he went to Congress in 1995, but it makes even more sense in this economy, he said. “Think about how much it costs to incarcerate someone,” Mr. Ensign said. “Do we want them just sitting in prison, lifting weights, becoming violent and thinking about the next crime? Or do we want them having a little purpose in life and learning a skill?”

The Nevada Republican Party is certainly trying to use all the skills they've learned to take advantage of this development. Even though it might not be such a smart move in Senate seat retention, Gov. Sandoval is reportedly about to replace Ensign with his protégé, Rep. Dean Heller, who had already announced he would run for the seat.

[S]enators appointed to fill midterm vacancies have fared rather poorly when it came time for the voters to give them a verdict. Over the past 25 Congresses, there have been, by my count, 49 senators who selected by gubernatorial appointment in midterm (this excludes cases where a senator-elect acceded to office a few days early to gain seniority on his colleagues, a once-common courtesy that is becoming less so.) Of those 49 senators, only 19-- fewer than 40 percent-- won their subsequent special election.

Perhaps a bigger fear for the Nevada GOP was that deranged Teabag Queen Sharron Angle could easily win a primary to replace Heller in the House-- and then lose a general election to almost any Democrat. Aside from having Sandoval appoint Heller to the Senate, the party also gets to select a primary-free nominee for the special election to replace Heller. That way they get the teabaggers out of their hair... they hope. Angle, retired Navy Commander Kirk Lippold have already declared for the seat and both Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki and state GOP Mark Amodei have been reported to be on the verge on jumping in. Republican Party thought in Nevada is that any of the males would be preferable to Angle, even though she actually won Ensign's district in her Senate race.

Angle lost the Senate race because she got slaughter in Clark County, 253,617 to 192,516. Clark County, essentially Las Vegas, is barely part of Heller's district and, although she under-performed Heller, she still beat Reid in most of the counties that make up the vast, sprawling 2nd CD. In fact, other than Washoe County (Reno) and tiny Mineral County (which saw a 855 to 822 split favoring Reid), she beat Reid in every other county in the state. It's worth mentioning that Heller won both Mineral and, more important Washoe, by big margins. Here are the county totals (not counting the parts of Clark in the 2nd CD) comparing Heller and Angle:

Carson City- Angle- 9,362; Heller- 12,470
Churchill- Angle- 5,639; Heller- 6,592
Douglas- Angle- 12,858; Heller- 14,872
Elko- Angle- 8,173; Heller- 9,443
Esmeralda- Angle- 268; Heller- 285
Eureka- Angle- 524; Heller- 599
Humboldt- Angle- 2,836; Heller- 3,627
Lander- Angle- 1,201; Heller- 1,429
Lincoln- Angle- 1,311; Heller- 1,396
Lyon- Angle- 10,473; Heller- 12,046
Mineral- Angle- 822; Heller- 1,190
Nye- Angle- 7,822; Heller- 8,817
Pershing- Angle- 915; Heller- 1,216
Storey- Angle- 1,124; Heller- 1,383
Washoe- Angle- 63,316; Heller- 80,216
White Pine- Angle- 2,201; Heller- 2,290

Thousands and thousands of voters who pulled the lever for Heller either then voted for Reid or another candidate or just didn't vote in the Senate race rather than pull the lever for Angle. And that was true in every single county, from giant Washoe, where the disparity between Heller and Angle was a whopping 17,000 votes to tiny Esmeraldo, where 17 of Heller's 285 voters just could not force themselves to vote for Angle. That's what the Nevada state party was seeking to avoid by nudging Ensign into resigning now.

From Sharron Angle, Rush Limbaugh And Sarah Palin, Right Down The Food Chain To Allen West Republicans Embrace The Violent, Divisive Rhetoric

When Nevada state Senator Bill Raggio (R), age 84, announced his retirement from politics a couple weeks ago, he held the all time record for the longest membership in the Nevada Senate in history, having been first elected in 1972. He was the minority leader 4 times and the majority leader twice, including a hefty stint from 1993-2007. It came as a great shock to many-- outside of Nevada-- when, revolted by his party's nomination of radical right sociopath Sharron Angle, Raggio endorsed longtime political nemesis Harry Reid last year. At the time he referred to Angle as "ineffective" and pointed out that as a state legislator she had a demonstrable "inability or unwillingness" to work with others. But in Nevada, it wasn't quite as shocking.

Angle, a Tea Party favorite this year, tried and failed to oust Raggio in a rough-and-tumble GOP primary in 2008. In his statement, the state senator from Reno made it clear he hasn't forgotten the bad blood between them two years ago.

"After losing to me in a primary, during which she ran a very negative campaign and distorted my record, referred to me as a liar and a RINO, I never heard one word from her, or a concession, or an offer of support," Raggio said. "Instead, she lent aid and comfort to an effort to recall me as State Senator."

In 1959 Raggio, then Washoe County district attorney, had the Triangle River Ranch brothel burned down as a public nuisance and had legendary brothel boss Joe Conforte arrested again and again. But it was his reputation as a mainstream conservative willing to work with Democrats that turned radical right Republicans like Angle against him. His endorsement of Reid cost him his Senate GOP caucus leader position and he announced his retirement on January 5.

It was widely assumed Angle would insist on appointment to the 2 years left in Raggio's term from the Washoe County Board of Commissioners. Then the massacre in Tucson and, wisely, Angle understood she wasn't about to be appointed to anything, not any time soon. She withdrew from consideration, citing previous commitments to give speeches to tea party meetings around the state and country. I think this video from Rachel Maddow on Monday gives a far better explanation of why Angle isn't going to be seeking any public office for a good long time:



Yesterday the Reno Gazette Journal addressed charges that Angle's purposefully "incendiary" and "irresponsible" political rhetoric had helped create an atmosphere that gave permission to mentally deranged people like Jared Loughner to grab a gun and going looking for a Second Amendment solution to some kind of imaginary problem.

National criticism focused on comments by Angle, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and others during last year's election cycle, when anti-incumbent sentiments created a volatile political environment. Some critics said the comments could've spurred someone mentally unstable to respond with violence.

Among Angle's critics was Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who said in a television interview from Tucson that Angle's campaign comments about "Second Amendment remedies" were "totally irresponsible and are not without consequences, and I think we may be seeing the fruit of it here."

U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., and the assistant Democratic leader in the House, agreed, saying the "connection" between the fiery words and the violence was clear.

"We've got to understand that what we say, our words have consequences," Clyburn said in a telephone interview. "Those of us in public office need to be careful about what we say."

Last year during the campaign, Angle said on conservative Lars Larson's talk show that "if Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying 'My goodness, what can we do to turn this country around?'"

Messages left Monday with Angle's spokesmen were not returned.

It looks like Angle has been flushed down the toilet of Nevada politics

Even before the massacre, 68% of Nevadans agreed that it had been a mistake for the Republican Party to have nominated Angle to run for the U.S. Senate. (21% said it was the right thing to do; that's how many people in Nevada are just a step or two away from Loughner.) Meanwhile, Palin is hiding under her bed and refusing to comment on her own role in this tragedy. Less high profile Republicans-- local congressmen, like Florida sociopath Allen West, for example-- are doubling down on the insanity and hate-filled rhetoric.

Talking about the shooting of her close friend, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), Wasserman Schultz pointed to remarks that conservative radio host Joyce Kaufman, one of West's most ardent supporters who nearly became his chief of staff, had made at a July Tea Party rally, saying that "if ballots don't work, bullets will."

"The shock jocks and the political movement leaders that are out there on both sides of the aisle need to have some pause as well," said Wasserman Schultz, pointing to Kaufman's remarks as an example of rhetoric that should be "toned down."

On Monday, West responded in-kind, calling in to Kaufman's radio show and saying Wasserman Schultz's criticism showed "how low people will go for political opportunism."

"I was standing there when you said that," West told Kaufman. "And guess what, we did it by the ballot box."

West went on to point fingers at his in-state colleague, saying "if you want to talk about toning down the political rhetoric, you need to look at yourself, first and foremost, you Congressman Wasserman Schultz," and accused her of "incit[ing] a political riot and protest outside my campaign headquarters."

"I'm just glad I have more class, more character than she has exhibited," said West.

During the 2010 election, the Iraq War veteran and Sarah Palin-endorsed candidate quickly became known as one of the more incendiary Tea Party candidates. West frequently used gun metaphors and war rhetoric to fire up his supporters, telling his supporters "get your musket, to fix your bayonet and to charge into the ranks; you are my brother and sister in this fight."

On Tuesday, the freshman's hometown paper called him out for his comments, especially after his immediate reaction to the Saturday's shooting, where he said the violent incident should be a time for the "country to consider the safety of members of Congress."

The Palm Beach Post's Frank Cerabino writes West "ought to know" that "there are lots of crazy people out there," because "he's been one of South Florida's prime feeders of violent fantasies."

West said earlier this month that he "didn't learn anything" from the controversy that erupted after he chose Kaufman as his chief of staff. But Cerebino says, "I'm hoping that after last weekend's shooting of one of his colleagues, West will begin learning. It's about time."

Wacko of the Year: Sharron Angle -- A Lesson in the Outer Limits of Republican Lunacy

Candidate Angle doesn't see why she shouldn't be allowed to take only the questions she wants to answer.

“The Federal Department Of Education should be eliminated. The Department of Education is unconstitutional and should not be involved in education, at any level.”

-- Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle

by Noah

"Mommy, why do so many people think Republicans are wackos?

Well, sweetie, take the case of the 2010 Nevada Senate race. You see, Republikooks decided that one candidate, who thought we could pay for medical services with chickens, just wasn’t crazy enough. So they checked every asylum in the state and came up with Sharron Angle! This new face of the Repug Party is a goonie from the endless conveyor belt of Republican goonies. Cuckoo is as cuckoo does!

Sounding not unlike some Koran-twisting Islamic extremist nutball, Angle claimed that her opposition to both Social Security and Medicare isn’t rooted in her view of the Constitution. Instead, she offers that her view of the Ten Commandments tells her to oppose such programs. I musta missed something in Sunday school. Thou shalt not have Medicare? Thou shalt not have Social Security?

Here’s Angle explaing her “thoughts” about phasing out Social Security in favor of a privatized system put in place by Chile’s right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet:

When I said privatize, that’s what I meant. That I thought we would just have to go to the private sector for a template on how this is supposed to be done. However, I’ve since been studying, and Chile has done this.

Angle also sees no reason why the press shouldn’t ask only the questions she wants to be asked, so she can give only the answers she wants to give. When that doesn’t happen, it’s run, Sharon, run! (See the clip above.) Run from those mics and nasty, nasty cameras!


“People ask me, ‘What are you going to do to develop jobs in your state?’ Well, that’s not my job as a U.S. senator.”

Even Angle’s communications directors seem to have had a problem with Sharron’s take on how her relationship should be with the press. In the first week of August, she went through two of them and hired a third in -- just in that one week! Just doing her bit to fight unemployment, I guess. One has to wonder why the third one took the job. Well, jobs are very scarce.

Here’s what greeted Contestant No. 3 on the Angle Loon Show:

We needed to have the press be our friend. . . . We wanted them to ask the questions we wanted them to ask so that they report the news the way want the news reported and when I get on a show and say send money to SharronAngle.com so that your listeners --

Gee, Sharron, sometimes life just isn’t fair. You may be a spoiled Republican Teabag princess, but sometimes things just don’t go the way you want. Even the Fox bozo interviewing her was incredulous. At one point you can see that he’s trying very hard not to laugh.

Angle is utterly clueless about the world -- and she wanted to be a U.S. senator. I wonder if she knew that she’d have to leave her room with the padded walls and go to Washington, DC. She’s really stretching the boundaries. One is almost moved to having sympathy for her. Maybe the people in Nevada could just give her some sort of honorary title like "senator from Area 51." They could trot her out for holiday parades,e on a float with some Teabaggers dressed up as little aliens cruising down the Extraterrestrial Highway.

Call me a compassionate, sensitive lefty. I also have to wonder how she finds her way home at night without having left a trail of bread crumbs or tied a very long string to her doorknob. Maybe one of her ex-communications directors can move in with her and be her minder when she returns to whatever nuthouse she came from. No doubt she’ll always blame the press. I wonder if she’s even heard of the concept of freedom of the press. Perhaps she could borrow a copy of the Constitution from one of her Teabagger buddies, or maybe she and her promoters, like her fans on Fox, would rather our country be like Iran or China, where a reporter can be arrested or worse just for asking “the wrong question.”

Sharron Angle is the kind of thing we get, and the kind of thing we deserve, when we tolerate the likes of Sarah Palin, John Kyl, James Inhofe or any one of a number of other of our typically deranged Republicans. The Republican Party will always push the envelope deeper into Crazyville. We, as a society, did not send Sarah Palin packing. We rewarded her with book deals, TV shows, and endless promotion. So next up was Sharron Angle.

“I hope that’s not where we’re going, but you know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness, what can we do to turn this country around? I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.”

Mentally normally-adjusted people don’t turn into Sharron Angle. She was so bad that Harry Reid beat her. Note that the Secret Service didn’t pay her a call when she threatened the Senate Majority Leader. They let it slide, and for now she's just a profile in Republican lunacy, vintage 2010. Hopefully, she will be locked away and forgotten, but if we tolerate her and make excuses for her, there will be more, and there will be worse.

Warning: If Angle gets more than the 15 minutes of fame she got this year, in no time someone even more bizarre will be pushed to the fore by the Republican Party. What that is, I can’t imagine. Put on the Twilight Zone theme music, and stay tuned!


NOAH'S YEAR 2010 IN REVIEW

10 Random Musings (1)
2010, Looking Back: To Republicans, It Was So Much More Than Just a Speech to Kids
Random Musings on 2010 (2)
Random Musings on 2010 (3)
Random Musings on 2010 (4)
Random Musings on 2010 (5)

Quotations of a Party on Crack, 2010 Version --
Republicans in Their Own Words:
Part 1, The Unemployed
Part 2, When Cousins Marry
Part 3, It's a Party!

AND THE YEAR 2009 IN REVIEW:
12 Days of Christmas Scorn

#

Republicans in Their Own Words -- Quotations of a Party on Crack, 2010 Version: Part 1, The Unemployed

Rachel Maddow on Newt Gingrich: "Just because he doesn't have a real job does not mean that Newt Gingrich isn't making a lot of money in politics." (See No. 3.)

by Noah

It’s hard to understand the Republican mind. If you try too hard, you may end up catching a case of their insanity, or at least being plagued by nightmares, or your psyche might end up so wounded by the assault that you need to go for counseling or maybe just a prescription for some valium. My suggestion: Just let their own words do most of the talking. It is what it is. They reveal the inner workings of their twisted minds just fine. The only cure for Republicanism is complete derision and dismissal. Herewith some classic examples of Republican Mental Illness, or RMI as we call it at the Down With Tyranny Medical Center.

1. The first is a true dialog between former House Repug leader Tom DeLay and CNN’s Candy Crowley. On-air, DeLay said to Crowley:

There is an argument to be made that these extensions, the unemployment benefits, keep people from going and finding [a] job. In fact there are some studies that have been done that show people stay on unemployment compensation and they don’t look for a job until two or three weeks before they know the benefits are going to run out.

Naturally, DeLay didn’t happen to have any of those studies he mentioned available for reference. Crowley then asked, “People are unemployed because they want to be?” DeLay’s answer: “Well, it is the truth. And people in the real world know it.”

This was a Republican talking point for much of the year, with similar utterances from the likes of Sen. John Kyl and senator-wannabe Sharron Angle.

2. And speaking of Sharron Angle:

We have put in so much entitlement into our government that we have spoiled our citizenry and said, "You don’t want the jobs that are available.”

Next thing ya know, “our citizenry” will want at least a minimum wage! And a less than 80-hour work week! And health benefits! And no whippings! Damn spoiled middle class! For more on the wisdom of Angle, just click on this.

3. “I’m opposed to giving people money for doing nothing,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, explaining why he, like virtually all his Republican brethren, is against the concept of paying unemployment benefits. Keep in mind that this was said by a guy who, as Rachel Maddow points out in the clip above, has been “earning” his money for 12 years or so as a scam artist. Newt, if you wanna do some honest work, maybe you should just do a deal with Jenny Craig. Sooner or later, though, Newt will be sending out his own version of those infamous direct-mail scam “letters from Nigeria.”

4. “Is the government now creating hobos?”

-- Nevada Congresscretin Dean Heller

Hey, Heller, why not just call them winos!

5. “If anything, continuing to pay people unemployment is a disincentive for them to seek new work."

-- Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl

Yeah, Kyl, people just enjoy being out of work. One would think that by now if the people of Arizona had any brains at all, they would ship Kyl to China along with the jobs he voted to send there.

6. “The jobs are there. But if we keep extending unemployment , people are just going to sit there."

-- Pennsylvania candidate for governor Tom Corbett

The sad punch line is that Corbett won, despite the fact that Pennsylvania is a state that is rife with extreme rust-belt poverty. The state is also well above the national average of having six applicants for every job. Now there’s a guy who really knows his constituents. “The jobs are there.” I guess that just depends on what the meaning of "there" is.

7. “We should not be giving cash to people who are basically just going to blow it on drugs.”

-- Utah Sen. Orin Hatch

This puss-for-brains loon should have been put out to pasture when he held up a copy of The Exorcist at the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991.

8. “Have you heard of the 99-ers? Some of these people, I bet you’d be ashamed to call them Americans.”

-- Glenn Beck, discussing the 1.4 million (and growing in number) Americans who have been unemployed for more than 99 weeks in a country whose jobs have been shipped to China and India

9. “The people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities. I say ‘generally’ because there are exceptions. But in general as I survey the ranks of those who are unemployed, I see people who have overbearing and unpleasant personalities and/or do not know how to do a days work."

-- former Nixon speechwriter and game-show host Ben Stein

Stein unwittingly went a long way in describing himself. He also works as an advertising pitchman of sorts. Personally, I make a point of not buying anything he’s selling. Not only that, but when I see it on the shelves, I push it to the back behind competing products. It makes me feel good. Everyone has to do their bit in some way, you know.

10. “Let them eat cake.”

-- French queen Marie Antoinette, proposing an alternative for peasants who couldn't afford bread

Now we know that Marie Antoinette was expressing the modern-day Republican philosophy centuries in advance. And what happened to her?

#

Is Sharron Angle A Zombie?

Hearing Rand Paul and Dino Rossi "debate" on the same night is a little too much for me. Even braving a Maureen Dowd NY Times column on the "Republican Mean Girls" seemed like it might work as a palliative. 

We are in the era of Republican Mean Girls, grown-up versions of those teenage tormentors who would steal your boyfriend, spray-paint your locker and, just for good measure, spread rumors that you were pregnant.

These women-- Jan, Meg, Carly, Sharron, Linda, Michele, Queen Bee Sarah and sweet wannabe Christine-- have co-opted and ratcheted up the disgust with the status quo that originally buoyed Barack Obama. Whether they’re mistreating the help or belittling the president’s manhood, making snide comments about a rival’s hair or ripping an opponent for spending money on a men’s fashion show, the Mean Girls have replaced Hope with Spite and Cool with Cold. They are the ideal nihilistic cheerleaders for an angry electorate.

Seated next to Brewer at the bridge dedication was Harry Reid, the slight, mild-mannered, 70-year-old Senate majority leader who has wandered into the surprise fight of his career-- a race where the fur is flying.

“Man up, Harry Reid,” Sharron Angle taunted him at their Las Vegas debate here Thursday night. That’s not an idle insult, coming from a woman who campaigns at times with a .44 Magnum revolver in her 1989 GMC pickup.

With casino red suit and lipstick, Angle played the Red Queen of the Mad Hatter tea party, denouncing career politicians and ordering “Off with your head!” and “Down with government benefits!” Even sober and smiling beneath her girlish bangs, the 61-year-old Angle had the slightly threatening air of the inebriated lady in a country club bar, tossing off outrageous statements and daring anyone to call her on them.

The debate between the former boxer and the former competitive weight lifter, the soft-spoken Mormon and the outspoken Christian, was a source of fascination because the rivals perfectly represent the two caricatures of the midterms: The Washington incumbent and master of back-room deals who’s been around forever and lost touch with people versus the wacky new-breed Tea Party challenger who’s hiding from and hating on the press, spouting a lot of weird stuff and vowing to do what Barack Obama didn’t: Shake up Washington.

It didn't work as a palliative. So I made the little Roky Erickson video above. That worked. Do you have a favorite zombie? I can't believe Maureen left out Virginia Foxx. I didn't.

"Unprecedented Ecological Catastrophe" On The Danube... Although We Could Possibly Still Avoid One In Nevada

See all that red stuff? It can kill you... fast or slow

Hungary seems so very far away, and after all only four people are dead in this flooding, not nearly as bad as the thousands who died in Pakistan on CNN. And look, the Danube is only Europe's second-longest river. Now the Volga... that's a river! But it does flow through a bunch of countries, even if most Americans couldn't find them on a map if their lives depended on it: Germany (where it starts), Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine and Romania (where it empties into the Black Sea).

You might not want to eat too much of that yummy Black Sea turbot, or even the mackerel or mullet. That's because this week a toxic red sludge that burst out of a Hungarian aluminum factory's reservoir flooded into the Danube, killing fish, threatening an ecological disaster and heading towards the Black Sea (and the six other countries between Hungary and the Black Sea). The chemical spill was the biggest ever in Hungary and pumped at least 35 million cubic feet of toxic, carcinogenic sludge (arsenic, cadmium and lead) into the river. Every single fish in a Danube tributary, the Marcal, has died.

As Danube nations such as Serbia and Bulgaria brace for contamination, Hungary is still struggling to deal with the devastation of the initial spill that flooded the villages of Devecsar, Kolontar, and Somlovasarhely in northwest Hungary. Emergency response teams, including the Hungarian armed forces, began to evacuate residents within hours of the spill, and staved off the contamination of a fourth village by treating and removing the sludge. Despite that good work, authorities say up to 7,000 people in these and four other villages have been directly affected. And leaders are struggling to measure the spill's human and environmental cost. "Nothing like this has happened in Hungary before," Tamas Toldi, mayor of Devecsar, told Time. "Right now the most important thing is to save people from the [flood]."

Toldi admitted that even those people who have been saved and evacuated face an uncertain future. Authorities reported on Oct. 6 that up to 2,000 acres of farmland and 8.6 acres of populated areas have been poisoned. "The [chemical] sludge has gone into houses and has destroyed and corroded everything," he says. "It's also going into the soil and we don't know how we'll produce healthy food in our fields."

Sounds disastrous, doesn't it? And it is... but the Hungarians and the regional authorities in central and eastern Europe are, by all reports, handling it extremely well. They're mobilizing whatever resources they can to battle the effects of the catastrophe, and I've been hearing on the radio that the deadly pH level is being dealt with efficiently-- hundreds of tons of alkaline-neutralizing plaster and acetic acid being dumped into the river system-- and is steadily declining. Reports are that the pH is now below 10 and expected to fall to 8, where it won't be as damaging. But Europeans can work together; they know social cooperation is how man moves forward.

Here, on the other hand...

We have a whole grab bag of freaks and loons who have taken over the poor old Republican Party with the latest and greatest ideas of the (early) 17th century. Joe Miller wants to abolish the EPA. Most of the extremists in what can generally be referred to as the "DeMint Caucus," or which will be the DeMint Caucus if enough of them get elected-- Pat Toomey, Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Ron Johnson, Christine O'Donnell, Ken Buck, Ken Buck, Joe Miller-- are convinced that government is a force for evil; not a force to protect society in general, but one that hampers the ability of the strongest and most aggressive to reach their full potential. It's a dark, Hobbesian view of the world, and most of them got it either directly or secondhand from Ayn Rand's cultish followers and her bitter, albeit silly and sophomoric, opus Atlas Shrugged.

How bad are they in the cooperation department? Yesterday Bill Raggio, the Nevada state Senate Republican Minority Leader, explained why he endorsed Harry Reid over his party's own nominee, Sharron Angle. Listen carefully. He knows her well, and this isn't something he did lightly. It will cost him. But what he says portends ill for America should Angle and the freaks like her wind up in public office:

"Only one of these candidates has sought my endorsement, Senator Harry Reid. I haven't heard from Sharron Angle or talked with her since long before she decided to run against me for State Senate two years ago. After losing to me in a primary, during which she ran a very negative campaign and distorted my record, referred to me as a liar and a RINO, I never heard one word from her, or a concession, or an offer of support. Instead, she lent aid and comfort to an effort to recall me as State Senator.

"Those are personal issues which I was willing to put behind me.

"What is difficult to overlook is her record of being totally ineffective as a four-term assemblywoman, her inability or unwillingness to work with others, even within her own party, and her extreme positions on issues such as Medicare, Social Security, education, veterans affairs and many others.

Taliban Dan, Meet Taliban Sharron, Your Sister in Hatred

When Alan Grayson exposed the ominously strong connection between Republican candidate Daniel Webster and Christo-fascist hatemonger Bill Gothard with his Taliban Dan ad, the brainless, lazy media-- both in Orlando and nationally-- jumped all over him and said it was offensive to accuse another American of being like the Taliban. Markos had the same reaction to his brilliant new book, American Taliban, which was deemed "too mean" by the mainstream media.

Digby turned me on to some of the writings of Daniel Webster's guru, Bill Gothard, who he used to brag about but is now strangely silent about. And, as I pointed out yesterday, part of Gothard's vision that Webster takes so much inspiration from includes "stoning as a form of capital punishment for rape, kidnapping, murder, heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, 'sodomy or homosexuality,' incest, striking a parent, extreme juvenile delinquency, and 'unchastity before marriage'.”

Webster has used Gothard's hateful fanaticism as an inspiration for legislation in the past. The media should be writing about his Covenant Marriage bill and his attempts to outlaw divorce in Florida instead of whining about Alan Grayson being mean in his ad. That aside-- and I'll let astrologers, people who have sex outside of wedlock and blasphemers, heretics and juvenile delinquents deal with the idea of being stoned to death on their own-- I want to focus on the age-old drive on the far right inhabited by creatures like Taliban Dan and Bill Gothard to exterminate gay people-- and to do it in the name of Christ, God, religion, the Bible, the Koran... whatever. Gothard wants to stone us to death. When Taliban Dan was singing his praises-- before the campaign-- he didn't say he was inspired by him except in the case of stoning gays to death. There were no exceptions.

And Taliban Dan isn't the only Republican radical who hides behind the Bible and transforms it into a tome of hatred and bigotry in the service of calling for the extermination of the LGBT community. Let's not forget Taliban Sharron (R-NV). Although recently eclipsed in national infamy by Christine O'Donnell, readers of DWT are no doubt aware of Sharron Angle, a former state Assemblymember who "has repeatedly come under fire for her comments about autistic children and gay adoption; opposing abortion for rape and supporting a constitutional amendment against marriage for same-sex couples, among other issues." Derek Washington, chair of the Stonewall Democratic Club of Southern Nevada likens her to "a peach with knuckles" but warns he knows "perfectly normal people who are social liberals" who support her. "She’s just weird."

Washington predicted dire consequences for LGBT Nevadans if Angle defeats Reid.

"This woman will lay waste to the gay community here; I can say that without reserve," he said. "This woman seeks nothing short of a right wing fascist state where here extreme views are the norm."

Chris Miller, president of the Nevada Stonewall Democratic Caucus, agreed.

"They [LGBT Nevadans] are afraid if she’s elected, she will take the LGBT community in Nevada and around the country a step backwards," he told EDGE from Las Vegas.

..."She’s got to be stopped," said Washington. "If she wins, it can’t be hopeful for our country and it will be disastrous for our community here. I get physically ill at the thought of looking at the election result and seeing that woman won."

Homophobia, albeit not usually as openly extreme as Bill Gothard's, is, despite Ken Mehlman's belated coming out party, an integral part of the 21st Century Republican Party coalition. At the minimum, the homophobic crazies are part of their big pup tent. The Party is filled with anti-gay sociopaths who are constrained from publicly screaming "Nigger! Nigger!" these days but encounter no such constraints when it comes to gays and lesbians. American Taliban like Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), and Steve King (R-IA) regularly go on hysterical anti-gay tirades and Republican congressional closet cases like Patrick McHenry (R-NC), David Dreier (R-CA), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Aaron Schock (R-IL), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Adrian Smith (R-NE), etc are so petrified about being outed that they automatically adopt extreme anti-gay legislative attitudes.

These are attitudes-- from the stoning to the bigotry-- that you would expect to find in a history book, or at worst, in a country ruled by an oppressive regime that uses religion as a form of political control, the way the Taliban does. We don't want that in American-- not in Orlando and not in Nevada. Let me know if you hear of any reporter asking Daniel Webster about his relationship with Bill Gothard, a relationship that ReligionDispatches has had more success looking into than anyone else:

[C]ontrary to both FactCheck.org and PolitiFact's assessments, Webster's 2009 talk is actually an excellent example of the point made in the Grayson ad: that Webster holds views that are outside the mainstream. He is unself-conscious about his sense that God is on his side and that God opposes his opponents. And he has aligned himself with organizations and individuals who advocate the application of biblical law to contemporary society, including wives submitting to their husbands.

...Webster has aligned himself with an organization that espouses an orientation to the Bible and its role in civil society that is certainly relevant to his campaign for public office, the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) and its affiliated Advance Training Institute International (ATI). He claims to pray for IBLP founder Bill Gothard "every day," has traveled with Gothard, has spoken at Gothard’s conferences (2009 and 2010 programs are online), and has contributed to "Wisdom Booklets" training materials that include David Barton and his Christian American history. These include The Light and the Glory, a Christian American history textbook popular in fundamentalist Christian schools and home schools. Webster's section itself cites Christian Reconstructionist Gary DeMar’s work in "Optional Resources."

Over at AlterNet, Bruce Wilson writes that Gothard wanted to use Christian Reconstructionist R.J. Rushdoony's seminal Institutes of Biblical Law for his programs if it weren't for their disagreement over divorce. In his post, Wilson focuses too much on the issue of the capital offenses for which some Reconstructionists advocate stoning. That emphasis favors sensationalism over more pressing issues in our political culture -- like the fact that this wing of the home school and Christian school movements wants to eliminate public education by replacing it. In the meantime, they want public schools to teach their revisionist Christian history as well as Creationism. (If you think they can't accomplish that, consider, as Lauri Lebo has documented at RD, the fundamentalist revision of the Texas public school curriculum, and Barton's role in that.) They believe in an entirely second-class status for women (some believe women shouldn't vote). They are virulently hostile to gays and lesbians. They believe that any social safety net should be eliminated and replaced by church programs—available only to believers. (And they succeeded in getting an exemption from the health insurance mandate for believers.)

What's Really Behind Yesterday's Unemployment Numbers?

Less than a third of Americans are stupid enough to have forgotten that it was Bush pushing failed Republican fiscal and economic ideology that drove the country to the brink of Depression. There's no data to back up this assertion, but I'm certain that these are the Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Fox die-hards, the core of angry, delusional teabaggery. I don't suppose that many people who watch Professor Know Nothing on Fox would understand the chart above anyway. That makes them qualified to run for the Senate in Teabaggia, where they would feel perfectly at home with the likes of Ken Buck (R-CO), Mike Lee (R-UT), Pat Toomey (R-PA), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Jim DeMint (R-SC), Rand Paul (R-KY), Joe Miller (R-AK), and, of course, Sharron Angle (R-NV).

In an interview this Wednesday, Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle heightened her criticisms of unemployment insurance, insisting that the benefits program to help the jobless ended up benefiting nobody.
Sitting down with conservative radio talk show host Heidi Harris, Angle once again addressed a topic that brought her a bit of political heat-- including a hard-hitting ad from her opponent Harry Reid-- not too long ago.

"People don't want to be unemployed," she explained. "They want to have real, full-time, permanent jobs with a future. That's what they want, and we need to create that climate in Washington, D.C. that encourages businesses to create those full-time, permanent jobs with a future, and all [Rep.] Shelley Berkeley and [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid want to do is put a band-aid on this by extending unemployment, which really doesn't benefit anyone. What happens is of course that your skills stagnate. You become demoralized yourself, you know, feeling that I can't ever get a job, and these are not the solutions to the problem. We have real solutions, but they won't look at the real solutions."

Now, back on planet earth, Christina Romer explained the employment report yesterday within the context of the miserable situation in which conservative economic policies have driven the country. She said things came out "better than expected."

Private sector payrolls increased by 67,000 in August—the eighth consecutive month of private sector job growth. This growth is consistent with other recent data reports indicating that the economy is continuing to recover, albeit at a somewhat slower pace than in the early spring. The rate of job growth, however, is not as large as needed to bring the unemployment rate down quickly. Indeed, the unemployment rate rose one -- tenth of a percentage point to 9.6%, as more than half a million people joined the labor force. The President continues to work with his economic team and with Congress to identify measures that could help speed the recovery and put the economy on a path of steadily declining unemployment.

In addition to the rise in August, the estimates of private sector job growth for June and July were revised up by a total of 66,000. Since last December, private sector employment has risen by 763,000. Despite the rise in private sector employment, overall payroll employment fell by 54,000, as 114,000 temporary Census jobs were eliminated... [T]he number of people employed rose by 290,000. But, because the labor force rose by 550,000, the unemployment rate ticked up to 9.6% (from 9.5% in July). The employment-- to-- population ratio also rose one-- tenth of a percentage point (to 58.5%), indicating that in the household survey employment growth more than kept up with population growth. In addition, the number of workers who have been unemployed 27 weeks or longer declined sharply, from 6.57 million to 6.25 million.

As Obama pointed out at a press conference later, when he took office, the economy was hemorrhaging 750,000 jobs a month. He might not have done it as boldly as many of us wanted, but his efforts stopped that. "There’s no quick fix to the worst recession we've experienced since the Great Depression," he asserted. "The hard truth is that it took years to create our current economic problems, and it will take more time than any of us would like to repair the damage. Millions of our neighbors are living with that painfully every day."

But one thing we also have to do right now–- one thing we have a responsibility to do right now–- is to lift up our small businesses, which accounted for over 60 percent of job losses in the final months of last year. That's why once again, I’m calling on Congress to make passing a small business jobs bill its first order of business when it gets back into session later this month.

Now, here’s why this is so important. Up until this past May, we were not only waiving fees for entrepreneurs who took out Small Business Administration loans, we were also encouraging more community banks to make loans to responsible business owners. These steps are part of the reason about 70,000 new Small Business Administration loans have been approved since I took office. And I thank Karen Mills for the outstanding job she’s been doing as Administrator of the Small Business Administration.

We’ve also been extending-- fighting to extend these loan enhancements with a small business jobs bill. It’s a bill that will more than double the amount some small business owners can borrow to grow their companies. It will completely eliminate capital gains taxes on key investments, so small business owners can buy new equipment and expand. And it will accelerate $55 billion in tax cuts for businesses, large and small, that make job-creating investments in the next 14 months.

And keep in mind, it is paid for. It will not add one dime to our deficit. So, put simply, this piece of legislation is good for workers; it’s good for small business people; it’s good for our economy. And yet, Republicans in the Senate have blocked this bill-- a needless delay that has led small business owners across this country to put off hiring, put off expanding, and put off plans that will make our economy stronger.

The bill, HR 5297 was filibustered by Republicans in the Senate, where it was stalled. Reid managed to hold even the worst conservative Democratic corporate shills together. If Obama is going to attack Republicans for the bill's failure to move forward-- as he certainly should-- it will sound a lot more convincing and less partisan if he mentions that 9 Democratic corporate shills in the House also voted against it: Marion Berry (Blue Dog-AR), Allen Boyd (Blue Dog-FL), Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL), Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN), Kathy Dahlkemper (Blue Dog-PA), Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (Blue Dog-SD), Harry Mitchell (Blue Dog-AZ), Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS) and Dina Titus (D-NV). Three Republicans, Ahn Cao (LA), Mike Castle (DE), and Walter Jones (NC), decided its too close to election time to screw their own constituents over again and follow Boehner down the road he's chosen-- driving the economy deeper into a ditch in the hopes it will win him the Speaker's job.

Thursday former Labor Secretary Robert Reich did an OpEd for the NY Times, How to End the Great Recession. His knows as well as anyone how the corporatist agenda of greed and selfishness caused the economic collapse but his prescriptions are unlikely to be welcomed by a team headed up by notorious Wall Street shills like Rahm Emanuel, Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers. He attributes our problems to the fact that consumers can't spend us out of the recession, because they have no money. "The real problem," he says, "has to do with the structure of the economy, not the business cycle."

This crisis began decades ago when a new wave of technology-- things like satellite communications, container ships, computers and eventually the Internet -- made it cheaper for American employers to use low-wage labor abroad or labor-replacing software here at home than to continue paying the typical worker a middle-class wage. Even though the American economy kept growing, hourly wages flattened. The median male worker earns less today, adjusted for inflation, than he did 30 years ago.

But for years American families kept spending as if their incomes were keeping pace with overall economic growth. And their spending fueled continued growth. How did families manage this trick? First, women streamed into the paid work force. By the late 1990s, more than 60 percent of mothers with young children worked outside the home (in 1966, only 24 percent did).

Second, everyone put in more hours. What families didn’t receive in wage increases they made up for in work increases. By the mid-2000s, the typical male worker was putting in roughly 100 hours more each year than two decades before, and the typical female worker about 200 hours more.

When American families couldn’t squeeze any more income out of these two coping mechanisms, they embarked on a third: going ever deeper into debt. This seemed painless-- as long as home prices were soaring. From 2002 to 2007, American households extracted $2.3 trillion from their homes.

Eventually, of course, the debt bubble burst-- and with it, the last coping mechanism. Now we’re left to deal with the underlying problem that we’ve avoided for decades. Even if nearly everyone was employed, the vast middle class still wouldn’t have enough money to buy what the economy is capable of producing.

Where have all the economic gains gone? Mostly to the top. The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty examined tax returns from 1913 to 2008. They discovered an interesting pattern. In the late 1970s, the richest 1 percent of American families took in about 9 percent of the nation’s total income; by 2007, the top 1 percent took in 23.5 percent of total income.

It’s no coincidence that the last time income was this concentrated was in 1928. I do not mean to suggest that such astonishing consolidations of income at the top directly cause sharp economic declines. The connection is more subtle.

The rich spend a much smaller proportion of their incomes than the rest of us. So when they get a disproportionate share of total income, the economy is robbed of the demand it needs to keep growing and creating jobs.

What’s more, the rich don’t necessarily invest their earnings and savings in the American economy; they send them anywhere around the globe where they’ll summon the highest returns-- sometimes that’s here, but often it’s the Cayman Islands, China or elsewhere. The rich also put their money into assets most likely to attract other big investors (commodities, stocks, dot-coms or real estate), which can become wildly inflated as a result.

Meanwhile, as the economy grows, the vast majority in the middle naturally want to live better. Their consequent spending fuels continued growth and creates enough jobs for almost everyone, at least for a time. But because this situation can’t be sustained, at some point-- 1929 and 2008 offer ready examples-- the bill comes due.

This time around, policymakers had knowledge their counterparts didn’t have in 1929; they knew they could avoid immediate financial calamity by flooding the economy with money. But, paradoxically, averting another Great Depression-like calamity removed political pressure for more fundamental reform. We’re left instead with a long and seemingly endless Great Jobs Recession.

The Great Depression and its aftermath demonstrate that there is only one way back to full recovery: through more widely shared prosperity. In the 1930s, the American economy was completely restructured. New Deal measures-- Social Security, a 40-hour work week with time-and-a-half overtime, unemployment insurance, the right to form unions and bargain collectively, the minimum wage-- leveled the playing field.

In the decades after World War II, legislation like the G.I. Bill, a vast expansion of public higher education and civil rights and voting rights laws further reduced economic inequality. Much of this was paid for with a 70 percent to 90 percent marginal income tax on the highest incomes. And as America’s middle class shared more of the economy’s gains, it was able to buy more of the goods and services the economy could provide. The result: rapid growth and more jobs.

By contrast, little has been done since 2008 to widen the circle of prosperity. Health-care reform is an important step forward but it’s not nearly enough.

What else could be done to raise wages and thereby spur the economy? We might consider, for example, extending the earned income tax credit all the way up through the middle class, and paying for it with a tax on carbon. Or exempting the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes and paying for it with a payroll tax on incomes over $250,000.