GOP Failure Watch Part II

you know that twix commercial when the short white dude gets mad at the girls at that party? That's mastershake.

 

http://www.suntimes.com/6720892-417/tea-party-rep.-joe-walsh-sued-for-100000-in-child-support
"during the campaign ... Walsh was driving on a suspended license. His license was suspended twice in 2008 for his failure to appear in court, and he was cited in 2009 for driving on a suspended license"

 

Reagan-Appointed Judge Richard Posner Calls 'Goofy' Republicans A 'Crowd of Lunatics'

 

Wow, we once thought he was far right. But he is data guy, and the current party no.

 

Then we should go back to the practices of our Founding Generation and ban big, unlimited, no liability, immortal, "person" corporations as they are now. Limit their activities, their time duration, their size, and go back to hows Washington, Jefferson, Madison, etc. did tings:

• Corporations had limited duration, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years -- they were not given forever, like corporate charters are given today.
  
  
• The amount of land a corporation could own was limited.
  
  
• The amount of capitalization a corporation could have was limited.
  
  
• The corporation had to be chartered for a specific purpose and not for everything or anything.
  
  
• The internal governance was very different. Shareholders had a lot more rights than they have today, for major decisions such as mergers; sometimes they had to have unanimous shareholder consent.
  
  
• There were no limitations protections on liability -- managers, directors, and shareholders were liable for all debts and harms and in some states, doubly or triply liable.
  
  
• The states reserved the right to amend the charters, or to revoke them -- even for no reason at all.

If Jack Welch or Jamie Dimon got sent to jail when their companies broke the law, including bribery, that would stop most of the bribery pretty darn fast.

The Founders were as wary of private power as they were of public power. It's too bad that the people who usually invoke the Founders the loudest have conveniently forgotten what the Founders knew and have become stooges for plutocrats.

 

The "Soopahmahduls!" commercial? That's Snickers. And Joe Pesci deserves better than to be compared to Mastershake.

 

Why are Comcast and CenturyLink my buddies?

 

http://m.livingstonparishnews.com/mobile/news/article_6c2da5fe-c1e5-11e1-ae3b-0019bb2963f4.html

This is 2012, right?

 

Nostalgia is a form of violence.

 

As a man currently in the process of rolling a doobie, I highly resent that comment.

Thank you everybody, as the above shall outline the entirety of my constructive contribution towards the debate pertaining to the matters at hand, relevant to this thread.

 

Getting public funds to christian schools has always been the driving force behind charter schools and vouchers.

 

A follow up: Krohn has an essay in Salon.com

I Was a Right Wing Child Star

My involvement at such a young age happened for manifold reasons: I always enjoyed writing (I had gotten my first paid writing gig when I was 9), I enjoyed politics (or at least the theory of politics), and I grew up in Georgia, where conservative ideologues dominated the radio and the populace. Mix those things with the naïveté of a kid and you’ve got the perfect recipe for a fresh, right-wing pundit. My star role worked out well for a while. I didn’t have to question any of the talking points I’d made in my speech, and I got to drone on and on about them at numerous Tea Parties and other conservative gatherings. I felt justified in my beliefs if for no other reason than no one actually told me I was wrong. Instead, men like Bill Bennett and Newt Gingrich hailed me as the voice for my generation and a hope for America....​

​

Then, echoes of Bill Maher...

But then, earlier this week, Politico released an interview in which I announced I wasn’t a conservative anymore — and the proverbial crap hit the fan. Since then, I have been treated by the political right with all the maturity of schoolyard bullies. The Daily Caller, for instance, wrote three articles about my shift, topping it off with an opinion piece in which they stated that I deserved criticism because I wear “thick-rimmed glasses” and I like Ludwig Wittgenstein. Why don’t they just call me “four-eyes”? These are not adults leveling serious criticism; these are scorned right-wingers showing all the maturity of a little boy. No wonder I fit in so well when I was 13.​

​

And my favorite passage (though again, highly derivative of Maher)

I was tired of being a part of the ideological warfare this country is so caught up in. I was tired of the right using me as an example of how young people “get” what they’re talking about — when it’s obvious that I didn’t get what I talking about at all. I mean, come on, I was between 13 and 14 when I was regurgitating these talking points! What does a kid who has never paid a tax bring to the table in a conversation about the burden of taxes? What does a healthy child know about people who can’t afford healthcare because of preexisting conditions? No matter how intelligent a person might be, certain political issues require life experience; they’re much more complicated than the black and white frames imposed by partisan America. (And no, my mother and father didn’t write my material for me. You’d have to be as paranoid as the birthers to think someone’s parents would put them up to all that. Have a bit more faith in the human race, man!) I was just a 13-year-old kid spitting up the nonsense he’d learned. In the future, a good rule of thumb might be: If you’re not old enough to have consensual sex, you’re probably not old enough to make consequential political statements.​

​

Not sure what it means that people old enough to have grandchildren regularly make (and apparently believe) those same political statements, but I'm not going to think about that without a boilermaker in front of me.

 

Cross Posting in Weird News/GOP Fail Thread:

At least some Tea Partiers like Porn Stars

 

I don't disagree, but usually the supporters don't go to this extreme.

 

Anyone who wishes to continue to have access to this forum will be wise to leave any and all unwanted personal references out of the conversation. No warnings henceforth, just a ban.

 

Perfect!

I grew up near Berkeley, so I have a lifetime loathing of earnestly spouting chirping kiddies, repeating the talking points fed to them by their parents. Blech.

 

SOB Scott.... I really hate the guy....


http://www.salon.com/2012/07/09/rick_scotts_tb_scandal/

On March 26 this year, Florida’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill that slashed the state Department of Health’s budget and closed a state hospital where bad cases of tuberculosis were treated. Nine days later, the federal Center for Disease Control (CDC) detailed in a report that Florida was experiencing its worst TB outbreak in 20 years in Jacksonville. Since then, the governor’s office has either ignored or suppressed news of the outbreak, and it rushed ahead with plans to close the TB hospital as local officials kept information about the outbreak from the public. This, all according to an excellent investigation by the Palm Beach Post’s Stacey Singer, who was stymied by state officials at every turn when she tried to learn more about the outbreak and about why the state hadn’t responded to it in a concerted way.

 

There's a nice paraphrase of Gandhi in the comments:

What Gandhi might have said, "I like your Republic but I do not like your Republicans. They are so unlike your Republic."​

​

 

I dare all of you to read the comments section of the Palm Beach Post story.

 

They refuse to even show you their front page unless you allow both javascript and cookies. They can go ******** themselves.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48128869/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/

Cracks appear in GOP unity on health law repeal


No doctors in white lab coats will be paraded before the television cameras pleading for repeal. The rhetoric is likely to be less about socialized medicine and government takeovers of health care and more about the health care law’s impact on the real issue driving the election — jobs and the economy.

Moreover, divisions are emerging over the wisdom of pulling the law out, root and branch. Some Republicans, facing re-election in swing districts, are openly suggesting that some measures should remain.

Others worry that the Republican leadership has yet to detail what the party would replace the health care law with. Representative Nan Hayworth, an ophthalmologist and a freshman Republican from New York, said she and others have a clear framework: bolstered health savings accounts, the option to purchase insurance across state lines, medical malpractice limits and a government-subsidized insurance pool for sick people who cannot buy insurance on their own. But those alternatives have not been broadly aired.

 

Maybe today, but in Gandhi’s time, he would have said the same about the Democrats.

I mean Abraham Lincoln and Roosevelt were Republicans and Klan members used to run as Democrats.

How things changed since the 60's.

Question, was the Wallace dude that ran for President wanting Sagregation, was he a Rep or a Dem?

Maybe he was independent.

 

Google 1) Dixiecrats.

1) Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican, except when he was heading up the Bull Moose Party. FDR was a Democrat.

2) George Wallace was a Democrat. Spent too much money on social programs for modern Republicans to want him. He eventually headed up a 3rd party on at least one of his preidential bids, IIRC. Along these lines...

3) google "Southern strategy." A theme will emerge.

 

He ran officially for President as an independent. Was a southern Democrat, but scared the shit out of both conservative Republicans and union/labor democrats as those were his core voters.