Republicans: Cookin' Up a Whole New Batch of Crazy!

Democrats shouldn't get too comfy between now and November because the Republicans are cookin' up all kinds of crazy and that always has its consequences for everyone... especially when there's a lot of money behind it.

Here's a brief rundown of the madness:

To refresh yourself on some of the GOP insanity from 2010, click here.

We'll kick off crazy-fest 2012 with our reigning queen of drunken bigotry, Jan Brewer.  Since her mostly failed attempts at Birtherism, immigration deform and hating on gay people, Jan Brewer has taken it upon herself to join her Tea Party fan-base in defining "personhood".  She says that the idea that women can secretly prevent pregnancy from rape is only "a little bit outrageous" and that it's totally up to legislators and voters whether or not they agree.  Brewer has outlawed abortions in Arizona after 20 weeks... making NO EXCEPTIONS for the life/safety of the mother if the doctor doesn't feel like it. It's an outrageous law that is not seeing nearly enough media attention considering that a woman could conceivably die from this in Arizona before the election.

Of course, we can't really discuss fetal personhood without an honorary mention of the grandfather of all screwy looney-toons soundbytes, Todd Akin. By now, you should know all about the idiotic belief system he holds and the statement that stirred the pot. But if you don't watch Rachel Maddow, then you wouldn't know all of THIS.  Akin's coo-coo for cocoa puffs lunacy stems from other pro-lifers with these crazy ideas before him... including a man by the name of John C. Willke. Willke, if you’re curious, endorsed Romney’s 2008 presidential run—a fact Romney freely boasted about at the time. “I am proud to have the support of a man who has meant so much to the pro-life movement in our country,” Romney said in a 2007 release, according to the New York Daily News. Even some Florida Republicans have seriously twisted ideas about rape.

Todd akin did not act alone in this insanity, though. Which brings us to your Republican Vice Presidential hopeful, Paul Ryan. “Nobody is proposing to deny birth control to anybody,” said Paul Ryan in a CBS interview where he backed away from every single point in the pro-life agenda. This is a very DRASTIC flip-flop for the congressman. Akins and Ryan had conspired immediately upon Ryan's entrance to the House of Representatives to draft a fetal personhood bill called H.R. 3 which, if it had become law, would have legislatively overturned the Roe Vs. Wade Supreme Court decision and made NO EXCEPTIONS for a woman who is raped or the victim of incest. The Paul Ryan lie that "nobody is proposing to deny birth control" is a BIG LIE indeed, however.  You can read all about these attempts (by Catholic Republicans like Ryan, no less) right here, here and here.

From Paul Ryan on the subject of fetuses, we come to the big guy - Mitt Romney. The "fetal skeletons" in Romney's closet were LITERALLY swept away by his corporation called Stericycle. It was an awful blow to the pro-life movement when they discovered that Mitt Romney had inked the deal for his Bain Capital corporation to purchase Stericycle. It is a company that they had been protesting all the while because it facilitates abortions by removing the "medical waste" and disposing of it properly. I don't need to tell you why pro-lifers have a problem with the term "medical waste". This is just the tip of the iceberg with Romney and Bain though.  The time at which Mitt Romney saw over the acquisition of Stericycle was a time that he said he was NOT in the employ of Bain Capital. Obviously, since the signatures are there, and it was Romney himself conducting this business, he lied.  This is also, conveniently, one of the many years for which Mitt Romney never released his tax returns. But it gets EVEN WORSE for the Presidential hopeful... It turns out that Romney lied yet even once more before all of this about his taxes... and the consequences of this other lie are insurmountable for him in his bid for the Presidency.  Mitt Romney never paid any taxes from an address in Massachusetts.  Why is that important?  Because his eligibility to run for Governor of the State of Massachusetts was entirely predicated on the idea that he had.  Romney had not been a Massachusetts resident for the required seven years. He brushed that concern aside by LYING. He told the people of Masshachsetts that he had paid TAXES in Massachusetts for seven years.  It turns out that everyone just assumed nobody would tell a lie that big... They had apparently never met someone like Mitt Romney before... because he did in fact, lie.

Somebody who's very concerned about how all of this will pan out for Republicans is a man by the name of Bryan Fischer. Fischer is one of those guys that Paul Ryan now claims doesn't exist.  He is totally in agreement with the Akins fantasy about "legitimate rape" not causing pregnancies. He also doesn't want women to have access to contraceptives.  Fischer heads up the American Family Association.  Immediately, you recognize that name because they are the secondary source of all things "anti-gay" in the United States.  The first and foremost source being the hate group known as the Family Research Council. While party leaders were immediately frightened by the onslaught of adverse reactions to Akins' crazy "magic vaginas" story, Fischer was upset with them for reacting to it.  His Twitter account relays: "Akin staying in. GOP elites, by gangtackling Akin instead of having his back, have put this seat in play. Loss is on them."  This is basically like saying that a legislator should not be held accountable for being wrong about something... That even if something is a total fabrication - we'll all be fine as long as we stick with it.

Bryan Fischer draws from the same fanbase as 700 Club Televangelist, Pat Robertson.  Of course, Pat Robertson has the heavy burden of explaining to Christian America what should be done with all the "persons" who will not be aborted when Republican policies take effect... You can apparently do whatever you want with unwanted kids after they're born... as long as you DON'T dare adopt them, says Robertson. No man is going to want to be tied down to the "whole United Nations" which includes "weird" kids of other races "who may have been molested" he says.
Pat Robertson seems to be on a rampage against our nation's young people lately. The religious school that he owns is called Regent University. Of course, it's not a real university because it's a private religious school. The word "regent" means "governing in absense of a higher authority". School boards and county-area branches at all levels of government are often called "regents" or regencies. It has been this way for over 100 years, actually. But you guessed it... Robertson has assembled a crack-team of lawyers to restrict the government from being able to use the term. He is suing local community colleges and non-religious public schools to try to take ownership of the word that he's only been using since 1979.

Speaking of "other races" whose children one should supposedly not adopt, lest they find themselves hosting a United Nations convention in their living room - we would be remiss in not reminding you that the Tea Party Express still has plans to plow over every last brown-skinned American until there are none left.  No man is better suited for this task than white America's favorite skinhead - Joe The Plumber.  Joe has given up the glamorous job of plunging toilets so that he can enjoy Government funded healthcare at taxpayer expense as a United States Congressman. His plan is apparently to shrink the size of Government by adding himself to it.  He is running in Ohio on a platform of "don't spread my wealth" and "let's start shooting at the Mexican Border".  Yes, you read that correctly.  Apparently, Joe is very sensitive about being called a racist by "liberal Obama supporters"... he routinely complains about that on his facebook page, but he just leaves that statement dangling there without apology.  Apparently, if Marco Rubio's parents happened to be anywhere near the border between Mexico and the United States, Congressman Plumber would suggest that border police should shoot at them.  No joke.

Let's not forget that Joe The Plumber was brought to us by the same public relations department in the GOP that delivered Sister Sarah Palin to us.  Palin, if you recall, put shooting targets over a map of Democrats in the United States, including one over the name and location of congresswoman Gabby Giffords who was shot, almost fatally, yet still luckier than a number of other innocent people at her event.  The mainstream media has failed to mention that Jared Laughner (the shooter in Arizona) listed "Mein Kampf" as his favorite book on his YouTube profile.  He also had a very creepy video he took of himself burning the American Flag in the Arizona Desert.  The media mostly in concert with CNN and Fox News, decided apparently that since Laughner was "crazy", that it somehow ruled out the possibility that he was ALSO an antisemitic white supremacist and gun-nut. Shockingly, violent racists who are connected in any way to Sarah Palin are never held up to scrutiny for their political alliances.

Since Palin has gone national with a lot of support from Fox News and the Oil and Coal lobby - a new Republican has emerged in Wasilla, Alaska.  His name is Mark Ewing... Palin would be so proud of Ewing.  Some of his latest stump speech talking points have included "I love coal. I love the smell of burning coal in the morning." and "We need to educate our children, but there are certain individuals that are just not going to benefit from an education... like kids who have a hard time making their wheelchair move."

Really?  The latest Republican attack will be... against kids in wheelchairs!  That's just made of win, isn't it?

Drunk On Sour Grapes - The Quotable Mitt Romney

Back in March, Mitt Romney got a little taste of political success in Illinois.  It was a mixed blessing, really, because the politics of Illinois (particularly Chicago) have become a dog whistle to Republican operatives seeking to tarnish Obama's reputation in the blogosphere and social media.  While Obama's familial home-base is Hawaii, Republicans have had more than their share of self-induced political misfortune in the Aloha State, leaving them with only Chicago (and sometimes the Republic of Kenya) to alienate in their propaganda.  For some unexplained reason, however, Romney's big win in the Land of Lincoln was short on dignity and long on misfired bravado.  While Romney isn't known as a "guy you could have a beer with", the Huffington Post/AOL reported that Romney slurred his words and stumbled in laps around his perfectly working teleprompter.

That being said, it is not Mitt Romney's inarticulate moment that I want to call your attention to... I want you to notice what Romney had PLANNED to say... what his entire campaign presumed to be fit for the scrolling screen in front of their candidate.  It's no "gaffe" that I'm sounding the alarms on here - it's what the so-called "Believe in America" troupe actually believes about America.  Ironically, it was the following sentiment that Mitt Romney spoke clearly without stuttering:

"I have had many business successes and failures over the years. Each step of the way, I learned something about what it is that makes our American system so powerful.  You can't learn that by teaching Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago."

This is a direct quote from a victory speech that the Romney campaign crafted and Mitt Romney read aloud from a teleprompter after an Illinois Republican Primary win.  Not only is it rather unbecoming of any professional to mar a victory speech with unnecessary character attacks against their eventual opponent, but it's also very telling that Romney and his campaign chose this line of attack to commemorate their small victory in Illinois. Mitt Romney knows that our President's achievements are far greater than his few years spent as a civil rights attorney and college professor.  Although Romney is 15 years older than President Obama, he received his Business Degree from Harvard University where Obama would ultimately become Editor and then President of the esteemed Harvard Law Review.

More egregious than the implied insult and elitist dismissal of both the President and the University of Chicago, is Mitt Romney's contempt for Constitutional Law itself.  In Mitt Romney's world, the almighty dollar makes the world go around and there's no place for "governmental intrusion" in the private sector.  It is this lack of ethics that has led Mr. Romney into trouble throughout his various attempts at political office. He has personally signed his name to the dotted line allowing American jobs to disappear into foreign sweatshops. He has hidden the majority of his income from taxation - ultimately depriving the United States of the only dues he owes to this great country.  He has sought to convert the United States Government into an agency that conducts its affairs with his best financial interests at heart.  He has built his entire campaign for the Presidency with insults and personal criticisms, all the while avoiding the requisite details to explain his own positions on important matters.

These transgressions are not just the mark of a bad politician... They are cowardly and selfish. They are bad for America.  These immoral actions might be "business as usual" to someone like Mitt Romney, but small business owners and employees who pay their taxes and respect the laws founded in our Constitution will not likely adhere to Mitt Romney's myopic view of America as his personal ATM machine.

Mr. Romney never got around to explaining exactly "what it is that makes our American system so powerful". Hopefully, whatever it is, it will be used to help us all in our journeys toward freedom, independence and peace. We know it's already been used for quite the opposite purposes at times.

Why the Impending Nomination of Romney Is a Special Gift to Social Democrats

Newt Gingrich did what he does best last week. He launched an attack video against Mitt Romney that calls into question his business ethics at this time of high unemployment.

Mitt Romney will be forever tied to the aptly named Bain Capital where he presided over the massive outsourcing of American industrial jobs to foreign nations. The fat-cats over at Bain Capital raked in the dough while American jobs were shipped overseas or dropped altogether.

The only asterisk after this criticism is the idea that Mitt Romney left his CEO position for a short time in order to chair, of all things, the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. Of course, he still profited from the jobs-killing Bain Capital during his winter vacation - to the tune of millions - but he was not "on the board" at the time that Newt Gingrich and others have chosen to highlight. Serendipitously, this brief hiatus serves as reminder to the American people of both Romney's "Multi-national" nature and his religion - another sore spot for Romney within his party.

(Can somebody please queue the videos of Mormon overseas adoption scandals?)

Until just now, the word "outsourcing" has been on the no-no list of American political rhetoric. The corporate media, being in cahoots with their advertisers, have agreed to refrain from explaining to the public why the jobs just aren't showing up. Even on MSNBC, you'll rarely hear Rachel Maddow go off any tangents about child labor exploitation in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Liberals have been shouting into a vacuum about the evils of outsourcing for quite some time. Terms like "multinational conglomerate" are dog whistles to the far left. We complain bitterly to our facebook friends about the astronomical cost of our defense operations and blame most of it on the ubiquitous "military industrial complex". It presents a rhetorical question that earns Social Democrats a lot of traction: How can we justify denying people unemployment insurance when we are spending so much money on defense? Furthermore, why is our defense money going overseas? Shouldn't our military or American civilians have those jobs?

The questions raised when the topic of outsourcing is mentioned are ones that Republicans - and some Blue Dog Democrats - find troubling to answer. The unrestrained capitalist process of moving jobs around from nation to nation is great if you are a foreign dictator who needs money for guns and bombs and have plenty of child-age workers to exploit. It's also great if you are a Wall Street tycoon who only cares about the bottom line.

But outsourcing is not so great for the average American worker. Can the Republican Party win an election without working class Americans? They didn't have to answer that question in years past because "jobs" was not nearly the buzz word that it has become in this economy.

2012 is going to be a very different sort of terrain for Republicans. They must now answer to their economic principles or lack thereof. Just a few short years ago, the Tea Party did a fine job of obfuscating these issues by promising an economic solution and then delivering a radical conservative social agenda. That kind of thing doesn't work twice and Mitt Romney is the perfect candidate to clarify that.

Romney is the 'Picture of Dorian Gray' for Republicans. He reminds them that they can encourage their party to follow Ayn Rand's economic mythology and Laissez-faire Capitalism or they can encourage Christian Morality but the two concepts cannot be reconciled without a lot of hypocrisy and disenchantment.

The very best thing that might come of a Mitt Romney nomination by Republicans is the election of a Democratically controlled congress which could easily persuade President Obama to put a legislative cap on the outsourcing of American jobs in his 2nd term.