Bad days for the GOP

Dems Making Massive Gains As GOP Deteriorates: Pew Poll

In seven short years, the American electorate has radically changed, as voters' priorities have shifted to the economy and away from such wedge issues as abortion and gay rights, as well as away from the threat of terrorism and from the war in Iraq, according to a comprehensive survey released Thursday morning by the Pew Research Center.

From 2002 to 2009, voters' partisan identification has moved from virtual parity -- 43 percent Republican and 43 percent Democratic at the height of George W. Bush's popularity in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 -- to a massive Democratic advantage today of 53 to 36, a 17 percentage point split, by far the largest difference in the past two decades.

The Pew survey is a testament to the miscalculations of the Bush administration and of the Republican leadership in Congress. The two were handed an extraordinary opportunity to build on an outpouring of public support in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Instead, those chances to revive a Republican majority were squandered on a mismanaged invasion of Iraq and dissipated by ill-advised culture war offensives, as well as by disclosure of corrupt lobbying and spending scandals in Congress under Republican rule.

Poor Glenn Beck

Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Walters beat the living daylights out of Glenn Beck. So mean! All he did was lie about them! Is that so wrong? /sarc off

The incredible shrinking GOP

Bad days for the GOP.

GOP Losses Span Nearly All Demographic Groups

The decline and fall of the Republican Party in recent years has been so widespread that the party has lost support among nearly every major demographic subgroup of likely voters across the country, according to a new Gallup poll.

The party lost support among a broad swath of Americans, from conservative to liberal, low-income to high-income, married to unmarried, and elderly to young.

The only subgroup in which the party saw a slight increase in support from 2001 to 2009 was frequent churchgoers.

The "Democrat Socialist Party"

Well, let's see. The GOP tried "rebranding" the Democratic Party as the "Democrat Party," because they were so enamored of schoolyard namecalling, and also because they thought that intoning the word "rat" would help them eradicate liberals from the face of the earth.

It didn't work. The "rats" won Congress back in 2006.

Then the GOP decided to call any and everything coming from the Democratic Party "socialist," because surely, that would rile up Americans to kill, maim, stomp all Democrats and liberals out of existence.

It didn't work. The "socialists" won even MORE seats in Congress AND the White House in 2008.

The Publicans are never ones to let failure stand in their way of trying failed tactics again and again:

Now the RNC is slated to approve a resolution calling on the Democratic Party to rename itself "the Democrat Socialist Party."

Yes, read the sentence again and see if you can keep yourself from laughing.

Godz love ya, GOP. Keep it up!

Turn off your cell phone!

Gibbs Let Off Hook By White House Press Corps Cell Phones (VIDEO)

They keep screeching that Obama is coming to take our guns. But it looks like it's our cell phones they're REALLY after.

The rise of the traitors

It wasn't that long ago that any criticism of George W. Bush was called treason. But now the same people who called all liberals and Democrats traitors are beginning to openly call for the armed, violent overthrow of the duly elected government of the United States.

THAT is treason, and the people who espouse such talk are traitors. It doesn't get simpler than that.

That some of this speech is coming from government officials (Michelle Bachmann) and so-called "mainstream" TV/radio pundits (Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity) should be shocking, but it's even more shocking to read comments made by people hiding behind the safety and comfort of anonymous comments and discussion boards.

There are discussion forums where messages like "time for a box of hollow points," "there will be hangings, I promise you!" and "we must stop Obama BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY" are the norm.

On these forums the so-called "moderators" (pretending to have been Marines or "former Democrats") and members are feeding conspiracy theories to the crazies, regurgitating word-for-word the garbage spewed by Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, et al (the intellectual leaders of today's conservative movement).  Eventually some nutcase snaps and winds up killing family members, ambushing and murdering police officers, and wiping out scores of innocent people, all because he was fed paranoia like "Obama is going to take your guns!" or "Obama is wiping out capitalism!"

The people who feed the paranoia and conspiracy theories to the crazies are the ones who bear the real moral responsibility for every person murdered as a result. The blood is on their hands. These monsters are just as guilty as those who pulled the trigger. They are cop-killers. Mom-killers. Wife-killers. Child-killers.

But eventually, they will inspire some crazy nut to attempt to shoot and kill government officials, maybe even target the president or someone in his family.

But the paranoia-mongers know this. THAT'S WHY THEY'RE DOING IT. It's what they want to happen, make no mistake. Whenever Glenn Beck gets that crazy gleam in his eye, and starts one of his paranoid rants, that's what he's fantasizing about.

That's why such hate speech must be opposed and exposed wherever and whenever it is brought into the light. That's one of the things we do here.

Living large while others suffer

Wonder how many of the recent thousands of people laid off from Clear Channel had to go to meet Limbaugh's multimillion-a-year salary? (And pay for his Oxycontin?)

And with the bottom having fallen out of advertising revenue, he ain't making that money back.

Limbaugh's living large while radio boss Clear Channel implodes

I have more friends who've had their positions eliminated than who are still working. The ones that are left are doing the work of four or more, sometimes at reduced salaries, and a few are nearing exhaustion but being warned about "not being profitable employees."

Limbaugh cracks the whip

So Republican luminaries went on a "listening tour." Listen this, listen that, all about listening to people. They repeated it over and over again. "This is a listening tour, we're here to listen to people, because this is a listening tour. On this listening tour, we listening to people on this listening tour. Listening tour. Listening tour."

Then Boss Limbaugh went on the radio and castigated them for it. He said they didn't need a listening tour, they needed a "teaching tour," in other words, they need to go out and tell people what to think.

How did the listening tour cavalcade respond? Eric Cantor jumped HIGH at Boss Limbaugh's whip crack:

"This is not a listening tour," he said the following day.

Let there be no doubt that Rush Limbaugh is in direct control of the GOP.

Thank God!

The voice of the GOP slurs gays

The voice and one of the biggest stars of the conservative movement, ladies and gentlemen:

Joe The Plumber Slurs Gay People: I Would Never Let "Queers" Near My Children (in an interview with "Christianity Today," natch.

Keep it up, Joe! Pretty soon, as long as you & Beck & Limbaugh, et al, keep mouthing off, not only will people be embarrassed to admit they're Republicans, they'll be embarrassed to admit they're conservatives!

For all that wishing and planning Karl Rove did for a "permanent Republican majority" and the virtual eradication of the Democratic Party, it almost makes me believe in karma that we are, thanks to him and those of his kind, watching the implosion and perhaps the permanent death of the Republican Party.

Bush was a mole

Latest nutty conspiracy theory to cross my transom... I saw this scattered through comments for YouTube videos. According to this theory, Bush was a mole planted by Democrats to ensure the election of Barack Obama!

Damn, we're good. Imagine, way back in 2000, we planted Bush, did a head fake with Gore, another head fake with Kerry, just so Bush would get two terms to make Republicans look so bad that we'd elect Obama! You know, because Obama is so evil, so socialist, so communist, so Muslim, so, er, Black, that a labyrinthine plot of epic proportions was the only way to get him elected.

I guess that's no nuttier than suggesting that Obama's parents planted his birth announcement in a Hawaiian newspaper to fool everyone, so that some 45 years later he could trick everyone into voting for him as president even though he's not really a US citizen, but was really born in Osama bin Laden's cave, with the ghost of Karl Marx providing midwife service.

Who knows. Maybe the plot to put Obama in the White House has been in effect since the 50s.

I know, I know, you think I'm kidding about this conspiracy theory. I'm not. You can find one example buried in the comments to this whiny video "proving" how much the press corps hated Bush and loves Obama here.

(Regarding the video, it should be noted the Bush footage comes from later in his second term when his approval ratings hit rock bottom. At the beginning of his term, and especially after 9-11, the press corps stood at attention for Bush just like they do Obama now.)