I’m going to copy and paste a conversation from Facebook. These people know of what they speak and I think you’ll find this interesting. If not, you’ll have a long scroll over so stock up on your scroll grease. I’m actually leaving out quite q bit of the conversation to make it shorter. 🙂
Even tho I’m pullin’ a Romney and asking you to “JUST TRUST ME” when I say these people know of what they speak, this is me sharing what a friend said that a friend said… Each of you have good brains, critical thinking skills, and are well informed so you’ll easily be able to process this along with all new info you seek and evaluate. fnord
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SPEAKER ONE: I was talking to an old friend from the DC days today, he’s still working the sick game, making low seven figures a year in a think tank (funded unknowingly by churches and those who naively donate to “Conservative” orgs and to various hate groups from openly hateful peeps like Westboro to on the down low haters like the CFA donations, etc..
Today he said and I quote “this election is over!!”
Obviously the GOP think tankers are usually the last to give up so I asked him what he meant and he said the Saudi money is slowing to a crawl, the money from the European drug companies is slowing down and the GOP has stopped running ads in 7 states in the past two weeks.
I was shocked when he said that because it was HIS very think tank that created the now famous line “flip flopper” that took John Kerry’s double digit lead and in less than a month engulfed America into a giant heap of poop.
Repeat after me …
“He voted for the war before he voted against it!!!”
“Flip flopper!!!’
If you say it ten times per hour, you’re officially a political expert in America!!! Brag to all of your friends!!!
Hey Dave, what do you know about John Kerry???
“He’s a flip Flopper!!!”
Never mind that THEIR guy used Daddy’s clout to avoid Vietnam and even after he was in the guard he couldn’t make it as a weekend warrior and they tossed him out on his ass.
And lets not even start talking about the OTHER White House staff’s endless deferments to get themselves OUT of serving, none of that matters!!!
And never mind that John Kerry volunteered to serve in Vietnam and not just serve but in the swift boats of all gigs, suuuuuuper dangerous job AND after he came home he volunteered to go BACK AGAIN and in a swift boat AGAIN!!!
“Ignore reality, just repeat after me….”Flip flopper!!!”
“He voted for the war before he voted against it!!!”
Millions of Americans never even took the five minutes needed to look it up.
Everyone in Congress ALWAYS votes to authorize war, it’s just like a union ratification vote authorizing a strike, it doesn’t mean they are going on strike but it’s a vote of unity to show the other side that they’re not playing at all.
Our Congress ALWAYS shows total unity on that one, the last thing the “bad guys” should see is some of our members of Congress balking at war with them. Even anti war guys vote for authorization and of course someone like John Kerry is going to vote to authorize, he’s a war vet AND he’s served on armed services committees for ages.
And then John Kerry did the unthinkable!!!
He actually read the troop spending bill word for word!!!
Oh no!!!!
And he saw that there was HUNDREDS of millions of no bid pork directly pointed to unqualified contractors (see Dick Cheney’s prior career) and MASSIVE language clarifying that OUR Government would not have any oversight on those contractors, meaning they were totally unregulated contracts…
….and not a red cent set aside for troop gear, no added money towards VA care for troops coming home, no exit strategy discussions AT ALL and John Kerry had the nerve to talk about this publicly!!!
Now fast forward a little, remember a couple of years after the war started, it leaked out that Mothers of troops were having fundraisers to buy their kids updated bullet proof vests and armor for their vehicles.
MOTHERS were literally doing this right here in America!!!
And John Kerry dared to read the bill and see that coming WAAAAAAAAAY BEFORE the war started, so he spoke out, voted AGAINST that troop bill and what did he get for that???
“Flip flopper!!!!!”
And don’t forget the add on story that Newscorp made up that “he lied about his medals!!!! and don’t forget the pre-Joe the Plumber very well paid con act, those “swift boats for truth!!!!
Who were all right there in THAT exact same river!!!! and they NEVER, EVER, EVER saw John Kerry there or anywhere!!! Fox News fact checked it, they swear they did!! and the rest of our “news” of course repeated it over and over.
Where were we???? Oh yea….
“Flip flopper!!!”
The tank literally came up with that line in an evening and then it was discussed at their daily 8am meeting (everyone from GOP leadership to Murdochs peeps to Limbaugh, Rove, NRA guys, every conservative org, Dobson, Koch Brothers, etc…they ALL have their peeps call in on this meeting every single day.
And by noon the very next day our ENTIRE media was repeating “flip flopper!!!” and by dinner time millions of Americans were blindly repeating it.
“John Kerry is a Flip Flopper!!!!!”
But with that being said, when an actual think tanker living in DC is saying this election is over, they KNOW it’s over.
And HE’s a guy that knows full well how the right is utilizing voter suppression from coast to coast, using the “news” to wag the dog day after day, creating bogus stories every hour on the hour, new Citizens United type “documentaries” coming out every week or so and even though they’re pretty much in control of our reality and definitely controlling reality at all costs about Mitt Romney or the real GOP agenda, he’s STILL saying it’s all over.
SPEAKER TWO: I hope so. But I also think they’re doing everything they can to steal this election like in 2000 and 2004. I put nothing past them.
BACK TO SPEAKER ONE: Oh yea, the actual machine definitely isn’t giving up, even AFTER the elections they’ve planned TONS of petitions to their “conservative” judge friends to contest due to “voter fraud!!!” and of course they’ll show that 8 second clip of those black dudes standing outside the polls years ago on a never ending loop and lots and lots of people will get really, really scared!!!
OMG!!! Black people are scaring voters and causing some folks not to vote??? OMG!!!! I heard out west that people wrote in votes for Hollywood actors!!!! OMG!!!
Never mind that the GOP begged people to vote for Reagan, a Hollywood actor turned corporate pitch man and never mind that Clint Eastwood just did some good stand up at their convention last month.
OMG!! Seriously, some people REALLY voted for Dave Lombardo and Martin Sheen and I think Jenna Jamison got a few votes in SoCal.
We can’t have any of this!!!! Let’s uproot the Constitution!!!! (Unless you vote for THEIR famous people)
It reminds me of the GOP solution for terrorism in the states, the FIRST piece of the Patriot Act put into law was that ALL Americans HAD to have a passport to LEAVE the US.
I guess it makes perfect sense for some, if a person is going to buy the idea that voter fraud is a reason to make it harder for everyone to vote then I guess you might think it’ll keep us safer by making sure every American has a passport before they go on vacation.
And lets not forget, the Republicans party has passed ACTUAL laws systematically eliminating voters AND votes for many, many years now and they are ramping UP that effort nationwide, not slowing it down and what they are doing makes the so called black panther intimidation at a polling station and a few bozos across the country voting for Eddie Van Halen or whoever mean absolutely nothing.
Just an FYI in case anyone is confused, we DO in fact have a constitutional right to write in a candidate, even one that’s not running so even a vote for Hulk Hogan or the leader of Westboro or whoever IS in fact exercising ones Constitutional right. Yea it’s silly but it’s still legal and it’s no reason to make it harder for Americans to vote.
I seriously heard a talk radio show while I was back in Indiana where the “host” was explaining how terrible it is and “it’s unpatriotic!!” and “sympathizing and aiding terrorist!!” when a person goes to the polls and votes for Mickey Mouse or insert any random name you can think of and I swear to God within minutes people were calling in DEMANDING picture ID’s from here on out!!!!
My home state is Indiana, and there the GOP literally scared the piss out of people over voter fraud and using examples like people voting three times!! OMG!!!! Three votes just might sway the entire planet!!!! and never mind that two votes don’t count and usually (by law) the third doesn’t count either and don’t forget that Eddie van Halen got some votes!!!! OMG!!!!
And the people back home bought it hook, line and sinker and to the point where the GOP passed a law where everyone in the state has to show a Indiana state issued picture ID to vote!!!
Some folks are just now starting to get it, TONS of elderly who won’t be able to vote, troops, students, the poor obviously, you know, those “undesirables” who’s votes just aren’t that important in our “democracy” (wink, wink!) because we’re not 100% positive those people will vote for the Republican party.
And even worse, Indiana STILL charges the people for even a simple picture ID, so much for our Constitutional rights huh? A poll tax right before their very eyes and the people sat back and watched it all happen, because they were focuses on “family values” and banning sam,e sex marriage.
This is the same state where the GOP passed “right to work” laws and even the GOP hasn’t had the nerve to try passing that anywhere since a decade ago in Oklahoma but Indiana was “ripe for the pickin!!”
(Some conversation I’m leaving out. If anyone wants the conversation in its entirety, I’ll send it to you email, but I don’t want to use up the scroll grease supply for one post.)
BACK TO SPEAKER ONE: The GOP leaders are actually and HAVE BEEN wanting to choke Romney and it goes waaaay back prior to these recent blunders where he got off the script trying to score foreign policy points.
I recently found out the real skinny about the whole tax returns thing, I’m out of time tonight but I’ll come back to this tomorrow, most of it is obvious, he’s hiding stuff, no brainer there but there’s some really interesting stuff as well and to make a long story short, the GOP obviously vetted all of his returns prior to the 2008 elections and prior to this one they asked if anything had changed and he and his team of lawyers and accountants all said “No” but he lied BIG TIME to the GOP leadership.
What really happened is that AFTER the 2008 elections he had his personal team of bean counters and lawyers amend all of those tax returns so he’d collect a ton of extra dough. I guess he wasn’t going to run again so why not go for the gusto, take as many write offs and loop holes, opff shore movement, etc….
This is WHY the GOP totally got caught off guard pushing a candidate that had a giant problem, even after he started getting massive campaign money flowing in, he STILL lied to them and kept stalling them out, the GOP was telling him to release the tax returns to THEM so they could look everything over and clean up the mess and he kept stalling, the GOP didn’t care at all about the Ameriucan people seeing the returns, but they HAD to see them to start fixing them PRIOR to the race starting and before the tax returns became an issue and once he kept stalling from showing the GOP they knew he’d done something reeeeeally, reeeeeally bad and stupid.
It’s mind blowing that he even considered trying to pull this and mind blowing that he thinks he’s even above the GOP leadership who would have easily re-amend his taxes AGAIN prior to the campaign had he just been honest and open with them.
I think he had a good idea that IF he’d showed them his re-amended tax returns combined with them already not really liking him, they’d chop off his money and he’d be off in the sunset.
Because the returns were modified sooooo much combined with him pulling that so late in the game combined with the side bar about how he hid tons of income and that’s going to expose that he shorted his Church out of tens of millions and the LDS doesn’t take that lightly, especially when he’s in an LDS leadership roll.
Obviously there’s a ton of other byproducts issues of that disaster and the GOP literally did the math and they know that it’s impossible to release those returns, take the huge hit and recover prior to election day and now it’s too late to even replace him, even if they’d go public and take the hit and hope for a rebound, there’s just not enough time for this amount of damage control.
He put the GOP in an impossible position and seriously, the GOP is NEVER in an impossible position, their friends literally OWN networks, they OWN everything, they can write reality and an hour later it’s starting to be repeated across the globe.
“Flip flopper” for example was pumped out into the masses and repeated within HOURS, ditto for “Al Gore lied and said he invented the internet!”
The list is endless!!!
There were serious talks in DC that IF the GOP got a big bump from Paul Ryan they were going to literally YANK Romney off the ticket and they were even going to go public saying “Romney withheld information relevant to the requirements”
We all know, the GOP has no problem eating their own if they have to, the GOP would have actually come out of that looking good, telling the American people that Romney had re-amended his taxes without their knowledge, then withheld that information and they weren’t happy about it, etc…
He probably could have avoided getting the boot from his Church, if the GOP wwere to kick him off the campaign they’d not even bother releasing those returns so the LDS wouldn’t know about his earnings and off shore loot.
But that whole idea of yanking him went down the drain when Paul Ryan actually lowered the poll numbers, now they have no plan B, they have to just keep repeating “we’ve released the returns that’s required” and hope that works, so far it has but it wont get him through the debates, Obama is going to exploit the shit out of him on that.
Obama is going to literally quote Romney’s Father who as a Governor spoke often and in detail about integrity and he was actually famous for a quote about how we can judge a man by his tax returns.
While we’re doing this “what people are saying stuff,” we may as well delve into a conspiracy, think about it and pull the parts we need to be aware of out of the whole. Remain well informed, but don’t fall into the trap our republican friends seem to find comfortable where they buy into everything anti-Obama, no matter what. That’s a silly place to live life. No one is without positives and no one is without negatives — that covers individuals as well as groups of people. Our best bet is to remain open to new input and able to evaluate our conclusions.
Rick Scott is governor in Florida, Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania, John Kasich in Ohio, Rick Snyder in Michigan, Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Jan Brewer is in Arizona. All are seen as hard-right republicans unlikely to agonize over flipping a Barack Obama majority into a victory for Mitt Romney.
That doesn’t mean they would actually do such a thing. But the stark reality is that if they choose to, they can, and there would be no iron-clad way to prove they did.
Another stark reality: hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent to win this election by multi-billionaires Sheldon Adelson, Charles and David Koch, the Chamber of Commerce and other corporate interests. For them, spending a few extra million to flip a key state’s electoral votes would make perfect sense.
(from the link): Take someone who makes $4 million dollars a year and someone who makes $40,000 a year. The person making $4 million dollars, assuming he’s not doing some Romney-esque planning, is paying a 35 percent tax on most of that money. The person making $40,000 is probably paying no income tax at all. So that makes the system look really unfair to the rich guy.
That’s the basic analysis of the 47 percent line. And it’s a basic analysis that serves a purpose: It makes further tax cuts for the rich sound more reasonable.
But what if we did the same thing for the payroll tax? Remember, the payroll tax only applies to first $110,100 or so, our rich friends is only paying payroll taxes on 2.7 percent of his income. The guy making $40,000? He’s paying payroll taxes on every dollar of his income. Now who’s not getting a fair shake?
Which is why, if you want to understand who’s paying what in taxes, you don’t want to just look at federal income taxes, or federal payroll taxes, or state sales taxes — you want to look at total taxes. And, luckily, the tax analysis group Citizens for Tax Justice keeps those numbers. So here is total taxes — which includes corporate taxes, income taxes, payroll taxes, state sales taxes, and more — paid by different income groups and broken into federal and state and local burdens:
(from the link): Romney’s Problem is the Republican Party
Why is Romney unwilling to give the specifics of his budget plan? After all, he is a numbers guy who has looked at hundreds of spreadsheets with budget numbers. That’s actually his greatest strength. Why doesn’t he take advantage of it to silence his critics?
His problem is that with deficit at 8% of GDP, new revenues ae needed (as well as spending cuts). Romney knows this very well. After all, when the deficit hit 4% of GDP, Ronald Reagan raised taxes. George H.W. Bush did it at 3%. Unfortunately for Romney, in the modern Republican Party any kind of tax increase–ever–is forbidden. If Romney were to speak what he knows to be the truth–that taxes must go up–his base would be outraged. In one of the debates he was asked if he would accept a plan that had $10 of spending cuts for every $1 of tax increases and he said no. The bipartisan Simpson-Bowles plan is even worse from his point of view: every $3 in spending cuts are matched by $1 of new revenue. Romney can’t change his position until after he is inaugurated. Then he will suddenly say: “Gee, the situation is even worse than I expected. We need some new revenue. Drat.” But he can’t say that before the election or there will be a revolt in his ranks. So he twists himself into a pretzel to avoid saying what he knows to be true.
This subject could easily come up at the first debate. Obama will answer directly that he will raise taxes on incomes above $250,000 to get some needed revenue. Romney will be hard pressed to give a clear answer about how he will reduce the deficit.
This Presidential Race Should Never Have Been This Close
(from the link): “Think about it. Four years ago, we had an economic crash that wiped out somewhere between a quarter to 40% of the world’s wealth, depending on whom you believe. The crash was caused by an utterly disgusting and irresponsible class of Wall Street paper-pushers who loaded the world up with deadly leverage in pursuit of their own bonuses, then ran screaming to the government for a handout (and got it) the instant it all went south.
“These people represent everything that ordinarily repels the American voter. They mostly come from privileged backgrounds. Few of them have ever worked with their hands, or done anything like hard work. They not only don’t oppose the offshoring of American manufacturing jobs, they enthusiastically support it, financing the construction of new factories in places like China and India.
“They’ve relentlessly lobbied the government to give themselves tax holidays and shelters, and have succeeded at turning the graduated income tax idea on its head by getting the IRS to accept a sprawling buffet of absurd semantic precepts, like the notions that ‘capital gains’ and ‘carried interest’ are somehow not the same as ‘income.’
“The people in this group inevitably support every war that America has even the slimmest chance of involving itself in, but neither they nor their children ever fight in these conflicts. They are largely irreligious and incidentally they do massive amounts of drugs, from cocaine on down, but almost never suffer any kind of criminal penalty for their behavior.”
Sorry, my friend, but there’s no time to snore.
And out-of-touch millionaires just declared war.
On schools, the environment, unions, fair pay.
We’re all on our own if Romney has his way.
And he’s against safety nets, if you fall, tough luck.
So I strongly suggest that you wake the fuck up.
–Samuel L Jackson
As a former republican, now only a registered republican, I so appreciate this comment. It offers me hope and encourages me when I hear the Kansas maniacs. Somewhere there really are sane people who are also republicans. —
“This republican party is hurting the country. I would love a real debate over policy in this country but instead we are the party that embraces the crazies.
In 2008 when some crazy lady at a McCain rally said Obama is an Arab, McCain took away the mic and stopped it. That was one of the best moments in the 08 race. He said that Obama is a good family man, a good citizen that he just disagreed with on policy. That’s what we need to get back to.
Over the last 4 yrs we have become the party synonymous with calling the president a communist, a socialist, a marxist, not born here, a Kenyan, a muslim, an anti American who secretly hates the country and on and on and on. The leaders of the party should do like McCain and stop this crap. But they don’t. And what they don’t realize is that while they allow it to continue, the independents (who don’t subscribe to this insanity) look at us like we are the party of lunatics. Today the average american looks at a republican and thinks “he must be one of those who thinks Obama isn’t an american” or some other garbage.
We are losing this election for a number of reasons but one main reason we are getting killed with women and independents is because we allow this lunacy to continue. Look, Obama is an american, he’s not a marxist, communist, socialist or whatever else you guys think. We can have a real debate over policy and that would only benefit the whole country. But instead we have maniacs like Alan West in Fl. who publicly claim he has a list of 78 to 81 democrats in congress who are members of the Communist party!!!
This is ridiculous and NOBODY in our party comes out and says this guy is insane. They approve of it. We are not the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower or Reagan.
As republicans we can admit that Obama has done some good things for the country. And we can also argue that there are things he hasn’t done. He is not the worst president in our history, that’s insane and a completely uneducated statement. And to keep babbling this rhetoric and garbage is only hurting the party and the country. There is nothing wrong with compromising and working with democrats, its how we became a great nation.
We need to have a grown up conversation about the future of the country. But we stand NO chance in winning any election if we keep making the independents think we are completely crazy. We can believe in science and we can treat him like the president. It would be great to see our party act like the republicans of years past.”
It’s going to have to happen somewhere. Not the nutjobs of the religious right, not the gun nuts, not those who bow to fear, but someplace there are rational people who understand our country needs a minimum of two strong political parties to keep one another in line. Even the Oligarchs who want to increase their control and their profits understand people will rebel if they perceive dictatorship. I think two parties fighting it out on a more rational adult level is all that covers the control of the wealthy. If the Republican Party ceases to be an entity perceived as sane, and currently they aren’t, added to the changing demographics of our country, how can they continue as a viable political party without growing up?
To answer your question directly: No, I don’t see it happening anytime soon. And I sure don’t see it happening without violence. All those bigots with arsenals — Americans — are who I think are our greatest enemy and what we should be most afraid of. The kinds of people who are easily convinced of Creationism vs Evolution, those who can’t recognize scientific facts about our environment, those who will gladly go to war so some rich guy can make lots of money simply don’t have what it takes to think clearly because they’re used to being afraid and following. It’s all those people who are easily worked up to a frenzy if they’re convinced their God, or their guns, are being threatened.
NEW ROMNEY VIDEO: In 1985, He Said Bain Would “Harvest” Companies for Profits
This clip shows the young CEO focusing on businesses as targets for his investors, not as job creators or community stakeholders.
The Pollyanna in me really really likes this op-ed piece! 🙂
(from the link): O rancid sector of the far left, please stop your grousing! Compared to you, Eeyore sounds like a Teletubby. If I gave you a pony, you would not only be furious that not everyone has a pony, but you would pick on the pony for not being radical enough until it wept big, sad, hot pony tears. Because what we’re talking about here is not an analysis, a strategy, or a cosmology, but an attitude, and one that is poisoning us. Not just me, but you, us, and our possibilities.
So here I want to lay out an insanely obvious principle that apparently needs clarification. There are bad things and they are bad. There are good things and they are good, even though the bad things are bad. The mentioning of something good does not require the automatic assertion of a bad thing.
Stop Leftsplaining!
Why the left should stop grousing, whining, Eeyoring, and parsing differences with your allies and get about the cheerful business of being heroes.
We’ve all heard what the gun nuts have to say, now let’s look at reality —
The NRA Surge: 99 Laws Rolling Back Gun Restrictions
In the past four years a barrage of measures across 37 states have made it easier to own, carry, and conceal firearms.
“Governor Romney and I are about the same age. Like millions of others in our generation we came to adulthood facing the harsh realities of the Vietnam War. 2.7 million in our age group went to Vietnam, a war which eventually took the lives of 58,000 young Americans and cost another 300,000 wounded. The Marine Corps lost 100,000 killed or wounded in that war. During the year I was in Vietnam, 1969, our country lost twice as many dead as we have lost in Iraq and Afghanistan combined over the past ten years of war. 1968 was worse. 1967 was about the same. Not a day goes by when I do not think about the young Marines I was privileged to lead.
“This was a time of conscription, where every American male was eligible to be drafted. People made choices about how to deal with the draft, and about military service. I have never envied or resented any of the choices that were made as long as they were done within the law. But those among us who stepped forward to face the harsh unknowns and the lifelong changes that can come from combat did so with the belief that their service would be honored, and that our leaders would, in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, care for those who had borne the battle, and for their widows and their children.
“Those young Marines that I led have grown older now. They’ve lived lives of courage, both in combat and after their return, where many of them were derided by their own peers for having served. That was a long time ago. They are not bitter. They know what they did. But in receiving veterans’ benefits, they are not takers. They were givers, in the ultimate sense of that word. There is a saying among war veterans: “All gave some, some gave all.” This is not a culture of dependency. It is a part of a long tradition that gave this country its freedom and independence. They paid, some with their lives, some through wounds and disabilities, some through their emotional scars, some through the lost opportunities and delayed entry into civilian careers which had already begun for many of their peers who did not serve.
“And not only did they pay. They will not say this, so I will say it for them. They are owed, if nothing else, at least a mention, some word of thanks and respect, when a Presidential candidate who is their generational peer makes a speech accepting his party’s nomination to be Commander in Chief. And they are owed much more than that – a guarantee that we will never betray the commitment that we made to them and to their loved ones.”
George W. Bush will be speaking at an event on investing in the Cayman Islands just days before the election. Do you think Romney is excited that there will be talk of two of his favorite topics right before election day: the Bush economic record and overseas investments.
PrairiePopulistsAndProgressives.net 
I’m going to copy and paste a conversation from Facebook. These people know of what they speak and I think you’ll find this interesting. If not, you’ll have a long scroll over so stock up on your scroll grease. I’m actually leaving out quite q bit of the conversation to make it shorter. 🙂
Even tho I’m pullin’ a Romney and asking you to “JUST TRUST ME” when I say these people know of what they speak, this is me sharing what a friend said that a friend said… Each of you have good brains, critical thinking skills, and are well informed so you’ll easily be able to process this along with all new info you seek and evaluate. fnord
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SPEAKER ONE: I was talking to an old friend from the DC days today, he’s still working the sick game, making low seven figures a year in a think tank (funded unknowingly by churches and those who naively donate to “Conservative” orgs and to various hate groups from openly hateful peeps like Westboro to on the down low haters like the CFA donations, etc..
Today he said and I quote “this election is over!!”
Obviously the GOP think tankers are usually the last to give up so I asked him what he meant and he said the Saudi money is slowing to a crawl, the money from the European drug companies is slowing down and the GOP has stopped running ads in 7 states in the past two weeks.
I was shocked when he said that because it was HIS very think tank that created the now famous line “flip flopper” that took John Kerry’s double digit lead and in less than a month engulfed America into a giant heap of poop.
Repeat after me …
“He voted for the war before he voted against it!!!”
“Flip flopper!!!’
If you say it ten times per hour, you’re officially a political expert in America!!! Brag to all of your friends!!!
Hey Dave, what do you know about John Kerry???
“He’s a flip Flopper!!!”
Never mind that THEIR guy used Daddy’s clout to avoid Vietnam and even after he was in the guard he couldn’t make it as a weekend warrior and they tossed him out on his ass.
And lets not even start talking about the OTHER White House staff’s endless deferments to get themselves OUT of serving, none of that matters!!!
And never mind that John Kerry volunteered to serve in Vietnam and not just serve but in the swift boats of all gigs, suuuuuuper dangerous job AND after he came home he volunteered to go BACK AGAIN and in a swift boat AGAIN!!!
“Ignore reality, just repeat after me….”Flip flopper!!!”
“He voted for the war before he voted against it!!!”
Millions of Americans never even took the five minutes needed to look it up.
Everyone in Congress ALWAYS votes to authorize war, it’s just like a union ratification vote authorizing a strike, it doesn’t mean they are going on strike but it’s a vote of unity to show the other side that they’re not playing at all.
Our Congress ALWAYS shows total unity on that one, the last thing the “bad guys” should see is some of our members of Congress balking at war with them. Even anti war guys vote for authorization and of course someone like John Kerry is going to vote to authorize, he’s a war vet AND he’s served on armed services committees for ages.
And then John Kerry did the unthinkable!!!
He actually read the troop spending bill word for word!!!
Oh no!!!!
And he saw that there was HUNDREDS of millions of no bid pork directly pointed to unqualified contractors (see Dick Cheney’s prior career) and MASSIVE language clarifying that OUR Government would not have any oversight on those contractors, meaning they were totally unregulated contracts…
….and not a red cent set aside for troop gear, no added money towards VA care for troops coming home, no exit strategy discussions AT ALL and John Kerry had the nerve to talk about this publicly!!!
Now fast forward a little, remember a couple of years after the war started, it leaked out that Mothers of troops were having fundraisers to buy their kids updated bullet proof vests and armor for their vehicles.
MOTHERS were literally doing this right here in America!!!
And John Kerry dared to read the bill and see that coming WAAAAAAAAAY BEFORE the war started, so he spoke out, voted AGAINST that troop bill and what did he get for that???
“Flip flopper!!!!!”
And don’t forget the add on story that Newscorp made up that “he lied about his medals!!!! and don’t forget the pre-Joe the Plumber very well paid con act, those “swift boats for truth!!!!
Who were all right there in THAT exact same river!!!! and they NEVER, EVER, EVER saw John Kerry there or anywhere!!! Fox News fact checked it, they swear they did!! and the rest of our “news” of course repeated it over and over.
Where were we???? Oh yea….
“Flip flopper!!!”
The tank literally came up with that line in an evening and then it was discussed at their daily 8am meeting (everyone from GOP leadership to Murdochs peeps to Limbaugh, Rove, NRA guys, every conservative org, Dobson, Koch Brothers, etc…they ALL have their peeps call in on this meeting every single day.
And by noon the very next day our ENTIRE media was repeating “flip flopper!!!” and by dinner time millions of Americans were blindly repeating it.
“John Kerry is a Flip Flopper!!!!!”
But with that being said, when an actual think tanker living in DC is saying this election is over, they KNOW it’s over.
And HE’s a guy that knows full well how the right is utilizing voter suppression from coast to coast, using the “news” to wag the dog day after day, creating bogus stories every hour on the hour, new Citizens United type “documentaries” coming out every week or so and even though they’re pretty much in control of our reality and definitely controlling reality at all costs about Mitt Romney or the real GOP agenda, he’s STILL saying it’s all over.
SPEAKER TWO: I hope so. But I also think they’re doing everything they can to steal this election like in 2000 and 2004. I put nothing past them.
BACK TO SPEAKER ONE: Oh yea, the actual machine definitely isn’t giving up, even AFTER the elections they’ve planned TONS of petitions to their “conservative” judge friends to contest due to “voter fraud!!!” and of course they’ll show that 8 second clip of those black dudes standing outside the polls years ago on a never ending loop and lots and lots of people will get really, really scared!!!
OMG!!! Black people are scaring voters and causing some folks not to vote??? OMG!!!! I heard out west that people wrote in votes for Hollywood actors!!!! OMG!!!
Never mind that the GOP begged people to vote for Reagan, a Hollywood actor turned corporate pitch man and never mind that Clint Eastwood just did some good stand up at their convention last month.
OMG!! Seriously, some people REALLY voted for Dave Lombardo and Martin Sheen and I think Jenna Jamison got a few votes in SoCal.
We can’t have any of this!!!! Let’s uproot the Constitution!!!! (Unless you vote for THEIR famous people)
It reminds me of the GOP solution for terrorism in the states, the FIRST piece of the Patriot Act put into law was that ALL Americans HAD to have a passport to LEAVE the US.
I guess it makes perfect sense for some, if a person is going to buy the idea that voter fraud is a reason to make it harder for everyone to vote then I guess you might think it’ll keep us safer by making sure every American has a passport before they go on vacation.
And lets not forget, the Republicans party has passed ACTUAL laws systematically eliminating voters AND votes for many, many years now and they are ramping UP that effort nationwide, not slowing it down and what they are doing makes the so called black panther intimidation at a polling station and a few bozos across the country voting for Eddie Van Halen or whoever mean absolutely nothing.
Just an FYI in case anyone is confused, we DO in fact have a constitutional right to write in a candidate, even one that’s not running so even a vote for Hulk Hogan or the leader of Westboro or whoever IS in fact exercising ones Constitutional right. Yea it’s silly but it’s still legal and it’s no reason to make it harder for Americans to vote.
I seriously heard a talk radio show while I was back in Indiana where the “host” was explaining how terrible it is and “it’s unpatriotic!!” and “sympathizing and aiding terrorist!!” when a person goes to the polls and votes for Mickey Mouse or insert any random name you can think of and I swear to God within minutes people were calling in DEMANDING picture ID’s from here on out!!!!
My home state is Indiana, and there the GOP literally scared the piss out of people over voter fraud and using examples like people voting three times!! OMG!!!! Three votes just might sway the entire planet!!!! and never mind that two votes don’t count and usually (by law) the third doesn’t count either and don’t forget that Eddie van Halen got some votes!!!! OMG!!!!
And the people back home bought it hook, line and sinker and to the point where the GOP passed a law where everyone in the state has to show a Indiana state issued picture ID to vote!!!
Some folks are just now starting to get it, TONS of elderly who won’t be able to vote, troops, students, the poor obviously, you know, those “undesirables” who’s votes just aren’t that important in our “democracy” (wink, wink!) because we’re not 100% positive those people will vote for the Republican party.
And even worse, Indiana STILL charges the people for even a simple picture ID, so much for our Constitutional rights huh? A poll tax right before their very eyes and the people sat back and watched it all happen, because they were focuses on “family values” and banning sam,e sex marriage.
This is the same state where the GOP passed “right to work” laws and even the GOP hasn’t had the nerve to try passing that anywhere since a decade ago in Oklahoma but Indiana was “ripe for the pickin!!”
(Some conversation I’m leaving out. If anyone wants the conversation in its entirety, I’ll send it to you email, but I don’t want to use up the scroll grease supply for one post.)
BACK TO SPEAKER ONE: The GOP leaders are actually and HAVE BEEN wanting to choke Romney and it goes waaaay back prior to these recent blunders where he got off the script trying to score foreign policy points.
I recently found out the real skinny about the whole tax returns thing, I’m out of time tonight but I’ll come back to this tomorrow, most of it is obvious, he’s hiding stuff, no brainer there but there’s some really interesting stuff as well and to make a long story short, the GOP obviously vetted all of his returns prior to the 2008 elections and prior to this one they asked if anything had changed and he and his team of lawyers and accountants all said “No” but he lied BIG TIME to the GOP leadership.
What really happened is that AFTER the 2008 elections he had his personal team of bean counters and lawyers amend all of those tax returns so he’d collect a ton of extra dough. I guess he wasn’t going to run again so why not go for the gusto, take as many write offs and loop holes, opff shore movement, etc….
This is WHY the GOP totally got caught off guard pushing a candidate that had a giant problem, even after he started getting massive campaign money flowing in, he STILL lied to them and kept stalling them out, the GOP was telling him to release the tax returns to THEM so they could look everything over and clean up the mess and he kept stalling, the GOP didn’t care at all about the Ameriucan people seeing the returns, but they HAD to see them to start fixing them PRIOR to the race starting and before the tax returns became an issue and once he kept stalling from showing the GOP they knew he’d done something reeeeeally, reeeeeally bad and stupid.
It’s mind blowing that he even considered trying to pull this and mind blowing that he thinks he’s even above the GOP leadership who would have easily re-amend his taxes AGAIN prior to the campaign had he just been honest and open with them.
I think he had a good idea that IF he’d showed them his re-amended tax returns combined with them already not really liking him, they’d chop off his money and he’d be off in the sunset.
Because the returns were modified sooooo much combined with him pulling that so late in the game combined with the side bar about how he hid tons of income and that’s going to expose that he shorted his Church out of tens of millions and the LDS doesn’t take that lightly, especially when he’s in an LDS leadership roll.
Obviously there’s a ton of other byproducts issues of that disaster and the GOP literally did the math and they know that it’s impossible to release those returns, take the huge hit and recover prior to election day and now it’s too late to even replace him, even if they’d go public and take the hit and hope for a rebound, there’s just not enough time for this amount of damage control.
He put the GOP in an impossible position and seriously, the GOP is NEVER in an impossible position, their friends literally OWN networks, they OWN everything, they can write reality and an hour later it’s starting to be repeated across the globe.
“Flip flopper” for example was pumped out into the masses and repeated within HOURS, ditto for “Al Gore lied and said he invented the internet!”
The list is endless!!!
There were serious talks in DC that IF the GOP got a big bump from Paul Ryan they were going to literally YANK Romney off the ticket and they were even going to go public saying “Romney withheld information relevant to the requirements”
We all know, the GOP has no problem eating their own if they have to, the GOP would have actually come out of that looking good, telling the American people that Romney had re-amended his taxes without their knowledge, then withheld that information and they weren’t happy about it, etc…
He probably could have avoided getting the boot from his Church, if the GOP wwere to kick him off the campaign they’d not even bother releasing those returns so the LDS wouldn’t know about his earnings and off shore loot.
But that whole idea of yanking him went down the drain when Paul Ryan actually lowered the poll numbers, now they have no plan B, they have to just keep repeating “we’ve released the returns that’s required” and hope that works, so far it has but it wont get him through the debates, Obama is going to exploit the shit out of him on that.
Obama is going to literally quote Romney’s Father who as a Governor spoke often and in detail about integrity and he was actually famous for a quote about how we can judge a man by his tax returns.
The debates are gonna get ugly!!!
Sorry, I have to bail!! Peace!!!
While we’re doing this “what people are saying stuff,” we may as well delve into a conspiracy, think about it and pull the parts we need to be aware of out of the whole. Remain well informed, but don’t fall into the trap our republican friends seem to find comfortable where they buy into everything anti-Obama, no matter what. That’s a silly place to live life. No one is without positives and no one is without negatives — that covers individuals as well as groups of people. Our best bet is to remain open to new input and able to evaluate our conclusions.
Rick Scott is governor in Florida, Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania, John Kasich in Ohio, Rick Snyder in Michigan, Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Jan Brewer is in Arizona. All are seen as hard-right republicans unlikely to agonize over flipping a Barack Obama majority into a victory for Mitt Romney.
That doesn’t mean they would actually do such a thing. But the stark reality is that if they choose to, they can, and there would be no iron-clad way to prove they did.
Another stark reality: hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent to win this election by multi-billionaires Sheldon Adelson, Charles and David Koch, the Chamber of Commerce and other corporate interests. For them, spending a few extra million to flip a key state’s electoral votes would make perfect sense.
Will 9 GOP Governors Electronically Flip Romney Into the White House
http://pdacommunity.org/component/content/article/156-cfte-articles/2231-will-9-gop-governors-electronically-flip-romney-into-the-white-house
We read recently that youth taking the ACT scored very low, but I’m thinking incompetence might be taking over and becoming acceptable to too many!
Connecticut Absentee Voters Get Blank Ballots
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/09/absentee-voters-connecticut-blank-ballots
(from the link): Take someone who makes $4 million dollars a year and someone who makes $40,000 a year. The person making $4 million dollars, assuming he’s not doing some Romney-esque planning, is paying a 35 percent tax on most of that money. The person making $40,000 is probably paying no income tax at all. So that makes the system look really unfair to the rich guy.
That’s the basic analysis of the 47 percent line. And it’s a basic analysis that serves a purpose: It makes further tax cuts for the rich sound more reasonable.
But what if we did the same thing for the payroll tax? Remember, the payroll tax only applies to first $110,100 or so, our rich friends is only paying payroll taxes on 2.7 percent of his income. The guy making $40,000? He’s paying payroll taxes on every dollar of his income. Now who’s not getting a fair shake?
Which is why, if you want to understand who’s paying what in taxes, you don’t want to just look at federal income taxes, or federal payroll taxes, or state sales taxes — you want to look at total taxes. And, luckily, the tax analysis group Citizens for Tax Justice keeps those numbers. So here is total taxes — which includes corporate taxes, income taxes, payroll taxes, state sales taxes, and more — paid by different income groups and broken into federal and state and local burdens:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/19/heres-why-the-47-percent-argument-is-an-abuse-of-tax-data/
(from the link): Romney’s Problem is the Republican Party
Why is Romney unwilling to give the specifics of his budget plan? After all, he is a numbers guy who has looked at hundreds of spreadsheets with budget numbers. That’s actually his greatest strength. Why doesn’t he take advantage of it to silence his critics?
His problem is that with deficit at 8% of GDP, new revenues ae needed (as well as spending cuts). Romney knows this very well. After all, when the deficit hit 4% of GDP, Ronald Reagan raised taxes. George H.W. Bush did it at 3%. Unfortunately for Romney, in the modern Republican Party any kind of tax increase–ever–is forbidden. If Romney were to speak what he knows to be the truth–that taxes must go up–his base would be outraged. In one of the debates he was asked if he would accept a plan that had $10 of spending cuts for every $1 of tax increases and he said no. The bipartisan Simpson-Bowles plan is even worse from his point of view: every $3 in spending cuts are matched by $1 of new revenue. Romney can’t change his position until after he is inaugurated. Then he will suddenly say: “Gee, the situation is even worse than I expected. We need some new revenue. Drat.” But he can’t say that before the election or there will be a revolt in his ranks. So he twists himself into a pretzel to avoid saying what he knows to be true.
This subject could easily come up at the first debate. Obama will answer directly that he will raise taxes on incomes above $250,000 to get some needed revenue. Romney will be hard pressed to give a clear answer about how he will reduce the deficit.
http://electoral-vote.com/
As usual, Matt Taibbi nails it —
This Presidential Race Should Never Have Been This Close
(from the link): “Think about it. Four years ago, we had an economic crash that wiped out somewhere between a quarter to 40% of the world’s wealth, depending on whom you believe. The crash was caused by an utterly disgusting and irresponsible class of Wall Street paper-pushers who loaded the world up with deadly leverage in pursuit of their own bonuses, then ran screaming to the government for a handout (and got it) the instant it all went south.
“These people represent everything that ordinarily repels the American voter. They mostly come from privileged backgrounds. Few of them have ever worked with their hands, or done anything like hard work. They not only don’t oppose the offshoring of American manufacturing jobs, they enthusiastically support it, financing the construction of new factories in places like China and India.
“They’ve relentlessly lobbied the government to give themselves tax holidays and shelters, and have succeeded at turning the graduated income tax idea on its head by getting the IRS to accept a sprawling buffet of absurd semantic precepts, like the notions that ‘capital gains’ and ‘carried interest’ are somehow not the same as ‘income.’
“The people in this group inevitably support every war that America has even the slimmest chance of involving itself in, but neither they nor their children ever fight in these conflicts. They are largely irreligious and incidentally they do massive amounts of drugs, from cocaine on down, but almost never suffer any kind of criminal penalty for their behavior.”
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/this-presidential-race-should-never-have-been-this-close-20120925#ixzz27g5tJX8q
Sorry, my friend, but there’s no time to snore.
And out-of-touch millionaires just declared war.
On schools, the environment, unions, fair pay.
We’re all on our own if Romney has his way.
And he’s against safety nets, if you fall, tough luck.
So I strongly suggest that you wake the fuck up.
–Samuel L Jackson
http://www.mediaite.com/online/samuel-l-jackson-shouts-at-voters-in-soros-funded-ad-wake-the-fk-up/
As a former republican, now only a registered republican, I so appreciate this comment. It offers me hope and encourages me when I hear the Kansas maniacs. Somewhere there really are sane people who are also republicans. —
“This republican party is hurting the country. I would love a real debate over policy in this country but instead we are the party that embraces the crazies.
In 2008 when some crazy lady at a McCain rally said Obama is an Arab, McCain took away the mic and stopped it. That was one of the best moments in the 08 race. He said that Obama is a good family man, a good citizen that he just disagreed with on policy. That’s what we need to get back to.
Over the last 4 yrs we have become the party synonymous with calling the president a communist, a socialist, a marxist, not born here, a Kenyan, a muslim, an anti American who secretly hates the country and on and on and on. The leaders of the party should do like McCain and stop this crap. But they don’t. And what they don’t realize is that while they allow it to continue, the independents (who don’t subscribe to this insanity) look at us like we are the party of lunatics. Today the average american looks at a republican and thinks “he must be one of those who thinks Obama isn’t an american” or some other garbage.
We are losing this election for a number of reasons but one main reason we are getting killed with women and independents is because we allow this lunacy to continue. Look, Obama is an american, he’s not a marxist, communist, socialist or whatever else you guys think. We can have a real debate over policy and that would only benefit the whole country. But instead we have maniacs like Alan West in Fl. who publicly claim he has a list of 78 to 81 democrats in congress who are members of the Communist party!!!
This is ridiculous and NOBODY in our party comes out and says this guy is insane. They approve of it. We are not the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower or Reagan.
As republicans we can admit that Obama has done some good things for the country. And we can also argue that there are things he hasn’t done. He is not the worst president in our history, that’s insane and a completely uneducated statement. And to keep babbling this rhetoric and garbage is only hurting the party and the country. There is nothing wrong with compromising and working with democrats, its how we became a great nation.
We need to have a grown up conversation about the future of the country. But we stand NO chance in winning any election if we keep making the independents think we are completely crazy. We can believe in science and we can treat him like the president. It would be great to see our party act like the republicans of years past.”
In order to have a grown up conversation, one side needs to throw away their poop-filled diapers (or Depends) and put on their big boy pants.
I don’t see that happening anytime soon….do you?
It’s going to have to happen somewhere. Not the nutjobs of the religious right, not the gun nuts, not those who bow to fear, but someplace there are rational people who understand our country needs a minimum of two strong political parties to keep one another in line. Even the Oligarchs who want to increase their control and their profits understand people will rebel if they perceive dictatorship. I think two parties fighting it out on a more rational adult level is all that covers the control of the wealthy. If the Republican Party ceases to be an entity perceived as sane, and currently they aren’t, added to the changing demographics of our country, how can they continue as a viable political party without growing up?
To answer your question directly: No, I don’t see it happening anytime soon. And I sure don’t see it happening without violence. All those bigots with arsenals — Americans — are who I think are our greatest enemy and what we should be most afraid of. The kinds of people who are easily convinced of Creationism vs Evolution, those who can’t recognize scientific facts about our environment, those who will gladly go to war so some rich guy can make lots of money simply don’t have what it takes to think clearly because they’re used to being afraid and following. It’s all those people who are easily worked up to a frenzy if they’re convinced their God, or their guns, are being threatened.
NEW ROMNEY VIDEO: In 1985, He Said Bain Would “Harvest” Companies for Profits
This clip shows the young CEO focusing on businesses as targets for his investors, not as job creators or community stakeholders.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/1985-romney-bain-harvest-firms-profits-video
Cold Capitalism is not a pretty sight.
The Pollyanna in me really really likes this op-ed piece! 🙂
(from the link): O rancid sector of the far left, please stop your grousing! Compared to you, Eeyore sounds like a Teletubby. If I gave you a pony, you would not only be furious that not everyone has a pony, but you would pick on the pony for not being radical enough until it wept big, sad, hot pony tears. Because what we’re talking about here is not an analysis, a strategy, or a cosmology, but an attitude, and one that is poisoning us. Not just me, but you, us, and our possibilities.
So here I want to lay out an insanely obvious principle that apparently needs clarification. There are bad things and they are bad. There are good things and they are good, even though the bad things are bad. The mentioning of something good does not require the automatic assertion of a bad thing.
Stop Leftsplaining!
Why the left should stop grousing, whining, Eeyoring, and parsing differences with your allies and get about the cheerful business of being heroes.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/rebecca-solnit-liberals-leftists-explaining-things
We’ve all heard what the gun nuts have to say, now let’s look at reality —
The NRA Surge: 99 Laws Rolling Back Gun Restrictions
In the past four years a barrage of measures across 37 states have made it easier to own, carry, and conceal firearms.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/map-gun-laws-2009-2012
Statement made by Senator Jim Webb earlier today:
“Governor Romney and I are about the same age. Like millions of others in our generation we came to adulthood facing the harsh realities of the Vietnam War. 2.7 million in our age group went to Vietnam, a war which eventually took the lives of 58,000 young Americans and cost another 300,000 wounded. The Marine Corps lost 100,000 killed or wounded in that war. During the year I was in Vietnam, 1969, our country lost twice as many dead as we have lost in Iraq and Afghanistan combined over the past ten years of war. 1968 was worse. 1967 was about the same. Not a day goes by when I do not think about the young Marines I was privileged to lead.
“This was a time of conscription, where every American male was eligible to be drafted. People made choices about how to deal with the draft, and about military service. I have never envied or resented any of the choices that were made as long as they were done within the law. But those among us who stepped forward to face the harsh unknowns and the lifelong changes that can come from combat did so with the belief that their service would be honored, and that our leaders would, in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, care for those who had borne the battle, and for their widows and their children.
“Those young Marines that I led have grown older now. They’ve lived lives of courage, both in combat and after their return, where many of them were derided by their own peers for having served. That was a long time ago. They are not bitter. They know what they did. But in receiving veterans’ benefits, they are not takers. They were givers, in the ultimate sense of that word. There is a saying among war veterans: “All gave some, some gave all.” This is not a culture of dependency. It is a part of a long tradition that gave this country its freedom and independence. They paid, some with their lives, some through wounds and disabilities, some through their emotional scars, some through the lost opportunities and delayed entry into civilian careers which had already begun for many of their peers who did not serve.
“And not only did they pay. They will not say this, so I will say it for them. They are owed, if nothing else, at least a mention, some word of thanks and respect, when a Presidential candidate who is their generational peer makes a speech accepting his party’s nomination to be Commander in Chief. And they are owed much more than that – a guarantee that we will never betray the commitment that we made to them and to their loved ones.”
Perky! 🙂
Kennedy jingle from 1960 is adapted for Obama
http://samuel-warde.com/2012/09/kennedy-jingle-from-1960-is-adapted-for-obama/
George W. Bush will be speaking at an event on investing in the Cayman Islands just days before the election. Do you think Romney is excited that there will be talk of two of his favorite topics right before election day: the Bush economic record and overseas investments.
You just cannot make this stuff up…..LMAO