Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

"Republican Lawmaker" is the new "Florida Man." it's two words that, well, you just cringe when you see them together. It's always a "Jeez, what now?" moment. For years we've seen headlines like "Florida Man Shocked When Pet 20-Foot Python Eats Daughter" or some such thing. Or, how about trying on "Florida Man Claims He Only Drank At Stoplights, But Not While Driving" for laughs? As for "Republican Lawmakers," we get things like "Republican Lawmaker Punches Wife In Face For Not Undressing Quick Enough," or "Republican Lawmaker Yells 'Go Back To Puerto Rico' At California Rep." To be fair, "Republican Lawmakers" usually contain their most insane vocal moments to statements or actions of misogyny, mass shootings, racism, rape, or their twisted version of god. Floridians take a more no holds barred approach to insanity but republicans are making great progress in their attempts to catch up.

So now we've gone from now former Missouri "Republican Lawmaker" Todd Akin's infamous words "If it's a legitimate rape..." to Iowa's current "Republican Lawmaker" Steve King saying what amounts to "Hey, everyone has a bit of rape and incest in their family tree. What's the big deal?" Well, Steve King's statement may ring more true out in the cornfields of Iowa or other places where one best not stop for gas, food, or lodging, but just what is King trying to justify here? Is this more of that permissive Republican society "It's ok to grab 'em by the pussy" thing that Trump's 62 million supporters went for so enthusiastically back in 2016? Must be. Like Trump, who has praised King in the past, Steve King is an avowed, open, white supremacist and also like Trump, King apparently sees sexual assault as normal, approvable or at least forgivable behavior. Iowans have even voted for their beloved representative more times than the nation has voted for Trump (so far). Damn, I can't wait to hear "Republican Lawmaker" Steve King's views on Jeffrey Epstein!

Of course, none of this should be surprising coming from a Republican Party whose "Republican Lawmaker" members accept being a traitor to one's country as normal and approach every Russian oligarch with their hand out. "Hey, everybody has a little treason in their family tree!"

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

-by Noah

For yesterday's meme, I threw a glaring prison yard spotlight on the 22 Republican creeping lowlife senators who, led by Mitch McConnell, voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act back in 2013. You can consider today's meme Part 2. It too, reflects the basic attitude of Republicans towards women. It's not just about their legislation ideas. Groping is bad enough but, to them, as evidenced by Trump's own recorded statements, republicans just consider groping and forced kissing to be "foreplay."

You can start with the cretin in today's meme, Maine state representative Lawrence Lockman. As additional evidence, I offer the exact quotes from a few of our most disgusting lawmakers. I'm surprised that a psychotic like Paul Ryan hasn't introduced a bill to make rape legal. It would be so Taliban of him and his party of sociopathic knuckle-dragging cavemen. It would certainly fit the rest of his personality profile.

Here they are. You know there's a lot more where this came from. Some will be familiar to you as being from the lengthy catalog of the GOP's Greatest Hits. Others, not so much, but every bit as grotesque and heinous. I've added editorial comments in parenthesis for each of these sub-human morons. And, yes, there are bad Democrats, but this is about overwhelming percentages and an attitude that serves as a qualification of party membership every bit as much as being a racist does.

1. Clayton Williams (R-TX) - Rape is kinda like the weather. If it's inevitable, relax and enjoy it. (Texas. Say no more.)

2. Todd Akin (R-MO) - If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down. (Oh, the mysteries of them female bodies!)

3. Rick Santorum (R-PA) - Rape victims should make the best of a bad situation. (It's bad enough that Santorum dresses like the neighborhood perv, but, apparently, he wants credit for admitting that rape is bad.)

4. Richard Mourdock (R-IN) - Even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, it is something that God intended to happen. (Wow, that some god these republican talibanistas have!)

5. Jodie Laubenberg (R-TX) - In the emergency room, they have what's called rape kits where a woman can get cleaned out. (Saving the "best" for last. This one comes from a woman, but, like Clayton Williams, she is from Texas. Do you think she'd feel the same way if, one night, her fellow Texan offered her a ride home and stopped the car on a dark side street and raped her?)

Like I always say, context is everything. Given the above quotations from such republican luminaries as these, is it any wonder that something like a Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) can just laugh at the press about pedophilia when they ask about his support for Roy Moore? For all we know, rape of an underaged girl is the best rape of all, in the mind of a Republican.

Ooh please, could we have Todd Akin to kick around some more? (Or wait, are we sure that's what we want?)

Hear Todd talk: "It's one of those things that depends on the circumstances really. I don't rule anything out. I consider it a bright new future and I'm interested to see what the possibilities are."

by Ken

Well, if Mark "Hikin' the Appalachian Trail" Sanford can make a comeback, why not Todd "The Bitches They Be Askin' for It" Akin? Washingtonpost.com's Aaron Blake reported this afternoon:

Todd Akin opens door to a comeback

Former congressman Todd Akin (R-Mo.), in his first interview since his 2012 Senate campaign imploded after his comments about "legitimate rape," says he's not ruling out another run for office.

"It's one of those things that depends on the circumstances really. I don't rule anything out," he told KSDK-TV. "I consider it a bright new future and I'm interested to see what the possibilities are."

Akin also had some sharp words for Karl Rove, who like many Republicans has criticized Akin's 2012 campaign as woefully inept.

"I think I lost one race; he managed to lose about 12 of them in one night," Akin said.

(Worth noting: If Akin had been able to run in more than one race in 2012, there's a good chance he would have lost the other ones too.)

For more, see the full interview here.

First off, for the umpteenth time, could we make it clear that the lamebrain thug never suggested that there is such a thing as "legitimate rape," and at this point I think it's air to ask anyone who suggests that he did whether they consider themselves morons or just liars. What Saint Todd in fact was suggesting -- and it's really impossible for anyone with a working brain to honestly misunderstand the point -- is much worse: that there is a teensy, weensy occurrence of violent sexual episods that legitimately qualify as rape, the obvious implication being that all the other cases where women cry "rape!" are illegitimate. Presumably either the bitches wuz lying' or they wuz askin' fer it. And what they really want is abortion on demand.

This is, I have no doubt, exactly what our Todd believes, and not just Todd. As far as I can tell (as we've pointed out here often) his views on rape are identical to those of Paul Ryan, and very likely a host of other right-wing fake-moral doodybrains. Todd just happens to be possibly a shade stupider but unquestionably a degree more indiscrete than the rest of these clowns, who wouldn't know actual morality if it blasted their tiny brains to smithereens. Hiding just under the surface is the belief that the proper role of the wimmins is to be the wholly owned property of Good Christian Mens and to provide the traditional barefoot-and-pregnant servitude that God spelled out in the Bible. (Scratch just a millimeter deeper and you'll probably find that for wimmins that don't know their place, the occasional punching out by their Good Christian Mens is God's Plan.)

This seems to me way more revolting than the foolish notion that these people are saying there's such a thing as "legitimate [in the sense of "okay"] rape," and I wonder if it's entirely accident or incompetence that makes the infotainment noozemedia unwilling to discuss the actual belief, which perhaps strikes too close to home for the infotainment noozers.

ALL OF THAT SAID . . .

It occurs to me to wonder whether we're absolutely sure we want Todd back in the headlights. The obvious assumption is that he's so toxic, he can only do public harm to his ideological cohorts. Last time out, he was caught in an exposed position, making the jump from his old House seat to the Missouri statewide Senate race, at a time when the Gotcha Press Corps was lurking. Especially once you scratch away the layer of confusion about what he meant, what he believes is now practically "mainstream" on the over-the-edge-of-sanity Right.

And I worry about every benchmark of respectability those people manage to lay claim to.

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Can the GOP learn that pretending to be inclusive isn't the same thing as being inclusive?

The result of this deception is very strange to tell,
for when I fool the people I fear, I fool myself as well. . . .
Make believe you're brave, and the trick will take you far.
You may be as brave as you make believe you are.

--  "I Whistle a Happy Tune," from The King and I

"The spectacle of the Republicans, like teenagers longing to be invited to the prom, floundering about in search of more popularity with American voters, would be comical if it didn’t present the sad picture of a once great and proud party—the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower—working its way into near irrelevance."

-- Elizabeth Drew, in "Are the Republicans Beyond
Saving?," in the March 21 NYRB

"“Republicans like [Alaska Rep. Don Young] will soon be extinct, and that's a good thing for the GOP. But in the meantime, when they make these remarks, it makes it harder for those of us who are trying to grow the base of our party."

-- GOP consultant John Weaver ("who has worked for moderate Republicans in recent years") in The Fix's "Don Young and the Archie Bunker Problem"

by Ken

Sorry about the performance of "I Whistle a Happy Tune," but after sampling 20 or 25 "real" performances on YouTube, I was kind of relieved to settle for this one. (Do the people who post these clips really not know how wretched they are?)

You see, we're going to be talking tonight about pretending to be things you aren't. It's a strategy being pressed on 2013 Republicans by consultants as well as voices within the party, and I'm getting the weird feeling that they don't see the difference between pretending to be something and being it. And I couldn't help thinking of Anna in The King and I, and the lesson she tries to teach her son Louis at the top of the show. But the point here, surely (she makes it pretty explicitly), is that in the act of pretending to be brave, you may actually wind up being brave.

I'm not as optimistic about the strategy being pressed on depressed R's.

"Bemused" is what I've been, watching from the sidelines as those R's -- coming as close as they're apparently capable of coming to self-reflection -- at least consider the possibility that their 2012 electoral disaster was self-inflicted, that Republicans had come to be viewed by alamring numbers of U.S. voters as a party of exclusion, as a party whose only mission is to defend the interests of the 1%.

I had occasion to wonder the other day about the claim of some of these self-accusing elements in the party that they need to hearken back to the days of their old "big tent." The Republicans had a big tent? When was this? Even when Richard Nixon was fashioning the new Republican Party by adding Southern racists to the seething Silent Majority of Americans sick to death of challenges to orthodoxy and the status quo, it was a gathering of people housed in a number of modest-size tents coexisting on the same campground because they were all so mad at all those damn commies and hippies and assorted other riffraff out there.

The only difference, really, it seems to me, is that the tents have gotten even smaller. But the purpose of the little tents was always to exclude the people who weren't inside them, even if for strategic purposes they voted in multi-tent unison on a lot of issues, especially when manipulated with the finesse of a Nixon or a Ronald Reagan or even a George W. Bush for as long "Chimpy the Prez" could hold his coaltion of excluders together.

A COALITION OF EXCLUDERS ISN'T THE
EASIEST THING TO HOLD TOGETHER

Rather obviously, you have to wonder how long it's going to be before they start excluding one another. Already, for example, there's a deep fissure between right-wing excluders who worry that they've been somehow perceived as too exclusionary and right-wing excluders who believe that 2012 happened because they weren't exclusionary enough.

I'll leave that to them to slug out. And among many considerations of the implications for Republicans if they don't come to grips with their exclusionary tendencies, I can recommend Elizabeth Drew's "Are the Republicans Beyond Saving?" in the March 21 NYRB, whose opening I quote atop this post. I just want to register a modest note of bemusement about this notion that the R's' problem is being perceived as too exclusionary. As too hating of (take your pick) women, immigrants, Hispanic voters, LGBT voters, etc.

What bemuses me is this apparent notion that the problem is perception. I look at it differently. If you get all huffy about being unloved because mean people keep saying you're bigoted, changing the perception may required that you be less bigoted.

Which brings me to the other piece from which I quoted atop this post, the post "Don Young and the Archie Bunker Problem" by Aaron Blake and Juliet Eilperin today on washingtonpost.com's "The Fix." It begins:

Less than two weeks after the Republican National Committee unveiled its 2012 election autopsy an emphasis on broadening the party's tent, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) used an ethnic slur for Latinos in a radio interview Thursday. Young's comments served as the latest wake-up call for Republicans in their nascent effort to woo a more diverse cross-section of America.

The message: whatever effort they make toward modernizing their brand, there will always be a few Archie Bunkers out there -- people, like the lead character in the 70's sitcom "All in the Family," who are unconcerned with or unwilling to moderate their tone. And these days more than in the past, their offhand remarks can derail the most carefully orchestrated PR campaign.

Young, 79, set off a fresh round of recriminations and hand-wringing among Republican leaders while talking about the people his father employed on his California ranch years ago.

"We used to hire 50 or 60 wetbacks and -- to pick tomatoes," Young said in the interview with KRBD. "You know, it takes two people to pick the same tomatoes now. It's all done by machine."

Oops!!! Or should I say: Whoops!!!

Now Don Young is an old DWT fave, not so much because he's an excluder and hater as because he's a crook, a man who seems capable of sizing up any situation that comes to his attention from the standpoint "What's in it for me?" (As a result of which, he tends to find himself facing far more than even the normal congressional share of big-league "What's in it for me?" opportunities.)

A constant thread in Aaron Blake and Juliet Eilperin's "Fix" piece is that R's are unjustly associated with louts like Don Young, or singled out for unfair heightened scrutiny, or subjected to a double standard -- the suggestion being that a Democrat could get away with reminiscing about "wetbacks." It seems to me, though, that on the contrary R's get away with far more than they're gotcha-ed for.

Various and sundry Republicans are quoted to the effect that Don Young isn't their guy, and they're all being tarnished by the same brush. And in the particular case of immigration, it's true that some Republicans are less exclusing than "Wetback Don." However, most of the Rs who are "enlightened" on immigration merely have a more "enlightened" view of the importance to the U.S. economy of all that cheap labor, which comes doubly cheap because so many of the immigrant workers -- directly contrary to the myth of being benefits sponges -- don't claim any benefits at all despite all the taxes they pay.

THE OCCASIONAL GOP "INCLUDERS"
ARE APT TO BE SERIAL "EXCLUDERS"

In addition, Republicans who happen to be "includers" with respect to one unfavored group tend to be extra-exclusive with many of the others. So those who may hold arguably inclusive views with regard to, say, immigration, or LGBT equality, are apt to be viral excluders when it comes to, say, the "47%" of so-called "takers not makers." It's a weird world indeed where cynical paper-pushers who produce primarily "deals" that don't produce anything except big profits for themselves and their cronies are considered "makers" while people who do the actual work in our society are dismissed as "takers."

A favorite GOP-apologist theme, for example, is that they're victimized as the perpetrators of a "so-called" War on Women. But again, the best way to answer such objections is to stop waging war on women. During the 2012 campaign, for example, when R's found themselves stuck with the obscenely frothing abortion imbecilities of Senate nominees Todd Akin (Missouri) and Richard Mourdock (Indiana), Howie and I pointed out frequently that there was no difference whatsoever between their beliefs about abortion and the law and those of right-wing darling Paul Ryan. But Ryan, unlike the neanderthal Akin and Mourdock, knows how to put a smiley face on his ignorance and savagery.

If Akin or Mourdock were to try whistling a happy tune, the effect would be creepy. (I think it's important, thought, that we not ignore their pre-2012 electoral successes. They were every bit as creepy before, just not as indiscreet, or perhaps more important, no so brightly spotlit when they were being creepy.) To me, Paul Ryan and the less visibly crackpotty R's are even creepier when they pretend to be wise or just or courageous.

#

Because Just One Todd Akin In The Senate GOP Circus Isn't Enough?

The Republican War Against Women is gearing up in the final thrust towards November. Let me just say from the outset that Claire McCaskill (D-MO) is the worst incumbent Senate Democrat running for reelection and that Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN) is easily the worst House Democrat hoping to get into the Senate. Both vote with the Republicans on crucial issues as a matter of course. Both are cowardly, craven, corporate oriented... the worst the Democratic Party has to offer. There's no circumstance I would vote for either, regardless of how horrible their opponent was. And in both cases, their opponent is vile and contemptible beyond anything currently in the Senate, one of the most vile and contemptible institutions in America.

Let's not go over the "legitimate rape" controversy that swirled around Akin last month, or the arrest record that showed him involved with an anti-woman terrorist group that physically blocked women's health clinics. The newest news is in Indiana, coincidentally the state where the KKK once grew to even more prominence and power than it did in any state in the South. Like Akin, Richard Mourdock was favored to win a Senate seat in November. Like Akin, his psychotic hatred for women has bubbled over in such a way that he may actually propel and nearly equally reactionary Democrat into the Senate. Mourdock, a far, far right radical, who swamped mainstream conservative Richard Lugar, in the GOP primary, told a debate audience Tuesday that although he opposes rape per se, he also opposes women being allowed to abort a fetus if she is raped because the resulting child is "something God intended." Let that sink in for a minute. Or watch him say it in the video above and contemplate the ramifications of something like this in the already dysfunctional Senate.

Romney put out a tepid statement of disagreement: "Gov. Romney disagrees with Richard Mourdock's comments, and they do not reflect his views," but has-- so far-- refused to withdraw his endorsement of Mourdock the way he withdrew his endorsement of Akin. Former Gov. Christie Todd Whitman (R-NJ) says Romney has to unendorse Mourdock or at least get him to stop running the endorsement ad. "Mourdock's comments damage all Republicans and especially Romney as the fight for the women's vote intensifies. This could be a defining moment for Romney and he should immediately denounce both Mourdock and the comment." The NRSC has also made it clear that they're sticking with Mourdock, although they had followed Romney into an anti-Akin posture. Patty Murray, head of the DSCC wasn't letting the GOP get off the hook so easily. "While Mitt Romney is rightly distancing himself from Richard Mourdock today, his ad endorsing Mourdock's extreme candidacy continues to air in Indiana. If Mitt Romney is serious about repudiating these heinous views on rape, he will take down this ad immediately. National Republicans cannot paper over Richard Mourdock's heinous views on rape. Enough is enough. The Republican Party needs to stop the coddling and take a stand against the horribly offensive and dangerous views of the Tea Party and their extreme candidates."

It's ironic that it may be Choice that sinks the polarizing extremist Mourdock (and the GOP's hopes of taking over the Senate)-- since Donnelly is a fanatic anti-Chopice freak himself and has been a dependable vote against Choice for the entire time he was in the House. His ProgressivePunch score on Family Planning issues over his entire congressional career is 14.29, one of the lowest of the Democrats and lower than several Republicans. After the debate, Donnelly realized he had a winning issue with which to clobber Mourdock and told reporters, "I think rape is a heinous and violent crime in every instance. The God I believe in and the God I know most Hoosiers believe in, does not intend for rape to happen-- ever. What Mr. Mourdock said is shocking, and it is stunning that he would be so disrespectful to survivors of rape."

And what about anti-Choice fanatic Paul Ryan, who has partnered with Akin on several misogynistic bills and has campaigned with Mourdock? Ryan, who has himself referred to rape as "a method of conception," has been consistently against exceptions for rape and incest. Rob Zerban, the progressive running against Ryan for Congress, issued a statement castigating Ryan for his anti-Choice mania. “Of course, Paul Ryan will keep backing away from the dark corners of his party from where these disturbing comments about rape and violence against women are emanating. But Ryan can't back off their shared anti-women worldview. Ryan himself has called rape just another 'method of conception,' and co-authored the infamous Todd Akin bill to redefine rape. Ryan can no longer duck responsibility for his extreme views against women's most basic rights.”

If I lived in Indiana or Missouri I wouldn't vote for Senate-- and I'd try to think of a way of moving. And I'd think about helping the rest of the country stop Paul Ryan.

Why the heck SHOULDN'T loyal GOP-ers support Missouri crackpot Todd Akin? They all believe the same things

"The National Republican Senatorial Committee issued a statement Wednesday clarifying its support for Rep. Todd Akin in the Missouri Senate race and suggesting it might spend money to help elect him, after saying a month ago that it would not do so."

-- the start of an Aaron Blake report this afternoon
on washingtonpost.com's "The Fix"

by Ken

Aaron Blake's report continues:

“There is no question that for Missourians who believe we need to stop the reckless Washington spending, rein-in the role of government in people’s lives, and finally focus on growing jobs in this country, that Todd Akin is a far more preferable candidate than liberal Sen. Claire McCaskill,” NRSC executive director Rob Jesmer said. “As with every Republican Senate candidate, we hope Todd Akin wins in November, and we will continue to monitor this race closely in the days ahead.”

The NRSC said after Akin’s controversial comments about “legitimate rape” last month thatit would not spend money on his behalf this fall. The hope at the time was that the threat would force Akin out of the race and Republicans could replace him with a more electable nominee.

It didn’t work, though, and the deadline for Akin to exit the race passed Tuesday. That means he will now officially appear on the ballot and Republicans have to deal with the situation as it stands.

Asked to clarify whether it might spend money on Akin, the committee declined to comment, citing a desire not to broadcast its strategy.

Establishment Republicans generally believe that the race is lost, but polling has shown that Akin trails McCaskill only by single digits, and other Republicans have suggested they might still have a chance to win the seat.

And really, when you get right down to it, the only reason for Republican officialdom not to support Akin would be if they've concluded that he can't win, and McCaskill's support going into her reelection bid has always been shaky enough that such a conclusion doesn't seem likely to be concluded anytime soon.

It's not exactly news that the American public has a short attention span, and all too predictably the heat on Akin has eased since the embarrassing intersection of his victory in the Missouri Republican Senate primary and his colossally ignorant and insane blithering about rape. As a lot of us suspected at the time of that hoo-ha, it was only the acute awkwardness of being associated with Akin that was driving state and national Republicans to scamper away from him as fast as they could.

It certainly wasn't because they disagreed with anything Akin said -- as we and others have pointed out frequently, conservative saint Paul Ryan has a position on rape that is absolutely identical -- allowing for the infelicitousness of that phrase "legitimate rape." But as anyone with a working brain had to understand, Akin didn't mean by that that he condoned the category of rapes he was so characterizing; on the contrary, those so-called "forcible rapes" are the only kind he believes are real rapes, and because he's a mental and moral tiny tot, the way he expressed his idea of "real" rapes was as "legitimate" ones.

We mustn't forget that for right-wing degenerates like Akin and PRyan, nearly all rapes are "unreal," or in their vocabulary "illegitimate" rapes, as in "there oughtta be a law against them slutty bitches who's all askin' fer it." When it comes to these perverts, there appears to be truly no limit to their loathing and contempt for women. What they're really saying is that with only occasional exceptions -- the "legitimate" ones -- there's no such thing as rape; it's just what the filthy harlots use as an excuse for having sex, or for having had sex.

Bear in mind that in the Great Abortion Debate as framed by degenerates of the Ryan-Akin school, the issue has been reduced to why there there should be an exception to a blanket prohibition on abortion, including cases of rape and incest. Right-wingers cultivated their passion for lies and hypocrisy by pretending that their opinion that life begins at conception is just that: their opinion, one that can be both defended and disputed. But because they have taken unto themselves a theocratic delusion that their opinion is fact and their right to impose their opinions on other people absolute, they have been allowed to pervert our basic democratic institutions.

The most grotesque irony is that the anti-abortion zealots, who are by and large amont the most blood-thirsty people on the planet, who have not the slightest interest in protecting or supporting life beyond the instant of birth. The non-moron contingent of the die-hard anti-abortion crowd has to know that abortion will always be available to people who can afford to take care of their women's "problems," and that those who can't, who can no doubt be located among the taking-not-making 47 percent, and therefore deserve what they get, will either give birth to unwanted children, whom the abortion foes will never lift a finger to help, or else will subject themselves to the possible butchery of illegal abortions.

Personally, I'm prepared to believe that perverts like Alom and PRyan experience a slobbering delight in the image of poor and probably "ethnic" women being butchered which is as close as they get to sexual pleasure.

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Why Hasn't Anyone Done A Reality Show About Congress Yet? Or Did I Miss It?

I had a wonderful dinner last night with a former Republican congressman. He's still a Republican-- a relatively enlightened one--but he's no longer a congressman, although he could be again someday. What a delightful and erudite guy... and so chock full of stories that I hope I can remember and relate to everyone as time passes. Like this one...

It's late summer, 1998. Clinton is presidente and Newt is Speaker. Clinton has signed a not very substantive bill prohibiting discriminating against federal workers because of their sexual orientation. (Remember Joe McCarthy is long dead and no one has tried this since... but Clinton had to give the gays something after he inflicted DOMA and DADT on the country.) But the religious right went berserk, as they tend to. And back then one of the crazier of their pet members was a Colorado sociopath named Joel Hefley. He proposed an amendment to the Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations bill that was meant to roll back Clinton's meager pro-equality policy. My dinner partner went charging into Gingrich's office, past startled and unhappy flunkies, and demanded Gingrich stop what he was doing to talk with him about Hefley. They argued but eventually Gingrich agreed to force Hefley to withdraw the offensive amendment. And then our hero, said, "No, don't... we'll beat him on the floor tomorrow." And they did. 63 Republicans joined 188 Democrats to defeat the hateful and bigoted amendment. It went down 252-176. Of course 15 homophobic and reactionary Democrats, mostly Blue Dogs, voted with the GOP. Several of the Blue Dogs subsequently became Republicans, as Blue Dogs eventually do, and most of the rest were subsequently defeated or retired; the only ones who are still in Congress today who voted for the amendment are Ralph Hall (now a Republican), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC) and Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN). Many Republican bigots who voted for Hefley's amendment are still in Congress today-- and still voting against equality for he LGBT community. Among those who are vulnerable to defeat in November are Charlie Bass (R-NH), Buck McKeon (R-CA), Joe Pitts (R-PA), and Ed Royce (R-CA). If you want to help their opponents this year, you'll find Ann Kuster, Lee Rogers, Aryanna Strader and Jay Chen here on this page. And by the way, most of the GOP closet queens in the House at the time voted NO, except Lindsay Graham (R-SC). So who's the hero of which I speak? Get ready... Mark Foley. Long time DWT readers might find that somewhat ironic. But, on the other hand, we had lots to talk about.

Unlike right-wing extremists Rick Santorum, Roy Blunt and Jim DeMint who endorsed him this morning, Rep. Foley is no fan of Todd Akin-- who once offered to "cure" him-- and something happened to Akin yesterday that is also an important piece of the Mark Foley puzzle, a piece I have written about before but a piece no one has ever been in the slightest bit interested in. It's about the important date a toxic candidate can no longer withdraw from an election, or at least a date on which the candidate's name will be on the ballot no matter what happens. Dead candidates have been on the ballot because of that and, as long as we're discussing a Missouri Senate seat, a candidate for that, Gov. Mel Carnahan died in a plane crash on October 16, 2000 and was elected to the U.S. Senate three weeks later, beating unhinged right-wing fanatic and incumbent John Ashcroft. Anyway, yesterday at 5pm, the deadline passed for Todd Akin-- Claire McCaskill's handpicked candidate-- to get off the ballot. He's widely viewed as unelectable, generally because he's deranged and insane and specifically because of that whole "legitimate rape" thing. Even if Karl Rove has him murdered-- as he threatened to do and as he probably did to Paul Wellstone-- Akin would still be on the ballot in November. Claire McCaskill has been such a pitifully mediocre senator that it would have been inconceivable she could have been reelected unless someone as bad as Akin were her opponent.

Now, back to Foley. Back in 2006 Blue America was backing a hardworking grassroots school teacher against Foley, who was one of the better-financed Republicans, a guy who was well-known and well-liked in his district. Our school teacher, Dave Lutrin, had little money and less chance to beat Foley, although with Foley there was always the chance that something would happen to out him as a closeted homosexual. It shocked me when Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer went nuclear on Lutrin and forced him out of the race. I'd seen them do similar things to progressives candidates, but never in a district where it didn't matter. I mean, why play so dirty when Foley was going to win anyway? But dirty it was-- they dried up all Lutrin's support and cash and literally forced him out of the race. And why? Rahm had found his favorite kind of candidate, a sleazy, corrupt conservative Republican who was willing to change his registration-- the way Patrick Murphy recently did to run in the same district by the way-- but only if Rahm and Hoyer could guarantee there would be no primary. Tim Mahoney was that Republican and he switched parties and started bragging to everyone that he would win because a huge scandal was going to break that would destroy Foley. He knew. He knew because Rahm told him. The problem is that knew for over a year but instead of moving to protect the congressional pages, Rahm moved to use the information for partisan gain-- and the hell with the pages. If they were in danger, he didn't give a damn. That's Rahm, always the sociopath and narcissist. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, needless to say, was in on this caper as well. Everyone sat tight on the info and they broke the story the day after it was too late for Foley-- who immediately resigned his seat (September 29, 2006) under threat of expulsion from Denny Hastert-- to get his name off the ballot. What a coincidence, huh?

Mahoney ran, as a Democrat, against Foley's name (with some other poor schnook explaining that if voters voted for the "child molester" he-- the schnook-- would get the seat. It actually almost worked! Mahoney won with 49% while "Foley" got 48%, 3% going to an independent. In Congress Mahoney promptly joined the Blue Dog caucus, set about compiling a corporately-funded campaign chest, a quasi-Republican voting record-- and a sex scandal to rival Foley's. He lost his re-election bid and a pathetic Republican zombie, Tom Rooney, replaced him after one pathetic term. Rahm Emanuel's greatest hit!

Monday I got to ask Foley if he knew. Did he ever! 

How Funny Would It Be If Someone Joked About Shooting Karl Rove In The Head With An AK-47?

I'm not asking you to contemplate whether or not Rove deserves to be shot in the head or not, just if publicly joking about murdering him would be funny. Rove was not prosecuted for the raft of crimes he committed while he worked for Bush and now he's working with Organized Crime elements and skirting lax campaign finance laws to put together hundreds of millions of dollars in dark money-- some of it coming from overseas enemies of the U.S.-- to defeat President Obama and win majorities in both Houses of Congress. But, like I said, I'm not asking if he deserves to be shot down like a mad, rabid dog in the street. But now that he's joked-- in front of organized crime figures who he works with-- that he'd like to see Rep. Todd Akin killed... well is that funny? Will the Secret Service have to start protecting the Missouri congressman and his family?

Rove had no idea he was being recorded when he made his threat. But a reporter had managed to get into a secretive event he held for big donors to his shady PAC on the last day of the GOP convention in Tampa. It was a breakfast for "about 70 of the Republican party’s highest-earning and most powerful donors. During the more than hour-long session, Rove explained to an audience dotted with hedge fund billionaires and investors-- including John Paulson and Wilbur Ross-- how his super PAC, American Crossroads, will persuade undecided voters in crucial swing states to vote against Barack Obama. He also detailed plans for Senate and House races, and joked, 'We should sink Todd Akin. If he’s found mysteriously murdered, don’t look for my whereabouts!'”

The purpose, of course was for Rove to beg the right-wing billionaires and multimillionaires for more money. (It doesn't all go up on TV. He reportedly gets a very hefty cut of every nickel contributed, enough to make him a wealthy man many times over.)

The morning began with an address about the urgency of defeating Obama by Florida’s Republican Senator Marco Rubio. Crossroads Chief Executive Officer Steven Law followed and introduced some of the super PAC’s staff, referring to general counsel Tom Josefiak as “the guy who keeps us from ever having to wear orange jumpsuits.”

Then came the main event: Rove, joined by former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, laid out his strategy for winning the White House. “The people we’ve got to win in this election, by and large, voted for Barack Obama,” Rove said, in a soothing, professorial tone, explaining why the campaign hadn’t launched more pointed attacks on the president’s character.

Rove explained that Crossroads had conducted extensive focus groups and shared polling and focus group data with “all the major groups that are playing” in the election. “As many of you know, one of the most important things about Crossroads is: We don’t try and do this alone. We have partners,” he said. “The Kochs-- you name it.”

What had emerged from that data is an “acute understanding of the nature of those undecided, persuadable” voters. “If you say he’s a socialist, they’ll go to defend him. If you call him a ‘far out left-winger,’ they’ll say, ‘no, no, he’s not.’” The proper strategy, Rove declared, was criticizing Obama without really criticizing him-- by reminding voters of what the president said that he was going to do and comparing it to what he’s actually done. “If you keep it focused on the facts and adopt a respectful tone, then they’re gonna agree with you.”

In Rove’s estimation, things are going well. “Barack Obama unleashed hell on our candidate on May 15,” he said. “Between May 15 and July 31st, he spent $111 million on ads out of his campaign war chest, and there was about another $17, $18 million spent by outside groups. The day that this started, the Gallup poll was 45-45. On the 31st of July, it was 46-46.”

“We spent-- outside groups spent $110 million and Romney spent $42 million,” Rove continued. “So the bad guys [Democrats] spent $130 million and the good guys [Republicans] spent $152 million, and our money didn’t go as far as theirs because we couldn’t buy at the lowest unit rate. Really, it was sort of roughly equivalent, and we fought it to a draw.” And that, Rove pointed out, was after a brutal Republican primary. “We have to keep in mind whose vote we’re trying to get-- it ain’t the delegate from Alaska. It’s not the alternate from Alabama. It’s some undecided voter in the battleground state who likes the president.”

Rove spoke almost exclusively about defeating Barack Obama and retaking control of the White House. There was sparse praise for Mitt Romney-- either as a candidate or as a future leader and policy maker.

One of the few Romney mentions was by Haley Barbour, who jumped in to explain how Democrats hoped to define the nominee: “You know, ‘Romney is a vulture capitalist who doesn’t care about the likes of you. He doesn’t even know people like you-- he’ll lay you off, cancel your insurance, shit jobs. He’s a plutocrat. Married to a known equestrian!”

...Rove’s analysis of the Senate races was technical and masterly. The Republicans need four seats to gain a majority, and Rove said he feels “really good” about Nebraska and is optimistic about North Dakota, even though Democrats have a strong candidate in former state Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp. “We’re deeply engaged” there, Rove said. In Wisconsin, former Governor Tommy Thompson “has an excellent shot to win-- he has a quirky, cross-party appeal.” Virginia is going to be tight and will likely mirror the way the state votes in the presidential race. Of those, Rove declared, “we can win three.”

In Connecticut, Rove noted that Linda McMahon, the former head of World Wrestling Entertainment, whom he had once written off, was running a “really smart campaign.” And the state, he noted, had moved more to the right. “Those affluent, socially liberal, economically conservative people in Fairfield County and the New York suburbs have finally figured out that their pocketbooks matter more than abortion.”

There are six Republican incumbents Rove identified as in jeopardy, but the biggest risk to Republican hopes of retaking the Senate is Todd Akin in Missouri, following his comments about “legitimate rape.” Rove urged every attendee to apply pressure on Akin to convince him to leave the race. “We have five people who are interested” in replacing Akin, Rove said. “We don’t care who the nominee is, other than get Akin out.”

Just to get the “juices flowing” of the billionaires in the room, Rove shared a little anecdote. Someone he described as a “benefactor” [widely believed to be Mafia thug and agent of China, Sheldon Adelson] had recently contacted him, offering to donate $10 million to be deployed in Florida-- $5 million for Republican Congressman Connie Mack’s Senate race against incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson and $5 million for the presidential race. But the donor placed two conditions on the money. One, his donation had to be matched by other donors. And two, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush had to start making phone calls on their behalf. Rove paused for effect and announced: “Jeb’s making phone calls for us!” The crowd erupted.

American Crossroads’ total budget, Rove said, was $300 million, with $200 million of it for the presidential race, $70 million for the Senate, and $32 million for the House.

Want to help combat Rove and the billionaires? You can contribute to progressive Senate candidates here and to progressive House candidates here. Oh... and Rove called and apologized for threatening to murder Akin. Rachel had the story last night:

That Akin Thing...

... It just won't go away. The first day of the Republican Convention lasted 5 seconds, as RNC Chair Reince Priebus-- fresh from an ass-whooping by Chris Matthews on national TV-- gaveled it open and then shut it down, as Republicans trembled in their rooms because it was a little windy in Tampa. And the ones who weren't trembling, were plotting. Apparently Chris Christie, well aware Romney is likely to lose in November-- is trying to position himself as the GOP front runner for 2016.

Right after Priebus opened proceedings today by announcing that the man who's run the country for the last three plus years "hasn't even run a garage sale or seen the inside of a lemonade stand," he got into another childish tit-for-tat with Todd Akin, his party's Missouri Senate nominee. “He could be tied,” Priebus told conservative bloggers Ben Howe and Chris Loesch, "we’re not gonna send him a penny.” Todd's son, Perry Akin-- wouldn't it be great if he was named Belly instead?-- shot back “Reince Priebus’ comments are extremely dissappointing [sic]." He claims the mantle of freedom, liberty and the good of America, but this betrays his apparent personal vendetta against Todd Akin. He is putting party power and political games ahead of the good of the country.” Perry's his dad's campaign manager.

Meanwhile, the Akin "thing" hangs over the convention like a pall, as though all those balloons they dropped could have been dead, stinking skunks. Manu Raju reported yesterday that the Missouri delegates are freaking out... and blame Romney for the mess, which isn't going to impact his own win in that increasingly red state but is likely to keep a very winnable seat in the hands of the Democrats' weakest and most pathetic incumbent, Claire McCaskill.

Missouri GOP delegates are rejecting the heavy-handed push by Mitt Romney and national Republicans to boot Todd Akin from their state’s Senate race, revealing a split among Republicans that could imperil the party’s effort to take back the chamber in the fall campaign.

In interviews with Politico, delegates argued that Akin could still win the race in the conservative state, pushing back against the notion that his remarks on rape were a death blow to his Senate candidacy. Several delegates here in Tampa seemed angry at the national party, saying the decision to withhold millions of dollars in campaign funding is the real impediment in their effort to oust Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in November.

“Absolutely,” said John Putnam of Carthage, Mo., when asked if he was disappointed at Romney for demanding that Akin exit the race. “I think he needs to rescind that, retract that. I think [RNC Chairman] Reince Priebus and [Sen.] Roy Blunt and all the people need to support the candidate that the folks from Missouri nominated and picked in the primary.

“I think the GOP party bosses that are trying to drum him out are creating a bigger split in the party than Todd Akin is,” said Putnam, head of the Jasper County Republican Central Committee.

Putnam wasn’t alone. At a breakfast meeting of Missouri delegates here in Tampa, a number were sporting “Akin for Senate” stickers and stood strongly behind the six-term congressman’s decision to stay in the race. The support of the state-level Missouri Republicans for Akin undermines the unified front that the rest of the Republican Party-- from Romney down to conservative pundits-- has tried to show in urging Akin to quit.

“I think there’s disappointment that they would disengage from a candidate that was elected by the people decisively,” said Vernon Harms, a Missouri delegate. “I think they made a mistake.”

“I think honestly that’s shameful. The party should not throw him under the bus simply because he made a misstatement,” said Mitch Hubbard of Fulton, Mo. “I think Mitt Romney should have focused on his race. … Todd Akin will win his race because of the support he has.”

“I really wish they had been a little more circumspect and had given him the courtesy of letting him explain and apologize,” said Beverly Martin of Fulton, Mo. “As I told my friend, Democrats don’t eat their own.”

...[N]ot all Republicans in the congressional delegation are ready to abandon Akin. First-term Rep. Billy Long, who represents the conservative southwestern portion of the state, said Akin was the party’s candidate, whom he planned to support.

“The people of Missouri voted for him, and he’s our guy,” Long told Politico. “And either you’re for Todd Akin and I’m not for Claire McCaskill. … He’s been an underdog his whole life, he won a lot of races he wasn’t supposed to win, so I think he can win.”

In light of the revelations that Romney refused to allow Ron Paul to speak-- even at Paul's own video tribute celebration-- unless he allowed them to script him, no one thinks Huckabee will get up on stage and talk about how Romney and Ryan betrayed the conservative movement by throwing Akin under the bus. But the whispering campaign is well underway. But this morning The Hill reported that the far right of the party is plenty pissed off that Romney's establishment types are trying to squeeze them out of the decision making processes for the future. [Note: When The Hill uses the word "conservatives," they imply Romney and Ryan and the establishment are something other than conservative, which is insane. Just substitute either the word "fascist" or psychotic right-wing extremist" every time you see "conservative" pop up and you'll be fine.]

Some conservatives are not satisfied with a proposed deal to avoid a fight on the convention floor over Republican Party rules for future presidential primaries.

Disgruntled conservatives say the proposed rules changes are an effort by inside-the-Beltway consultants and party leaders to wrest influence away from grassroots activists.

Conservatives on the convention rules committee are trying to round up 28 signatures in support of an effort to abolish the proposed changes. If 28 rules committee members-- about 25 percent of the panel-- sign the petition, it could lead to a roll-call vote on the convention floor on the issue. A roll-call vote would also need to receive support from six state delegations. ...A floor fight over the contentious issue of delegate rules in future primaries could distract from the central project of officially nominating Mitt Romney to take on President Obama in November.

...The changes are being championed by Ben Ginsberg, a high-profile Washington-based election lawyer who is representing Romney’s campaign.

Conservatives believe Ginsberg is supporting the agenda of powerful political consultants and insiders.

“The guy who pushed these obnoxious changes was one of two members from the District of Columbia. His name is Ben Ginsberg. Earlier this year he was employed by the Michele Bachmann campaign and now he represents himself as representing the Romney campaign and he is doing things which are vigorously opposed by conservatives. Ben Ginsberg is a man unencumbered by principal,” Blackwell said.

Blackwell has served on GOP convention rules committees since 1988.

Drew McKissick, a rules committee member from South Carolina, said he remains unsatisfied with proposed changes to delegate and primary rules.

He said the proposed reforms would weaken the disincentive for states with winner-take-all primaries to move their primary dates to early March, diminishing South Carolina’s influence in choosing future nominees.

He said another proposal to empower the Republican National Committee to change its rules in-between conventions would marginalize grassroots conservatives.

“There’s a proposed Rule 12 which would in effect give the RNC the ability to change its rules in-between national conventions, a power they never had before, and that ruins the influence of the grassroots, of conservatives,” he said. “It would make the RNC a battleground for future presidential campaigns because everyone would start to try to jockey for influence on the committee to try to rig the rules in their favor for the next campaign, and we’re not going to have that either.”

...Under current rules, states that hold primaries before April must assign their delegates proportionally, a safeguard against a frontloaded presidential primary schedule. States that move their primaries to March have less influence because their delegates get split among candidates. ... Blackwell said the Virginia delegation was “extremely angry” over a third proposed change that would empower a presidential candidate to disavow delegates from a state he or she won-- thereby allowing candidates, and not voters, the power to pick delegates.

DCCC Shows A Sign Of Life

I can't count the number of posts I've done about the DCCC. I can count the number I've done that were complimentary... on the fingers of one hand. And one of my biggest beefs with them is how they consistently refuse-- what whatever reason-- to take on any Republican leaders of committee chairmen. Republicans always go after senior Democrats and regularly knock off senior committee chairs-- the in 2010 when they took out the chairmen of the Budget Committee, the Armed Services Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. This year the Republican chairs of all three of those committees are vulnerable and could be beaten by Democrats, particularly Paul Ryan (Budget) and Buck McKeon (Armed Services). Obama won both districts in 2008 and both districts have extremely good Democratic candidates this cycle, Rob Zerban against Ryan in Wisconsin and Dr. Lee Rogers against McKeon in California. But the DCCC has shown as much interest in taking on these two Republican galoots as they ever have-- in other words, none whatsoever.

Until today. They're still ignoring the CA-25 race pitting Rogers against McKeon, despite the fact that the utterly out-of-touch McKeon is enmeshed in a serious of scandals that has roiled his L.A. area district. But they have made a tiny move in the direction of showing a modicum of support for Zerban. He's still not on their Red-to-Blue list (which signals big Democratic donors that it's OK to contribute to his campaign) but when picking 20 Democratic challengers to help with anti-Ryan robo-calls they actually decided to run some in Ryan's own district! It isn't much, but it's a step in the right direction and I am determined not to denigrate Steve Israel once in this post or for a period of at least 24 hours (starting yesterday). Even the Washington Post seemed shocked to see them include Zerban in their anti-Ryan attack. "Among the targeted Republicans is Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who faces Democrat Rob Zerban in November, but is still leading in polls in his southeastern Wisconsin district."

The DCCC website explains that they launched "new automated phone calls to expose 20 vulnerable House Republicans for their extreme agenda that they share with Congressman Todd Akin."

At the Republican National Convention in Tampa this week, Republicans will include the Akin-plank in their platform that would ban a woman's right to choose with no exceptions for rape, incest or if the life of the mother is at risk.

Instead of creating jobs, Republicans in Congress have pursued a relentless assault on women's rights-- trying to redefine rape, close down Planned Parenthood, and overturn Roe v. Wade.

"The problem for House Republicans isn't what one of their Members said, it's what many of Republicans believe and do-- support an extreme agenda that limits health care access for women," said DCCC Communications Director Jesse Ferguson. "Voters will hold Republicans accountable for the rest of this campaign for sharing some of Congressman Akin’s extreme beliefs and now making the latest attack on women's rights part of the official platform for Republican candidates."

In a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released last week, 54 percent of voters believe Republican candidates are “out of step” while only 38 percent believe they’re in the main stream.

An example of an automated phone call in Congressman Mike Coffman’s (CO-06) district follows:

Hello. This is Julie calling from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.  By now, I’m sure you’ve heard Congressman Todd Akin’s unbelievable comments about rape and his outrageous beliefs about women’s rights.

You know what’s even more worrisome? He’s not alone.

Republicans like your Congressman Mike Coffman share some of these radical, right-wing beliefs-- that the government should take away a woman’s access to making informed decisions about her own pregnancy.

It’s outrageous. This week, Congressman Coffman’s Republican Party platform will include a plank that says no to a woman’s right to choose without any exceptions even in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is at risk.

If you’re tired of this right-wing social agenda from Congressman Todd Akin and Congressman Coffman then call him now at (720) 283-9772.

Coffman's opponent is progressive state legislator Joe Miklosi. Most of the candidates the DCCC is helping with these robocalls are just standard New Dems and but, aside from Miklosi and Zerban, they're also doing some good for Ann Kuster and... and... oh, that's it for the progressives. Better than what they usually do. When they do one of these deals for Lee Rogers (or Patsy Keever, Sue Thorn, Nate Shinagawa, Wayne Powell, Aryanna Strader, Syed Taj or Jay Chen) I'll eat my hat... figuratively. Anyway, this seems like a more effective way to get the message across:

Even Without A Direct Hit From Isaac, Romney Has His Hands Full

This thing doesn't look like the Unity Convention Romney desperately needs it to be. Last night's David Brooks column in the NY Times-- he's their conservative guy-- was like a harbinger of bad tidings for Romney. The fake bio is probably not Romney's idea of a joke-- not like asking for Obama's passport.

Mitt Romney was born on March 12, 1947, in Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Virginia and several other swing states. He emerged, hair first, believing in America, and especially its national parks. He was given the name Mitt, after the Roman god of mutual funds, and launched into the world with the lofty expectation that he would someday become the Arrow shirt man.

Romney was a precocious and gifted child. He uttered his first words (“I like to fire people”) at age 14 months, made his first gaffe at 15 months and purchased his first nursery school at 24 months. The school, highly leveraged, went under, but Romney made 24 million Jujubes on the deal.

Mitt grew up in a modest family. His father had an auto body shop called the American Motors Corporation, and his mother owned a small piece of land, Brazil. He had several boyhood friends, many of whom owned Nascar franchises, and excelled at school, where his fourth-grade project, “Inspiring Actuaries I Have Known,” was widely admired.

...Romney is also a passionately devoted family man. After streamlining his wife’s pregnancies down to six months each, Mitt helped Ann raise five perfect sons-- Bip, Chip, Rip, Skip and Dip-- who married identically tanned wives. Some have said that Romney’s lifestyle is overly privileged, pointing to the fact that he has an elevator for his cars in the garage of his San Diego home. This is not entirely fair. Romney owns many homes without garage elevators and the cars have to take the stairs.

After a successful stint at Bain, Romney was lured away to run the Winter Olympics, the second most Caucasian institution on earth, after the G.O.P. He then decided to run for governor of Massachusetts. His campaign slogan, “Vote Romney: More Impressive Than You’ll Ever Be,” was not a hit, but Romney won the race anyway on an environmental platform, promising to make the state safe for steeplechase.

After his governorship, Romney suffered through a midlife crisis, during which he became a social conservative. This prepared the way for his presidential run. He barely won the 2012 Republican primaries after a grueling nine-month campaign, running unopposed. At the convention, where his Secret Service nickname is Mannequin, Romney will talk about his real-life record: successful business leader, superb family man, effective governor, devoted community leader and prudent decision-maker. If elected, he promises to bring all Americans together and make them feel inferior.

At least no one expects Mike Huckabee to use his prime time speaking slot tomorrow right before Condoleeza Rice for a Mount Carmel Moment on behalf of Todd Akin, who he feels has been wronged. He wouldn't dare cast the Mormon in the role of Baal... would he? Well, he did tell a coven of radical right Baptist preachers that “I’ve never seen an effort like what I’ve seen this week with party leaders coming together expressly for the purpose of taking one of their own wounded soldiers on the battlefield-- and instead of coming to get him off the field and to the hospital-- basically opening up rounds and rounds of fire on him, and then running over him with the tanks of the trucks, leaving him to be ravaged by the wolves of the other side.” He was talking about, among others Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, NRSC Chair John Cornyn, RNC Chair Reince Priebus and Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, among others.

But I sense Huckabee is trying to calm the waters a little. I don't know if he still can, especially not with the other side-- the Country Club Establishment-- still working hard to undermine Akin and force him out of the race. Over the weekend Mary Matalin told ABC News that the Establishment would run a write-in candidate of their own and screw Akin over completely. "We are going to win Missouri and Wagner is going to be our candidate," the former Cheney flack told George Stephanapolous. "The party is going to get Ann Wagner in... Or we’ll run a third party, we’ll run a write-in. We can do it. We have the money to do it. We are going to transfer the money. It’s not as easy. But it’s a good state for Romney and we will get it back." Can Huckabee defuse that kind of derangement?

“Today, the rhetoric was dramatically dialed back,” he said. “You did not see the NRSC, the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, coming out with the kind of harsh statements because they’ve dialed it back. They’ve assured me that they will no longer be threatening the business of some of the vendors in politics and telling them that if they do anything to help Todd, they’d be blackballed and not get any business.

“That kind of stuff’s been going on, and I told these people yesterday that I talked to: That’s got to stop. It can’t continue. That’s what union goons do: breaking people’s kneecaps when you cross a line. And Todd Akin has done nothing but make a mistake for which he has roundly repudiated the comment and apologized. There’s nothing else he can do.”

The NRSC went on record to say Huckabee made up the whole thing and that "no one at the NRSC has even spoken with the governor this week.” Huckabee later admitted he lied but excused lying because his lies were "on my own forums of radio and to the people who choose to receive communications from me." OK. I think he'll make believe there's no such thing as Todd Akin on Wednesday night.

Another one of the kooks, John Yeats, said if David Vitter could survive his multiple prostitution scandals, Akin could weather his problems too. “David had been exposed for going places he shouldn’t have been going. And there were calls for him to step out, but he stayed by his campaign and restored his relationship with his wife. As I think about Congressman Akin, his quote, ‘transgression,’ was not nearly as vile as Vitter’s. So I think this thing is survivable. And beyond survivable, I still think he has a real shot at winning the race here in Missouri. One of the things we have to remind ourselves of and remind our people of is that Congressman Akin represents the mainstream of our values. He is the mainstream of our values.” A fellow Baptist preacher, David Baker, agreed that Akin had to stay in and fight: “We have a responsibility as prophets to speak out. One thing I know about Missouri Baptists is that we don’t like to be told what to do.” Akin is also a Baptist preacher.

So while the Romney folks deal with this insanity on the extreme right of the party-- a nasty fight Romney and Ryan have personally weighed in on-- and in a way that doesn't please the base-- on the more mainstream end of the party they already have a major defection. We're not talking about some desperate publicity hound like Artur Davis looking to get wingnut welfare... we're talking about former Republican Governor Charlie Crist. He endorsed Barack Obama... the day before the convention was due to start in his hometown. And he didn't just endorse Obama; he savaged his old party.

As Republicans gather in Tampa to nominate Mitt Romney, Americans can expect to hear tales of how President Obama has failed to work with their party or turn the economy around.

But an element of their party has pitched so far to the extreme right on issues important to women, immigrants, seniors and students that they've proven incapable of governing for the people. Look no further than the inclusion of the Akin amendment in the Republican Party platform, which bans abortion, even for rape victims.

The truth is that the party has failed to demonstrate the kind of leadership or seriousness voters deserve.

And then beyond the realm of right or left, there's the Ron Paul problem. Maine Governor Paul LePage is boycotting the convention-- some say because Romney laughed when he demanded a speaking slot, but he claims because of the shabby way Ron Paul is being treated. Romney wouldn't let him speak-- not even at his own video tribute Wednesday night!-- unless he endorsed the ticket... and allowed them to edit his speech. He refused both demands, saying he can't endorse Romney until he sees what he's hiding in his tax returns. As for letting the Romneybots have veto-power over what he says... “It wouldn’t be my speech,” Mr. Paul said. “That would undo everything I’ve done in the last 30 years. I don’t fully endorse him for president.”

Rape: The Ultimate Tyranny

-by Noah

Rape of the land. Rape of your 401K. Rape of Iraq. The desire to rape Iran. Rape of you. Rape of your whole class. Government sanctioned trans-vaginal violations. It’s no big deal, if you’re a Republican or some other malevolent conservative malignancy. What’s all the fuss? You won’t get pregnant if you’re raped anyway and if you do, you we’re probably, you know, asking for it, and you should spend the next nine months carrying the fetus to term because we might need another soldier on the front or another apple picker in the orchard. Rape is as Republican as a bottle of 1996 Chateau Margaux (If you have to ask how much, you probably don’t know a Koch brother, but the answer is $1,600).  
 
All this recent talk about Republican Rep. Todd Akin and his partner and co-sponsor VP nominee Paul Ryan and their light-hearted approach to rape has had me thinking about a post I wrote almost three years ago, in December of 2009, that dealt with the Senatorial aftermath of Jamie Leigh Jones’s charge of drugging and gang rape by KBR co-workers and ensuing abuse at a Halliburton/KBR Green Zone location in Iraq.

Jones was reportedly tossed into a shipping container, without food or water, bleeding and in dire need of medical treatment. How dare she ask for such things! She eventually lost her court case against KBR who enjoyed a significant amount of homecourt advantage in a Houston, TX court. The court even made her pay $145,000 in court costs after KBR called her suit frivolous and the locals on the jury decided against her. The court case was interesting from several angles and you can read about that in the linked Mother Jones piece from July of 2011. As is often the case, neither the plaintiff nor KBR came off well. Large parts of Jones’s case were tossed out by Judge Keith Ellison, a Clinton appointee, while KBR was allowed to raise questions about Jones’s credibility. It was a textbook case of putting the guilt on the victim, made worse by the fact that a single plaintiff can’t match the power of the platoon of lawyers that a large corporation can set against you. We’ve all seen this movie. There is no such thing as equal justice under the law.

The reaction in Congress, however, was interesting for a reason that goes beyond the individual merits of the case and how it played out. The reaction in the Senate is what got me thinking when the thoughts of Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin and Paul “Forcible Rape” Ryan surfaced this past week.
 
Freshman Senator Al Franken (D-MN) was inspired by the events surrounding Jones’s case to create a law that would prevent future plaintiffs from being blocked in their efforts to gain some measure of justice from an employer in a court of law. A key part of Jones’s case hinged on the legality (morality does not enter into the law) of an arbitration clause in her contract with KBR. It was a clause that was designed to prevent victims, alleged or otherwise from seeking justice in a court. KBR’s stance was that she had no such rights. Welcome to serfdom, 21st century style. You cannot only be be raped by your co-workers but, after that, your employer can take a turn. Jones fought the law and the law won.
 
Franken’s law, designed to enable a day in court for an alleged victim, was at least a partial or moral victory for justice. It does, however, have to be approved yearly as part of the Department of Defense appropriation process and corporate lobbyists will always fight mightily against it with stacks of nice green “campaign contributions."

The law passed in 2008 by a vote of 68 to 30. Guess which party has a pro-rape caucus that thinks that a woman alleging rape should have no day in court. In my post, I listed the 30 Senate members who would deny a person charging rape their day in court: Republicans all. Should we be surprised? It’s quite a list of ne’er do wells and total freaks, including none other than John McCain, a man who got his party’s nomination for President and a man who used the c-word to describe his own wife and, demonstratively had no problem telling rape jokes on the campaign trail. Hey, it’s all just good fun, heh, heh.



David Vitter? Ensign? ‘Nuff said.

• Alexander (R-TN)
• Barrasso (R-WY)
• Bond (R-MO)
• Brownback (R-KS)
• Bunning (R-KY)
• Burr (R-NC)
• Chambliss (R-GA)
• Coburn (R-OK)
• Cochran (R-MS)
• Corker (R-TN)
• Cornyn (R-TN)
• Crapo (R-ID)
• DeMint (R-SC)
• Ensign (R-NV)
• Enzi (R-WY)
• Graham (R-SC)
• Gregg (R-NH)
• Inhofe (R-OK)
• Isakson (R-ID)
• Johanns (R-NE)
• Kyl (R-AZ)
• McCain (R-AZ)
• McConnell (R-KY)
• Risch (R-ID)
• Roberts (R-KS)
• Sessions (KKK-AL)
• Shelby (R-AL)
• Thune (R-SD)
• Vitter (R-LA)
• Wicker (R-MS)

 Given that the case went against Jamie Leigh Jones, Franken’s law may not have a bright future as it comes up for its yearly vote. Will the Senate’s pro-rape caucus grow-- think Akin (MO), Connie Mack (FL), Tommy Thompson (WI), Denny Rehberg (MT), Jeff Flake (AZ), Ted Cruz (TX), Josh Mandel (OH), Rick Berg (ND)-- as time fades away and the cameras disappear? Most likely, yes. Will any of the Pro-Rape 30 change their votes? Never. It’s who they are; overgrown drunken fratboys who graduated from college after four years of raping coeds on pool tables, then, put on a suit to convey a phony air of respectability, and went to work in Washington after turning over enough rocks and selling out to any corporate bidder they could find.
 
Maybe sex and rape is one and the same to such inhuman and deranged minds. I don’t know. I am not a Republican. Republicans come from a different place than normally adjusted people. Republicans see women as décor or obstacles or merely utensils to greedy achievements, as are any “minority” or class that isn’t upper. KBR made a killing in Iraq and that was the goal of Iraq. War is the legalized rape of lands, of resources, of the people themselves. No wonder the Republicans always feel the need to start wars, whether necessary or not. Bush legalized the rape of Iraq and a lot of people got hurt along the way. Now they desire Iran. Lives be damned. It’s all the same. To the cigar-chompers, a cigar is so much more.
 
Republicans approach life with an Attila-the-Hun attitude. Sorry, Atilla, I didn’t mean to insult you. Bank rape. Corporate rape. Rape of women. Twisting the law to rape… Now, they give us concepts of “forcible rape” and “legitimate rape." One thing’s for sure. It is the victim who must be punished, or, at least has no rights. I feel that we are only minutes away from some Republican somewhere spouting the words “permissible rape."

Dean Baker asks, "Does Paul Ryan Know What's in His Budget?"

The folks at Center for American Progress Action Fund have produced a report that includes this infographic (click to enlarge it) showing, as The Progress Report put it today, "how much Romney and Ryan will rob your retirement to pay for new tax breaks for themselves."

"Does Representative Ryan really think it is a good idea to end the federal government's role in building and maintaining infrastructure, in financing education, in funding basic research in health care and other areas, in maintaining our national parks, federal courts, the FBI? His budget says that this is what he thinks . . . .

"If reporters do their job, they have a simple question to put to Mr. Ryan. 'Your budget would put an end to everything the government does, except for Social Security, health care and defense. Is this really what you want to do?' "

-- Dean Baker, in a recent post,
"Does Paul Ryan Know What's in His Budget?"

by Ken

I've been meaning all week to write about the post of economist Dean Baker's about Paul Ryan's so-called budget from which I've extracted the above quote, and I guess each time I tried to do it, I finally threw up my hands and figured what's the point? By now anyone who doesn't know that every word that comes out of Ryan's [thanks, John!] mouth is either a flat-out lie (either for his convenience, as when he's flip-flopping on matters like his worship of Ayn Rand, or in service to the 1%-ers who find him such a useful tool, as with his yeoman's service toward the dismantling of Social Security and Medicare) or an expression of ideological psychosis as extreme as anything that has ever been uttered in the American political circus either isn't paying attention or just doesn't want to know.

The famous Ryan budget, Dean writes,

implies that after three decades the federal government will have no money to spend on health research, education, highways, airports, and other infrastructure, the Food and Drug Administration and most other activities that we associate with the federal government. His budget has money for Social Security, Medicare and other health programs and the Defense Department. That's it. This is not a vicious anti-Ryan attack coming from hyper-partisan Democrats. This is what the analysis of his budget by the non-partisan CBO shows. It's right there in the fifth row of Table 2.The table shows that in 2040, Representative Ryan would allot an amount equal to 4.75 percent of GDP to all these other areas of government including defense spending. By 2050, Ryan's allocation for these areas, including defense, falls to 3.75 percent of GDP.

And as Dean goes to great lengths to demonstrate, walking us through the process that CBO goes through when asked for analysis by its employers, Congress, "CBO did not blindside Representative Ryan with a half-baked analysis they did in the middle of the night."

It is important to understand that CBO tried to accurately present the implications of the budget that Representative Ryan gave them. CBO works for Congress. These are career civil servants. They cannot be easily fired, but if CBO's staff deliberately misrepresented a budget proposal from a powerful member of Congress like Paul Ryan, that is the sort of thing that could get them put out on the street.

BUT WHAT ARE WE TO THINK WHEN A GUY WHO'S
BEEN WRITING A NYT COLUMN FOR UMPTEEN YEARS . . .

. . . says, in all apparent seriousness, "I don’t see how anybody can say that Ryan is unserious when, unlike most national pols, he actually has a budget detailed enough for C.B.O. to score."? Okay, the guy is David Brooks, who we know isn't bright, or well plugged into reality, but still, you figure that somewhere, somehow he's held to a certain minimum standard of factuality, but no, as Dean Baker had to explain in a Wednesday night post, that no, this isn't at all what PRyan did.

The CBO report explains at the top, Dean tells us, that the calculations prepared at the request of Representative Ryan --

do not represent a cost estimate for legislation or an analysis of the effects of any given policies. In particular, CBO has not considered whether the specified paths are consistent with the policy proposals or budget figures released today by Chairman Ryan as part of his proposed budget resolution.

The amounts of revenues and spending to be used in these calculations for 2012 through 2022 were provided by Chairman Ryan and his staff.

"In other words," Dean tells us, "Representative Ryan did not give CBO a set of tax and spending proposals to be scored. He told them to write down a spending and revenue path."

The difference is that the former would require that Ryan indicate specific spending cuts and tax increases that he was proposing.

For example, if Mr. Ryan was actually writing a budget for CBO to score, he would tell them that he wants to cut spending on Head Start by 50 percent over the next decade, spending on medical research by 30 percent, and spending on education by 40 percent. On the tax side, he would tell CBO that he wants to eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction over the next decade, phase out the deduction for employer provided health insurance over the next two decades, and immediately eliminate the charitable interest tax deduction.

The point is that he would hand CBO specific policy proposals like these and then have CBO show what the budget looks like. This is absolutely not what Ryan did, as CBO tried to say as clearly as it possible could.

Instead, Ryan told CBO to write down specific numbers for broad categories of spending. This means he told them to write down that spending on non-health care, non-Social Security spending will be 4.5 percent of GDP in 2040. He told them to write down specific numbers for tax revenue.

Since CBO works for Congress, it does what powerful members of Congress want it to do. Thus it wrote down the numbers that Mr. Ryan instructed them to write down. However CBO was honest and clearly stated that it had just written down numbers given to it by Mr. Ryan and his staff. Unfortunately David Brooks is either too confused to understand what CBO wrote, or alternatively is deliberately trying to mislead NYT readers into believing that CBO scored a Ryan budget when it did not.

IT'S NO SECRET TO DWT READERS THAT THE
MYTH OF PRYAN'S SERIOUSNESS IS JUST THAT

It's a myth. He's a liar, a crackpot, and at his most fragrant a crook. As Howie has pointed out here, he has no shame in distancing himself from his ideological twin Todd Akin, even though his position on rape and abortion isn't virtually the same, it's identical, and is based on the right-wing article of faith that with the exception of that tiny category of "forcible rapes" -- which poor Todd referred to so infelicitously as "legitimate" rapes -- there are no rapes. It's all just those damn slutty wimmins who wuz probly askin' fer it and jes' got what they all deserved.

Which still leaves the question of how someone who intellectually is, from any standpoint, the flightiest of flyweights, maintains a reputation for "seriousness." One answer is suggested in Dean Baker's Wednesday piece on DBrooks's love affair with PRyan --

PER DBROOKS, YOU CAN ONLY COMMENT
ON CANDIDATES YOU'VE INTERVIEWED

After picking apart the DBrooks's nonsensical notion that PRyan is so serious that he was able to submit an actual budget to the CBO for scoring, Dean writes, "There is one other issue worth beating up on Brooks for in this piece."

At one point he says: "I have enormous respect for Ryan and I regard most of the commentary I've read about him by people who've never even interviewed him to be ludicrous."

Huh? What planet is this guy on? It's wonderful that Brooks has had the opportunity to interview Paul Ryan. Most of us will not have that opportunity.

In David Brooks Land that apparently means that we don't have the right to comment on Ryan's positions on issues. That might be true in David Brooks eliteland, but we still have pretensions of having a democracy in this country. That means that we all get to say whatever we damn well please about Representative Ryan, even if we never interviewed him. If that troubles Brooks, then perhaps he can find some dictatorship where speech is regulated more to his liking.

Let me come out and say what Dean has tactfully merely indicated: that media whores like DBrooks were born to be coopted. It's the insidious Curse of Insiderness. DBrooks has come away from his Encounter(s) with PRyan blanketed by the same snowjob as The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza in his repellent puff piece on PRyan: Ooh, ooh, he talked to me! I must be somebody really important!

Au contraire, DBrooks. If you had the tiniest grain of either intelligence or integrity (and one or the other would probably do it), you would announce, "I have belatedly realized that I am too stupid and dishonest to live, let alone pass myself off as a commentator, and I realize how simply I can solve both problems. Th-th-that's all, folks!"

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