Left, Right, or Wrong?

Archive for the ‘Republicans’ Category

No matter how bad GOP scandals are, Democrats are always skewered by the media and their own party for their scandals. Why is that? Is it because Democratic scandals are worse? I’d have to give that notion a resounding no. Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of Democratic scandals out there over the years and they aren’t pretty. But corruption and sex scandals – particularly from ‘family values’ candidates – are the worst and they are predominantly members of the GOP that are at fault. Let’s take the case of Anthony Weiner. Weiner texted with six women over the past several years mostly before he was married and some after he married. Weiner, after initially lying out of embarrassment and fear (paraphrasing Weiner here), then came clean. The notorious Andrew Brietbart was behind the outing with what appears to be the help of Congressman Darrel Issa (who denies it, but emails seem to indicate otherwise).

The Weiner scandal has produced a 24-hour ‘beat the snot out of Rep Weiner’ campaign by the ‘liberal’ media and disdain from his colleagues whom have asked him to resign. Weiner, in the mean time, has checked into a rehab facility and asked for a leave of absence from Congress. As of this time, Weiner has committed no crime, broken no ethics violations, and had no physical or attempted physical relationship with any of the women he texted. Granted, his actions show poor judgement on this issue and sending a lewd photo to a woman was idiotic. However, again, he broke no laws.

The GOP – outraged – want him gone. The Democrats, who lack spine, want him gone. Weiner’s constituents want him to stay (56% positive to 33% negative).

In contrast, the GOP has not asked David Vitter to resign. The GOP Senator was guilty of multiple violations of the law when he engaged in sexual acts with prostitutes. Vitter lied about this, indignantly refused to resign and the GOP left him alone (something the Democrats seem unable to do with Weiner). Nor did the GOP ask ‘toe-tapping’ Larry Craig to resign. Craig, said he would resign, but then finished out his term with very few peeps from the GOP. Democrats didn’t exactly raise a huge stink either. It was forgotten by all including the media. That darn short attention span got the better of them. Craig, like Vitter, broke the law. He was arrested in a Men’s bathroom for soliciting sex from the undercover Police Officer in the next stall. Where was the media, GOP, and Democratic outrage then? Did the GOP leadership force him to resign? Nope.

So, I ask again, what exactly is it? Why are Democratic scandals always worse than GOP scandals? Take the more recent attempt at creating a White House scandal with President Obama and the information leaks. There is ample proof to show that the Obama White house has gone after leaks aggressively – and yet the press goes along with the white noise from McCain and his ilk that the White House is behind the leaks. In contrast, none of the media or GOP seems particularly interested in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame – even though that led directly to Vice President Dick Chaney’s office.

There is always an attempt when a GOP scandal breaks to say both parties are equally corrupt or wrong or whatever the media and GOP want to call it for that given situation. The truth is, this is far from true.

Newly minted House Leader John Boehner recently commented that, although the GOP now has control of the house, that President Obama is still in charge. It seems that even with control of the House that the GOP has no intention of taking any responsibility for setting the agenda for the people’s business. Instead, and this should be no surprise, the GOP will simply block the Democrats attempts at passing legislation and helping stimulate the economy. After all, why not do this if they can successfully use this political tactic against the Democrats time after time?

Sadly, even though the Democratic Party did pass health care reform, Wall Street reform, stop the free fall loss of jobs, and create a new consumer protection bureau, the GOP was more successful at whining about jobs and how the cost of these programs were sinking the economy.  The result was nothing short of a disaster for the Democratic Party in the recent midterm elections.

If, however, the Democrats are following the correct legislative strategy, then why weren’t they more successful in the midterm elections?  It is very clear that the Democratic Party has a messaging problem. They cannot seem to be able to energize their own base nor do they seem able to adequately respond to the GOP and Tea Party attacks without looking like they are ready to fold. The result of all this was a sound trouncing by the GOP. The President, incidentally, has the right strategy, but at the wrong time. His attempts to take the high road and avoid division with the GOP is the better way. Unfortunately, however, all this did was to make the Democrats appear weak in the face of constant 24/7 GOP campaigning.

In the end, despite all their gains in the midterms, the GOP plans to continue the strategy of blocking everything the Democrats do while simultaneously blaming them for getting nothing done. The only sound response to this GOP strategy, is for the Democratic Party to come out fighting hard and to compromise less since the GOP will simply sink anything the Democrats attempt to compromise on. Put simply, the President and his party need to force the GOP to come up with alternatives to their legislation, every hour of every day and hammer at this until the American people wake up and realize that the GOP is truly the party of no.

The GOP are cowards. That’s right – I said cowards. Karl Rove and his ilk are spreading lies, disinformation, and increased half truths by way of corporate funded attack ads. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this is the secretive way that these corporations (some foreign) funnel campaign financing secretly to front groups that produce attack ads and literature that are all 100% against the Democratic Party. The GOP doesn’t even hide the fact that they are working with corporations to raise millions of dollars to attack Democrats.

What is truly disgusting about this is that the GOP defends the secretive nature of their fundraising. What are they hiding? What are they afraid of? The answer is clear: they are ashamed of the backers that fund their attack ads. Why ashamed? If the American Public knew about the businesses that backed the GOP agenda, they would vote against the GOP!

However, without the mandatory disclosure rules of campaign donations,  corporations are free to donate to whomever protects their interests best – the GOP. And why would corporate America protect the GOP? It’s simple – for money.  The US Chamber of Commerce, leading the charge, wants to help make the GOP agenda a reality. This agenda includes the repeal the health care law, privatizing Social Security and Medicare, and rolling back as many of the new regulations that protect consumers and regulate corporations.

Imagine, for a moment, if you knew that BP funded attack ads that helped a GOP candidate who was friendly to their agenda. A candidate who was against regulations that protect our natural environment from an oil spill disaster. A candidate who was letting the oil industry lobbyists help the GOP write legislation (just as many GOP members did during the first term of George W. Bush). A candidate who did not care about the middle class workers who would be hurt by having their livelihood erased by BP. Would you vote for that candidate knowing all this? Probably not. But the Supreme Court – a right-leaning court for some time now – ruled that corporations are people and have the right to donate in private.

The result of this ruling was nothing less than mayhem. Now, financing from corporations – all done in secret – remove the accountability that those corporations have to the people.

The GOP claim, however, that this doesn’t change anything. Or they claim that Democrats do the ’same’ thing. This is clearly a lie – on a very large scale. Some Democrats are friendly to businesses and support their interests in legislation. This is true. But the Democratic Party – as a whole – does not have an agenda to oust the GOP by employing secret attack ads across a wide spectrum of candidacies. This is anti-American and undemocratic.

In the end, the GOP does not want you – the voting public – to know where their donations (now in the millions) come from. They are happy to hide in the cloak of secrecy that protects their corporate masters. They do not care what is at stake for our democracy and country as a whole. Fortunately, there are many people who do care. The GOP would have you believe that these people do not exist. That we support them and have no problem with their secret campaign contributions.

Again, this is very far from true. Case in point? How about Fox News. When shareholders found out about several $1 Million donations to the Republican Governors Association and the US Chamber of Commerce, they responded angrily to Rupert Murdoch’s evasive answers at a recent shareholder’s meeting.

The GOP and their TeaParty cohorts often talk about taking the country back. This makes no sense to me since in my opinion, they already have the country. If anyone needs to take the country back, it should be the American people and the Democratic Party.

In the last Presidential debate, Senator McCain referred to a person he called “Joe the Plumber”. Joe, as the story goes, is a plumber that wants to buy a plumbing business for $250 to $280K from his boss and in a rally, was seen to question Senator Obama’s tax plan since that would hurt Joe.

In a seemingly convenient series of events, this led to John McCain’s attack of Senator Obama’s tax plan during the last debate. There only one problem with all of this: it’s not true. It’s fiction. In fact, I’d say the timing to all of this stinks to high heaven. I think Joe the Plumber is really Joe the Republican Shill.

Joe, in reality, is not a licensed plumber, makes $40K a year (making it highly unlikely he could purchase a business for $280K), has no business plan or other plans to buy his boss’s business, and his boss’s business is only worth approximately $100K not $250 to $280K. To make matters even worse, Joe isn’t even an independent. He is a registered Republican. Well, at least we know one thing for certain about Joe. He is a liar.

So what is Joe up to? Why did Joe approach Senator Obama at a rally and lie about his background and business plans? Also, is it just me or is it really convenient that candidate McCain latched on to ‘Joe’ and mentioned him a whopping 21 times during the last Presidential debate. Maybe Joe works for the McCain campaign? Maybe Joe is RNC operative? Or maybe, Joe is as Joe seems: a lying weasel. Apparently, Joe also owes back taxes which I suppose makes him a weasel and a tax cheat.

The irony in all this is that Joe and Joe’s boss would both benefit under Obama’s tax plan. Say it ain’t so, Joe!

Despite early bipartisan support, including the support of the President and Housing Secretary, the GOP in the House, by a 2-to-1 margin voted against the bill that would bail out the financial sector and allegedly stabilize the economy. Democrats, a majority of whom voted in favor of the bill, were aghast when the Republican GOP leadership opposed the bill. This bill was – after all – not the perfect Democratic bill. In fact, what is perhaps the most interesting detail of this whole mess is that the Democrats could have passed the bill in the house along party lines if they had written a bill that the Democrats could all support. Instead, they wrote a bill trying to address part of what they wanted and part of what the GOP wanted. Unfortunately, the GOP leadership had different thoughts – that is to say – we want it our way or the highway.

As a result, the GOP leadership – ignoring what is clearly best for our country – decided to scuttle the bill and in the end, defecting Democrats aided in the 2-to-1 GOP vote against the bill. Since that event, the stock market has taken the single largest plunge in it’s history – more than that of black friday – falling 777 points. That loss translates to approximately a 7% drop in the stock market.

A little advice to Democrats: write a bill that all Democrats can support – if the GOP is going to trash a gift then write the bill you really want and let the Senate and House negotiate the resulting bill.

Seemingly above politics, Senator McCain vowed to suspend his campaign, travel back to Washington, and help lead the fight to straighten out the mess with the $700 Billion bailout. There was one small problem – he needlessly complicated matters instead of resolving issues.

Candidate McCain injected politics where they didn’t belong – in a national crisis. Obama, on the other hand, was reluctant to endorse the involvement of he and McCain directly in the meeting at the White House fearing that the temptation was too great to politicize the issue. He was right.

Yesterday, a bipartisan effort by Democrats and Republicans in the Senate produced a bill that both parties agreed to but contained important wording that the Democrats had demanded – to protect the American people – and not to simply “rescue” Wall Street. This bipartisan effort all parties agreed was needed – including candidate McCain – was thwarted at the last minute when McCain and House Republicans arrived at the White House.

McCain, who led a delegation of House Republicans to the White House meeting, proposed a completely different idea that the Senate Dems and Republicans had not seen or considered. McCain’s shameless actions helped throw a virtual agreement into shambles and helped interject just enough time to let yet another major financial institution fail: Washington Mutual.

McCain’s actions have further endangered the well-being of the economy, aided in the collapse of another major financial institution, and helped to further divide the House and Senate. Furthermore, in doing so, McCain was not even honest about his claims of suspending his campaign. According to the MSNBC, a check of all McCain campaign headquarters revealed that it was business as usual for the McCain campaign. None of the offices were closed and none of the advertising McCain claimed to have pulled from the airwaves was actually stopped.

This was pure political drama – plain and simple. John McCain should be ashamed of himself.

This is an enormously important issue demanding urgent action. All John McCain could do was attempt to politicize the issue for his own benefit.

NOTE: Refer to the interview with Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D-Ill) explaining just what happened at the White House.

Tonight on Countdown, Rachel Madow put it best: They lie. Who “they” you ask? Republicans present at the Republican Convention, of course!

Barack Obama, according to Palin, never wrote a law, wants to raise your taxes, and has less experience than her. Obama, of course, has written laws, has promised to cut taxes on the middle class and raise them on the top 1% of the wealthiest people in the country, and has more practical experience than Palin.

Lies.

Palin, according to pundits and even herself, fought corporate lobbyists, sold an airplane on Ebay, and said “no thanks” to the infamous bridge to nowhere.

Lies.

Romney, in his speech, told Al Gore he needed to start saving the environment by grounding his private jet. One problem, Gore doesn’t own and has never owned a private jet. Ooops.

Lies.

McCain, who decided that arguing against change is a bad idea has attempted to co-opt Senator Obama’s message of change. McCain, with little fervor, proclaimed he was the candidate of change and that he and Governor Palin represent the true chance at change in Washington since they are both Mavericks.

Lies, lies, lies.

It never ceases to amaze me that the attendees at the Republican convention can lie so easily. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised – they’ve had a lot of practice over the years.

Republicans at the convention should be ashamed of themselves. The 9/11 video they showed tonight – alleged to be a tribute – was nothing more than a political advertisement that cheapens the memory of the many people that sacrificed so much on that terrible day.

It was a horribly sad and disturbing day. What possible purpose can it serve to show those terrible scenes again? The burning towers, fleeing people, and emergency personnel working feverishly.

The McCain campaign should apologize to everyone for this obvious and transparent tactic.

Governor Huckabee’s message of unity and change is touching. He thanks the liberal media for uniting the republican party, refers to reporting as tacky and talks about housing crisis, gas prices, and the need to change. “You want something to change,” was his mantra. But like most convention-going, fear spreading Republican participants, Huckabee plays the fear card by mentioning his list of “things that you don’t want to change”:

• freedom
• security
• the opportunity to prosper

Translation: Democrats won’t defend you, protect your rights, or favor trickle-down economics. Huckabee went further by calling Barack Obama’s overseas trip his “excellent adventure in europe”. Obama, as Huckabee would have you believe, brought back europeon ideas that could destroy our way of life or even our government!

Can you believe this? It’s just more of the same. Republicans don’t discuss the serious issues or their plans to improve the economy or handle the war in Afghanistan. Instead, they simply attack democrats as elite and out of touch. What a farce.

Maybe all the showers Huckabee took with lava soap affected his brain. That would explain why, once attending college, he realized that showers should not hurt.

For all those media analysts who think Joe Biden or Barack Obama should be ‘careful’ when discussing or debating Sarah Palin, I think that is clearly behind us now. Tonight, Sarah Palin put the gloves on and came out swinging. Her criticism of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and the Democratic party was harsh and absolute. I think it interesting that Palin – after attacking the Democratic ticket – extended the olive branch in seemingly unlikely fashion:

No one expects us to agree on everything.

But we are expected to govern with integrity, good will, clear convictions, and … a servant’s heart.

I pledge to all Americans that I will carry myself in this spirit as vice president of the United States.

These statements, given at the end of her speech seemed almost to reach across the aisle. However, after her prolonged attack on Obama, the Democratic ticket, and Democrats as a whole, it seems insincere at best.

Palin, it seems, is really good at following the party line and Republican-scripted attack used throughout the convention. For instance, Palin made sure to mention McCain’s POW experience and sacrafice prominently:

A fellow prisoner of war, a man named Tom Moe of Lancaster, Ohio, recalls looking through a pin-hole in his cell door as Lieutenant Commander John McCain was led down the hallway, by the guards, day after day.

As the story is told, “When McCain shuffled back from torturous interrogations, he would turn toward Moe’s door and flash a grin and thumbs up” – as if to say, “We’re going to pull through this.” My fellow Americans, that is the kind of man America needs to see us through these next four years.

Once again this transparent and obvious attempt to divert attention from the great issues of our time – which the Republican Party is great at – is revolting in the extreme. In particular, the convention focus on John McCain’s POW experience is – again – manipulative and sickening.

But Palin was not through beating us over the head with this issue. In case there was any doubt that she was sincere instead of politically shrewd and manipulative, Palin added:

There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you … in places where winning means survival and defeat means death … and that man is John McCain. In our day, politicians have readily shared much lesser tales of adversity than the nightmare world in which this man, and others equally brave, served and suffered for their country.

It’s a long way from the fear and pain and squalor of a six-by-four cell in Hanoi to the Oval Office.

I guess we have our answer: Politically shrewd and manipulative. Sadly, it is blatantly obvious that the single minded focus of the Republican Party in this election is to win by any means – even if that means manipulating McCain’s military service, distorting the facts, or frightening the voting public with talk of war and terrorism.

In fact, Palin and all the speakers tonight make it very clear that the politics of fear and division is their preferred method of campaigning, relating to the American people, and defeating their opponents. Palin and her colleagues attempt to instill this fear and division by mentioning 9/11 again and again, referencing McCain’s POW status and torture over and over again, and talking about the continued dangerous threat by terrorists – that could attack on our soil again.

But, in her attempts to convey this message to the American public, Palin faultered.

Palin is – to put it bluntly – factually challenged. But she was not alone. Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, and President Bush all seem to manufacture the truth – a Republican truth – not, of course, the actual truth.

But don’t take my word for it. The bipartisan group – FactCheck.org holds both parties accountable for their misstatements. Last night, they worked overtime to keep up with the misrepresentations and distortions of the Republican speakers.

My prediction is that Sarah Palin will keep FactCheck.org very very busy, indeed.