THE COVEN DEMANDS IT: VOTE CHRISTINE O'DONNELL

“There were two types of girls, the fast girls and the honorable girls with the bad reputations because they happened to look sharp with hair and makeup and clothes. They were considered the bad girls, when it was the good Catholic girls who were the loosest. Appearances were deceptive then.”-Anton LaVey, Founder, Church of Satan

Adventures In TEA PARTY Campaigns: "I DABBLED INTO WITCHCRAFT" (Guess Who?)

OH MY ... Teabaggers, ARE YOU SITTING DOWN?!?

“I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I'm not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do. One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar and I didn't know it. I mean, there was a little blood there and stuff like that.

We went to a movie and then had a little picnic on a satanic altar.”

Update: After this video aired Ms. O’Donnell cancelled all her appearances on the Sunday shows. OH MY.

She’s running all right ... AWAY from the media! Notice a pattern here, teabaggers: Sister Sarah, Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, and now ... America’s wingnut witch next door. I mean, what’ve you all got to lose [hide]?!? HUH?

IT JUST GOT WEIRDER ...

Couple of Annoying Examples Why The Media Is Held In Such Low Esteem

Heard on MSNBC -

Norah O’Donnell: “I would be fascinated to see a Senate with Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Joe Miller ... ”

Guest: “Sure. It would be fun for us!”

I would be fascinated to see you start paying your top bracket fair share in taxes instead of picking the pockets of the middle class.

I would be fascinated to see the poverty rates decline.

I would be fascinated to see our children’s future secured by quality healthcare and education, and our Social Security and Medicare secure from right wing extremists.

How about you, Norah? By the way, no relation, right? RIGHT?

Note to Luke ‘The Force Is Not With Me’ Russert: Introducing a puff-piece on John Boeher, you said: “folks on the left tried to define Boehner as a country club Republican and the NYT talked about ties to lobbyists ...”, but he came from a humble background.

Um Luke, so what does Boehner’s humble background prove? (FYI, “folks on the left” don’t need to “define” John Boehner as a country club Republican linked to special interests. These are empirical facts. And Luke, by “left” do you mean your senior colleague Chris Matthews, who has frequently characterized Boehner as a country club Republican?)

Richard Nixon came from humble beginnings and gave us Watergate. FDR was a patrician raised in wealth, privilege, and surrounded by country clubs, who became a champion for the people and one of the three greatest presidents in U.S. history. So Luke, the next time you decide to take a dump on the viewers with a puff-piece short on facts and balance, you might want to get a few pointers on journalistic integrity and contextual research from Rachel Maddow.

Notes From The Fringe: "Can It Get Any WEIRDER Than This?" Edition

Republican Ransom Note To America - Extending the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 or 3 percent “would have us borrow $700 billion over the next 10 years to give a tax cut of about $100,000 to folks who are already millionaires.” – President Barack Obama

Christine O’Donnell Returning From Vacation At Island of Dr. Moreau* – The richly quotable TEA PARTY darling and Senate candidate from Delaware, warned of the sinister stem cell research she witnessed while a guest of the reclusive Dr. Moreau:

“They are — they are doing that here in the United States. American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains. So they're already into this experiment.”

Here are the next 10 zaniest quotes from the woman Karl Rove endorsed as “nutty.”

Karl Rove’s Permanent Hearing Loss RINGING Endorsement of O’Donnell -

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Glenn Beck, Fashionista: TEA PARTY Dress Code -

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The Carl Paladino Vampire Theater (Dig Those Vampireal Eyelids!) -

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McConnell Claims Rich Hurt As Poverty In America Highest Since 1994 –

The New York Times editorial today notes:

“For both parties and certainly the broad swath of independent voters, defeating this new crop of Tea Party nominees has become imperative to avoid the sense of national embarrassment from each divisive and offensive utterance, each wacky policy proposal.”

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Let’s be real, folks. This teabagger crowd of angry, old, ignorant white voters does not represent America. Not even close. They’ve stepped into an vacuum created by the tough economy and disappointment of Obama voters. Christine O’Donnell is a fringe hard right candidate whose views are not representative of the centrist electorate. She won a closed primary with 5 percent of all Delaware registered voters. Most of her 1 million+ contributions are flowing in from out of state. The same goes for Joe Miller in Alaska, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Ken Buck in Colorado, and Rand Paul in Kentucky.

Every single one of these candidates aren’t only ‘pro-life’ but they don’t even support an exception in cases of rape and incest. These extremists would roll back the clock to back alley abortions and Jim Crow pre-Civil Rights. For all their talk of “freedom,” they support government intervention in a woman’s most private decision, they would force her carry to term a child conceived of rape or incest, or face criminal penalties.

This is a RADICAL RIGHT position. Moreover, these extremists would repeal healthcare reform, financial reform, Medicare/Medicaid, privatize Social Security, abolish the Department of Education and the EPA and, for all their talk of Constitutional sanctity, move to repeal the 14th and 17th Amendments. Further, they will do EVERYTHING to bring down the presidency of Barack Obama, including gumming up the works with endless frivolous investigations, using their subpoena power to bring government to a standstill, up to and including the stunt pulled by the Gingrich crowd in the 90s, to shut down government and cause a showdown between the President and Congress.

If you think the current Republican Senate minority’s historically unprecendented abuse of the filibuster can’t get any worse, you ain’t seen nothing yet. By any means necessary, is the extremists’ creed. In Weimar Germany, Hitler came to power with 24 percent of the vote. He never represented a majority of the German people, but economic conditions were so dire and his opposition so dispirited and divided that the fascists rode this voter apathy to power. The fearful political and economic situation in America today is not dissimilar from Weimar Germany of the 20s and 30s. It really is imperative that Democrats, independents, and rational Republicans wake up to this threat from the Far Right and go to the polls this November to reclaim the center in American politics.

These are dangerous times, people. VOTE.

*Located somewhere in the Virgin Islands chain.

The REAL WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST Resides In Arizona And Her Name Is Jan Brewer

As seen on The Blaze:

John Dennis has been called “the longest of long-shot candidates.” This is his first campaign. He told the San Francisco Chronicle, “I thought I’d aim low.” Good aim.

If by that he means STEALING MY MATERIAL I’d say he’s right. Long before this derivative ad made the cable networks rounds for being oh so clever and creative, OUR LITTLE BLOG had already pegged Arizona Governor Jan Brewer THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST. I blogged the story and artwork (below) on April 18 to be exact, and another post with THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST in the title, AGAIN, well before this bit of Republican chicanery on video.


Plus, it makes sense. Regionally, the state of Arizona is certifiably, historically and geographically THE WEST -- not to be confused with liberal SAN FRANCISCO, Baghdad by the Bay, Sodom by the Sea with its metrosexual mayor, thriving gay community, and European-style universal healthcare. All of which makes it one of the rare places in America where the standard of living and QUALITY OF LIFE actually matches the best in the world.

“THE WEST” my ass; San Francisco is WEST COAST. The REAL WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST presides over a RED POLICE STATE, and her name is JAN BREWER.

So wingnuts … STOP STEALING MY MATERIAL! (Grr.) This is why the GOP is called THE PARTY OF NO IDEAS.

JOHN DENNIS = LOSER.

Celebrating Christine O'Donnell's Victory With Song!

A Nod to Balloon Juice for this. Perfect:

POST-ELECTION ANALYSIS: THE THINKER TAKES BATTING PRACTICE WITH IDIOT PUNDITOCRACY

Crossing The Delaware Does Not Equal Crossing The Rubicon; Neither George Nor Ceasar Are There To Guide You Across.

Be Careful What You Wish For, Democrats, There Is A 51 Percent Probability It Will Come To Pass.

A Schumer In The Hand Is Better Than A One-Handed Christine And A Reid In The Bush.

Before The Cock Crows Twice McConnell Will Deny O’Donnell Thrice.

Grab Your Torches And Pitchforks, The Castle Wall Has Been Breached!

New York Royalty Cuomo Slays The Paladino Tea Porn.

Tea For The Tillerman, But The Cat Is Muslim … Who Knew?

Ironic Teabagger Sign After TEA PARTY Darling Christine O'Donnell Knocks Off Mike Castle in Delaware

The Continuing Tea Party Adventures of Christine O’Donnell:
GO TEA PARTY!

Um well, if you’re a Delaware Teabagger, “stimulate MYSELF!” is a definite nonstarter!

Your Senate candidate, Christine O’Donnell believes self-stimulation, a.k.a masturbation, is sinful: The “Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can't masturbate without lust.” She is sort of a perky gadfly for The Lord and a favorite of Bill Maher’s because the jaded atheist just looooves cute weirdos with extremist views. The Republican national Senate Committee has already written her off with a “So long, and good luck ...”

Here is Christine O’Donnell talking about her abstinence campaign:

Fools’ Show: Dylan Ratigan Outs Self, Sort Of

It’s not as if I didn’t TELL YOU SO:

MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan: “I consider myself a conservative.”

Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart (vying for INGENUE of the decade): “REALLY?!?”



Ratigan shimmie-shallies: “Libertarians lose me when they go to the law of the jungle but refuse to actually prevent the game from being rigged. I don't think it's the law of the jungle when the game is rigged for the lions to eat everything.”

Then explain this, Dylan: How do you “prevent the game from being rigged” without regulations and President Obama’s “rules of the road?” That is the eternal contradiction of a “conservative” vision of governance. You cannot “prevent the game from being rigged” absent a vigorous and effective regulatory environment. And the minute a “conservative” moves to regulate the game for the benefit of all, he or she is no longer a conservative, but a progressive.

One of the most compelling examples of this is the transformation of Republican conservative Teddy Roosevelt into a flaming progressive once he became a monopoly buster, so much so that T.R. ran as founder and standard-bearer of the Progressive Party, the most successful third party in American history which finished ahead of the Republican Party in the election of 1912.

Yet Another Example of How The Daily Caller Uses Pictures to Slime Its Subjects

The story is a pickup from another site — which does not include the picture — the only way a parasitical, content-leeching site with sparse original material such as the Daily Caller can fill its front page. As with the Jon Stewart-monkey picture, the story itself is “straight news;” the Caller’s sole contribution to it is a farcical illustration of two dudes (it’s ambivalently unclear whether they’re military) embracing in a suggestive way as two uniformed military men look on with what seems disapproval and/or homophobia. This picture totally misrepresents the reality of gays in the military on many levels, but most importantly grossly distorts the news story attached to it.
The distinction the wingnut media has totally erased is one between news and commentary/editorial content. News is news: Straight up. As much as bias is often injected in how news is reported or where the emphasis lies, it’s still the 5-WH: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. As images — pictures, videos, illustrations, photos, and cartoons — are part of that content, to present news with false or distortive images is inappropriate and contrary to accepted standards of journalism.

If the Daily Caller wanted to express an opinion about gays in the military rather than reporting the news, then the illustration above would not be blatantly fudging the image/graphic line between news and commentary. But editorializing news with provocative and racist images is standard MO for this slime-site.

Wingnut Rag, Daily Caller, Shows Racist Colors

This is the repulsive headline and picture-caption on the right wing rag, Daily Caller, that can barely contain its racist eruptions. A teenie-tiny brainchild of embittered wingnut and MSNBC has-been Tucker Carlson, the Daily Caller is mostly known* for its obsessive-compulsive fixation on progressive media in general and Keith Olbermann in particular.
In its desperately seeking quest for the ephemeral “liberal bias” the Caller hacked and mined J-List, a private Google forums discussion group for some 400 journalists and academics with progressive political views. But the breathless rag‘s 'Page Six'-style gossip and innuendo posts failed to uncover any liberal bias “smoking gun.” Instead, when a Carlson e-mail begging to join the group was published in retaliation (he was denied, for obvious reasons: No Rats Allowed) and it was revealed that one of his reporters was a J-Lister, the wingnut rag quickly ended its broadbrush smear of honest professionals whose members-only private exchanges, though never meant for publication, were not inconsistent with their for-publication work product. It didn’t even rise to the level of a tempest in a Tea Party pot, but spoke volumes of Carlson’s backstabbing character and his team’s sleaziness, as evidenced (above) by the depiction of President Obama as a monkey.

Their obsession with Keith Olbermann has shades of 'Fatal Attraction'. The presumed female assigned the KO beat “because I have to” (uh-huh) linked to a lengthy and rather flattering New Yorker bio of Olbermann because it seemed like the only reference she could find that Keith had once dated wingnut Laura Ingraham. (1) Yawn; (2) If you’re a Lib, I can see it (if you catch my drift); (3) this rather pathetic reporter, whose lame digs at KO and his program lack much substance, seems to have an unusual interest in his dating habits; and (4) Tucker Carlson crapped in his pants with childish antics by purchasing KO’s dot.com domain name to link to his publication (hahaha ... um, not working), and behaving like a regular pissant with spiteful and infantile whines re: big bad Keith at MSNBC. Tucker’s got issues, what with all the self-loathing and self-inflicted embarassment.

In brief, the wingnuts are hardly worth the copy, except as a good example of what goes on in their tiny whiny racist minds. (In the wingnut universe, the monkey depicting our President above is supposed to be funny and not offensive.) As their Mama Grizzly likes to say, they’re real “sick puppies.”

*Did I mention sexism.

A Question of Faith

Last week in the course of his presser, President Obama felt compelled to reiterate his Christian faith when making a broader point about intolerance toward the Islamic religion as contrary to our values:

“As someone who relies heavily on my Christian faith in my job, I understand the passions that religious faith can raise. But I also respect that people of different faiths can practice their religion . . . and they are still good people.”

This was not an impromptu remark, coming on the heels of a White House statement that affirmed the President’s faith:

“President Obama is a committed Christian, and his faith is an important part of his daily life. He prays every day, he seeks a small circle of Christian pastors to give him spiritual advice and counseling, he even receives a daily devotional that he uses each morning. The President's Christian faith is a part of who he is, but not a part of what the public or the media is focused on everyday.”

The White House was responding to a poll that found nearly 20% of Americans believe falsely that Obama is a Muslim and 43% aren’t sure. Not surprisingly, behind the rumors of the President as secret Muslim is the right wing smear machine driven by Fox, hate radio, and wingnut blogs perpetuating the myths of the President’s religion and birthright with a strong partisan component.

The issue was further soiled by wingnut evangelical Reverend Franklin Graham claiming Obama is Muslim by virtue of his father’s “seed” and so deemed by Islam. As if DNA is biological and religious destiny, too. (A novel religious twist to the theory of Evolution.) Never mind that Obama’s father was a committed atheist who abandoned the two-year-old child to his American mother’s care:

“My father was almost entirely absent from my childhood, having been divorced from my mother when I was 2 years old; in any event, although my father had been raised a Muslim, by the time he met my mother he was a confirmed atheist, thinking religion to be so much superstition.”

Blogger Ann Althouse eloquently put to rest the question that “genealogy is destiny:”

“Regardless of what the Muslim world may or may not believe, this whole seed fixation is profoundly un-American. It says that genealogy is destiny, that a man is Muslim regardless of what he espouses or believes. It’s all about descent—and nauseatingly close to the “one drop rule” of the post-Reconstruction South. That rule held that if a person had any African or Indian ancestry whatsoever, he or she was classified as “colored” and subject to anti-miscegenation laws, voter disenfranchisement, and segregation at large. At least eighteen states adopted some form of the rule; Virginia’s 1924 law, for instance, was called the Racial Integrity Act.”

This is America. Here, neither race or ancestry nor genealogy or DNA determines a person’s religion, spiritual path, and destiny. Incredibly, Newsweek’s Howard Fineman actually suggested on Hardball that President Obama should have joined a church in Washington for the sake of political optics:

“Can I say something here that‘ll probably get me in trouble? But I‘m going to say it anyway. Barack Obama probably should have joined a church here, OK? Now, I‘m not excusing any of the hatred or nasty language or any of the dirty strategy that we‘re talking about. But some things in politics you have to do at least for the symbolism.”

Fineman added, “after he came to town, a lot of this stuff would never have arisen.” Perhaps. But the reason President Obama did not join a church in Washington, D.C. had nothing to do with politics much less the religion of Islam. As recounted in Jonathan Alter’s book, Promise:

“Let’s be blunt,” Obama said. “We were pretty affected by what happened at Trinity and the controversy surrounding Reverend Wright. That was disturbing to us. It made us very sensitive to the fact that as president, the church we attend can end up being interpreted as speaking for us at all times.” To avoid that, the Obamas sometimes attended services at a tiny chapel at Camp David run by the military and used by a few military families. The navy chaplain there, Carey Cash, whose great-uncle was the singer Johnny Cash, was known for his compelling sermons. He had witnessed a lot of the action in Iraq and spoke of how a “wall of angels” protected the soldiers around him. The president found special comfort in church when responding to tragedies or weighing matters of war and peace, but like other presidents, he attended services irregularly, in part out of concern about the inconvenience it caused other worshippers.”

Any genuinely religious American should understand, respect, and accept the President’s Christian faith without qualification or reservation. This president has written more about his personal spiritual journey than many of his predecessors, certainly Ronald Reagan. The fact that he hasn’t trumpeted it with media photo-ops outside a church holding the Bible or with pictures of him worshipping in Camp David speaks well of his Christian faith. Religion, after all, is innately private and personal.

People forget, most don’t even know, that the President worships with family, friends, and colleagues of our military who are in harm’s way every single day. That he would not exploit this for political purposes, is admirable. That right wingers would question and exploit his Christian faith because the President has chosen to keep it private, is despicable.

Teabaggers, FYI: Founding Fathers Can't Find John Boehner Either

In Keeping with the TEABAGGER’s Opera, here’s the FLIP-FLOPPER John Boehner, who would have us believe he and the Republicans vehemently opposed the Wall Street bailout. The date is September 28, 2008, less than two months before the presidential election. George W. Bush was president, and the TARP bailout was a Bush emergency initiative proposed by Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.

As President Obama reminded us a few days ago, his very first day in office he was greeted with a nice gift-wrapped $1.3 TRILLION deficit right on his doorstep. All he and his economic team did was prevent the country from falling into another Great Depression, stabilized the markets so they came roaring back, and saved the U.S. auto industry, a key American industrial sector that these teabagger bastards would just as soon have collapse. And they have the ignorance-is-bliss gall to call our President un-American and socialist, and unconscionable racial epithets. Add to crooks and liars on the Republican side, ingrates, hypocrites, and a whole lotta teabaggers suffering from short, medium, and long-term memory loss. If not the Big A, I believe it’s called AMNESIA:

Independents, FYI: John Boehner is a SCUMSUCKER

This is a message to so-called “independent” voters for whom voting once a year (if that) is the extent of their political participation. And anyone else who still has a brain but is contemplating voting Republican.

When wingnuts pooh-pooh the President’s “personalizing” of the midterm elections by putting a face on the opposition, it’s a clear sign they’re worried and the strategy is a winner. I watched enough of the McLaughlin group to verify this truism. Nativist Pat Buchanan and wingnut Manhattanite Monica Crowley, an insufferable talk radio shill, both dismissed it.

Buchanan argued the President was “elevating” Minority Leader John Boehner. Nice try Pat, but you’re too old to fake it when you lay on the BS thick. You know full well that in dirty politics you’ve got to pull the crud out from under the rotting foundation and expose it, before disposing of it. Only then can we shore up the foundation.

The shallow Crowley basically let the cat out of the bag when she said Americans “have no idea who Boehner is” and they don’t care. Oh really? Sorry to upset your plans for concealing the scum and extremists in your midst (which by the way, includes you), but when a wingnut says Americans shouldn’t care who the scumsucker slated to become Speaker of the House is, if Republicans win control — it’s because they’re very afraid the voters will find out before November rolls around.

The thing about Boehner, from my personal observation of the man, is that he is dour, unimaginative, unintelligent, derivative and unoriginal (he frequently uses words like “insensitive” or “we have to be grown-ups” after others have said them, to make the opposite point), but cunning and despicable; in short, an individual who scarcely exercises his smile muscles — when he tries it comes across at best as a grimace — and proud of it. Beyond the low personal character, which includes being lazy and a Georgetown barfly, this spills over onto his public servant persona (an ironic oxymoron), which is unethical, straddling the illegal. During the House debate on legislation to regulate tobacco, Boehner was seen on the House floor distributing checks from the tobacco lobby.

Now that, according to the Idiot Punditocracy, Boehner is poised to become next Speaker of the House, a New York Times article exposes his sleaziness in greater detail than simply the barf-bag nauseating prospect of seeing this bastard’s face plastered nightly on the politics networks. (Memo to MSNBC: Don’t get too cozy with the Idiot Punditocracy’s triumphalism that you start parroting their line, lest you lose legions of progressive viewers too disgusted to see Boehner flapping his jaws incessantly on the Boehner toob.)

Here’s a sampler:

WASHINGTON — House Democrats were preparing late last year for the first floor vote on the financial regulatory overhaul when Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio and other Republican leaders summoned more than 100 industry lobbyists and conservative political activists to Capitol Hill for a private strategy session. The bill’s passage in the House already seemed inevitable. But Mr. Boehner and his deputies told the Wall Street lobbyists and trade association leaders that by teaming up, they could still perhaps block its final passage or at least water it down. “We need you to get out there and speak up against this,” Mr. Boehner said that December afternoon, according to three people familiar with his remarks, while also warning against cutting side deals with Democrats. That sort of alliance — they won a few skirmishes, though they lost the war on the regulatory bill — is business as usual for Mr. Boehner, the House minority leader and would-be speaker if Republicans win the House in November. He maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R. J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS.

They have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns, provided him with rides on their corporate jets, socialized with him at luxury golf resorts and waterfront bashes and are now leading fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign, which is soliciting checks of up to $37,800 each, the maximum allowed.

So if you can wrest yourselves for a moment from watching Jimmy Johnson on “Survivor,” read on, indies. Because this is what you’ll be voting for if you pull or punch or touch that “R” — stands for repugnant government.