Watch the video above if you can stand to watch Ann Coulter. Coulter compares waterboarding to hazing, punishment for small children.
Thanks to our friends at Media Matters for America.
Category: Republicans
GOP Sen. Arlen Specter to Switch Parties, Run as a Dem. in ’10
Talk about your seismic shifts!
Veteran Republican Sen. Arlen Specter disclosed plans Tuesday to switch parties, a move intended to boost his chances of winning re-election next year that will also push Democrats closer to a 60-vote filibuster-resistant majority.
“I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans,” Specter said in a statement posted on a Web site devoted to Pennsylvania politics and confirmed by his office. Several Senate officials said a formal announcement could come later in the day or Wednesday.
Specter, 79 and in his fifth term, is one of a handful of Republican moderates remaining in Congress in a party now dominated by conservatives. Several officials said the White House as well as leaders in both parties had been involved in discussions leading to his move.
With Specter, Democrats would have 59 Senate seats. Al Franken is ahead in a marathon recount in Minnesota, and if he ultimately wins his race against Republican Norm Coleman, he would become the party’s 60th vote. That is the number needed to overcome a filibuster.
I have always liked Sen. Specter, even if I’ve disagreed with him in the past. If I still lived in Pennsylvania, I would have supported him many times over.
Welcome to the Democratic Party, U.S. Senator Arlen Specter!
Conservative Blogger Matt Drudge Near Top of Out Mag’s Power List
Out Magazine has released their Power 50 list, featuring the leading figures in the gay community. Much to the chagrin of the far right, I’m sure, Matt Drudge makes his debut on the list in 6th place.
Right-wingers know Drudge is gay, right?
Power and Money have always been close companions, and the global economic crisis has only made them more so. But the Out Power 50 list has never been only about person wealth: congressman Barney Frank rose to the top this year because of his power over national financial policy. On the other hand, since just about everyone from Warren Buffet (not on our list — he’s not gay) to Dolce & Gabanna (also not on the list — they don’t live and work primarily in North America) has taken a personal financial hit, changes in person wealth generally didn’t affect rankings.
Any surprises? Rosie O’Donnell dropped from 31st to 42nd. The editors are sorry to not hear from Rosie any more, “We’ll admit it: The world is quieter, and maybe even a bit more boring, without daily updates from the mouth of Rosie. (She’s even abandoned her blog, at least for the time being.)”
Jodie Foster dropped from 13th to 36, “There’s not much doing in the life of Jodie Foster these days. But as the highest-paid openly lesbian actor in Hollywood — she got $15 million for her role in The Brave One — she’s got a lot of sway.”
Facebook creator Chris Hughes makes his debut on the list at number 32, “Not only is the 25-year old Harvard grad a cocreator of one of the most triumphant starups in recent history — a little marvel called Facebook — he also helped Obama land in the White House. Hughes left Facebook in February 2007 to serve as director of online organizing for Obama and launch My.BarackObama.com (orMyBO), allowing supporters to form groups, raise funds, and plan events online. ”
Neil Patrick Harris debuts at number 28, the editors saying, “Named one of last year’s Entertainers of the Year by Entertainment Weekly, Out cover guy Harris could do no wrong wherever he showed up.”
Suze Orman moved from 24th to 22, “Personal finance guru Orman came out publicly in The New York Times two years ago, but with the economy now on life support we need her more than ever. ”
Making his debut to the list at number 7 is Anglican Bishop Gene Robinson, “Baptized Vicky Gene (his parents had been hoping for a girl), Bishop V. Gene Robinson has been a lightning rod in the debate over the church and homosexuality ever since his consecration in 2003. But while the 77 million — member Anglican church of which Robinson is a member remains deeply conflicted over the issue, his series of meetings with Barack Obama in the run-up to last year’s election was a powerful signal of the new administration’s inclusiveness. ”
In what may be the biggest surprise, or disappointment, to the right wing and conservative America in general, Matt Drudge debuts on the list at number 6:
Matt Drudge — the archly conservative 42-year-old owner of the right wing news–aggregating site Drudge Report—also happens to love Chaka Khan, The Young and the Restless, and sex with men. Though he often plays coy about his homosexuality — “I go to straight bars. I go to gay bars,” he once said — he had a long-term relationship with a male landscaper. The power of Drudge is formidable; he reports that his site averages 20 million page views a day. Unfortunately, his agenda is often antigay, anti-choice, and anti-tolerance. No one said power was always used for good.
The weird right is taking being led over the cliff by a gay man. I suppose there’s poetic justice there somewhere.
Let Texas Secede!
Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com did a decent analysis of politics in a post-Texan-secession United States. As he puts it, if Texans follow the charge of Governor Rick Perry, Democrats would control Congress with a fillibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and Republicans would be severely weakened.
Here are a few of Nate’s key points:
- If Texas were not in the Union, the Democrats would currently have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate — or at least they would once Al Franken gets seated. This is because, in a 98-seat Senate, only 59 votes would be required to break a filibuster.
- If Texas were not in the Union, the Republicans would operate from a significantly weakened position in the House, since the net 8-vote advantage their congressional delegation gives them in the state (they have 20 seats to the Democrats’ 12) is by far their largest.
- If Texas were not in the Union, George W. Bush would never have become President in 2000 — not because he’d be constitutionally ineligible (Bush, despite his Texas twang, was born in posh New Haven, Connecticut). Rather, he wouldn’t have had enough Electoral Votes to defeat Al Gore.
Let Texas secede! Let’s build a wall to keep out the illegal Texans who try to cross our borders! Give the Republicans their own country! Let them have little government or no government, executions on every street corner, no health care, no welfare, no social security! Let them “Drill, Baby Drill!” until they’re drunk on oil as the United States of America freely moves away from oil to green technology! Let’s impose huge tariffs on imports from Texas!
Let the lunatics run the asylum! Let Texas go!
Enough exclamation points for you? Notice I’m not classifying this one under “Humor.” This Republican idea has promise.
Baracknophobia – From Jon Stewart
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This is hilarious. Jon Stewart on the far right’s Prophets of Doom.
If you’re reading this from one of our affiliate sites, please click here to watch the video.
Bring On Senator Al Franken
I saw Al Franken in Chicago a few years ago. Still regret that I didn’t stand and applaud when he walked on the stage for a live broadcast of Air America Radio. We all stood and applauded Senator Dick Durbin.
That was the right thing to do. I’m a big fan of Sen. Dick Durbin.
But I always regretted not standing for Al. No one else did, either. He was the first on stage, and if I had stood, others would have as well.
It’s okay. I got over my guilt by donating to the Al Franken campaign. You should too.
In all fairness to Al, he came out to warm up the crowd. After he warmed us up, we all felt more comfortable being ourselves, and standing or Senator Durbin.
Enough of that already.
Al Franken has won. It’s over.
But FORMER SENATOR Norm Coleman (Is it Goldman? Sorry. Forgive my Bird Cage flash back.) plans to appeal and keep Franken out of the U.S. Senate for as long as possible. And Minnesota be damned.
Al Franken has won. It is over.
Norm, good luck with your future endeavors.
Well done, Al. I look forward to standing for you some day soon.
Republicans Crouch for April 15 Teabagging Fest
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I’ve never laughed so hard in my life.
MSNBC has come up with every conceivable means of describing the great Republican Teabagging Festival set to begin tomorrow without actually coming out and defining the slang term “teabagging.”
I’m close to tears with laughter.
Take this, for example, from tonight’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann: “FOX news can’t keep it’s mouth shut about teabagging.”
And again from Olbermann, rich with the double entendres, “You’ve got Dick Army teabagging the nation. Are you sure Howard Stern isn’t behind this?”
Yet again, “Of course, we already know how Bill O’Reilly crouches on this issue.”
Good luck to all our Republican teabagging friends. Thank your leadership for us!
If you’re reading this from one of our affiliate sites, be sure to click through here to watch the hilarious report from MSNBC.
Glenn Beck’s Obama Derangement Syndrome
Gov. Bobby Jindal is Trying to Stand Up
It’s going to be quite a ride watching the Republicans try to reorganize themselves. They really want power. They should focus on issues and developing policy. Their only policy is their stubborn ideology regardless of circumstances.
Governor Bobby Jindal is trying to position himself for a presidential bid for 2012. He says it’s time for the GOP to stand up to President Obama.
Of course it is. Why wait until you have ideas?
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal again found himself carrying the Republican mantle opposite a primetime appearance from President Barack Obama on Tuesday, saying Republicans must be ready to defy the president when they disagree with his policies. He also joked about his widely panned response to Obama’s address to Congress last month.
“We are now in the position of being the loyal opposition,” Jindal said at a Republican congressional fundraising dinner that only by coincidence fell on the same night as Obama’s news conference. “The right question to ask is not if we want the president to fail or succeed, but whether we want America to succeed.”
Saying “the time for talking about the past is over,” Jindal said Republicans have begun to find their voice after back-to-back elections losses — motivated by what he called historic Democratic spending excess.
“The time for talking about the past is over.” Of course it is. The past is how we got into the mess we’re in right now: Republican policies, George W. Bush, historic Republican spending excess.
Yes, and don’t you forget it: Historic Republican spending excess. In all the wrong places.
Stand up, Bobby. Repackage for us the same, old, dangerous Republican policies that paved the way for the Great George W. Bush Recession — and thank Americans they tossed your party’s sorry collective asses the hell out of Dodge.
Republican Rep. LaTourette Tightens His Sphincter
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Republicans in Congress are really searching for meaning. With no policy to advance, they’ve turned into a side show.
That’s a shame, because we could use them.
The majority of Republican governors get it. But Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-OH, is from another planet:
“Ross Perot when he ran for president in 1992 talked about the giant sucking sound. Well, today, there’s another giant sucking sound going on in Washington D.C. And that’s tightening of sphincters on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue as people are having to explain who put into the stimulus bill this provision of law.”
Enjoy Keith Olbermann above.