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October 22, 2009 03:55 PM UTC

Thursday Open Thread

  • 60 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.”

–Niccolo Machiavelli

Comments

60 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread

  1. This is karmic payback at it’s finest – the Right Wing Moonbats created their talk radio media machine to try and be the permanent majority in government, and now it’s devoring them like some Super-Villain’s monster released by the hero of the movie….

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/politi

    Welcome to the permanent minority, douchebags! Maybe another ass-whupping in the election will force Moderate repubs to take back their Party…  

    1. Until Colorado’s caucus system is a thing of the past that’s tough to do.  The strangle hold these idiots have all but eliminates a reasoned, moderate voice at the precinct level. Speak out for a moderate candidate and your assured of never being elected to the county assembly as a delegate or alternate.

    2. you sound really bitter and jealous.  

      Why would anyone lash-out in such a manner when they control the government.  Its just not professional, mature and indicates a lack of leadership for someone so interested in seeing the opposition lose.

      You no motivating message.  

      1. ‘tad I considered myself a moderate-to-left Repub until 1994. That’s when Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC memo came out, and I realized the Party of Eisenhower was now the Party of Moonbats.

        The motivation of the message is this – I know far more Moderate repubs who hate their party than I know of the Dem version. Until those moderate Repubs take back their Party, the GOP is destined to be a fringe party full of birthers deathers and Civil War re-enactors.

        The irony of the message is that the same mechanism the GOP Moonbats used to squirm their way into (temporary) power is now the one dragging them down into the depths of obscurity.

        1.    He got involved in that special election to fill the vacancy credted when Obama named Rep McHugh (R-NY) to be Sec of the Army.  Gingrich endorsed the RINO running as the GOP candidate.  She is currently polling in 3d place.

            Dick Armey, former House Majority Leader and currently leader of the Teabaggers, endorsed the Conservative Party nominee (who is running in second place behind the Dem candidate).

          1. Soon he’ll be drubbed out of the party for being a RINO.

            He put the wheels of craziness in motion, now he’s gonna end up like the Coyote when the Acme safe he pushed off the cliff somehow lands on him.

            1. Conservatism is like heroin. No matter how much you get, eventually it’s not enough, and you get ever more desperate for a bigger fix to get you off like it used to.

              The Republican Party is like this guy.

    3. First it was alienating the very same Latinos they were initially making progress with on social conservative issues, then cute e-mails with watermelons on the White House lawn, now just naturally defaulting to the age old stereotype of cheap, penny pinching Jews when they want to make a point about frugality after voting 3 to 1 against standing up for the rights of women, raped and held captive by American contractors in Iraq, to redress.  

      What’s next?  Finding a way to insult Americans of Asian descent?  Is the 20% willing to admit to being Rs the bottom or is it GOP limbo time, how low can they go? He he he, as Middle would say.

        1. the world view of the majority of the remaining self-identifying 20% whether they would admit it or not. I exclude you from sharing the views of that majority of the 20% self-identifying R minority.  

        2. BC’s comment aside, the original article that SSGDan was linking to should have you worried.

          Rush, Glenn Beck, and all the other conservative media personalities have halfway sane Republicans like Tim Pawlenty worried about 2010 and 2012. The Tea Partiers soak up the crazy rhetoric, but the middle doesn’t respond very well to it.

          Herein lies the Catch-22 that conservatives and Republicans get trapped by: they can’t win without the hard-right base, but they can’t win without the middle. If Rush and Beck keep pushing around Republicans they see as not conservative enough, then yo9u can forget about people starting to see the GOP as the Big Tent party again.

          The problem is that Rush and Beck aren’t interested in making the country a better place–they’re interested in making their mansions a better place through increased ratings and book sales. If that costs them the upcoming elections, all the better for making hard-right Republicans even more pissed off, which makes them even more money.

          It’s a vicious cycle, and the GOP is running out of time to make a course correction. Pretty soon it will be too late. Not that I’m complaining.

        3. But we’re not the moderate and “sane” R’s the party needs to build itself back with or for.

          And in politics, the often sad but unmistakeable truth is that perception is reality.

          Republicans for rape.

          Repubilcans are the party of no.

          Limbaugh and Beck are the R leadership.

          According to Cheney/Bush deficits don’t matter.

          Karl Rove is a bastard.

          Michael Steel is a token idiot.

          I could go on – but the point is that at some point it doesn’t matter what is th emainstream R dogma is nor what you think it is. What matters is what’s the headline tomorrow and Stewart and Fox.  And lately that’s a heaping helping of the crazy.

        1. .

          If it’s not too obvious, consider that if these contractors would do this to an American, might they do even worse to Iraqis ?

          Also, note that its a Democrat who is pulling this from the bill.  Republicans may prefer no accountability, but it took Senator Inoyue to remove the provision to hold contractors accountable.  So it’s bipartisan support for rape in the Senate, literal and figurative.

          .

            1. Apparently, he is being lobbied hard by contractors to strip it out of the final bill or weaken it or water it down. He has reaped almost $250,000 over the years in campaign contributions from them so I would venture to say that is factoring into his decision making. So yeah, he is primarily responsible for gutting this, the bastard.

              (And one Democrat compared to the 30 Republicans that voted against this does not equal bipartisanship, Barrron.)

            2. .

              and that was what came up:

              “Inoyue supports our pro-rape stance,” or words to that effect.

              Of course it’s bipartisan, if you forget the literal rape of individual Americans by contractors in Iraq, and focus on those contractors figuratively raping the American people at large.

              .

              1. Here’s what it said:

                Franken’s Anti-Rape Amendment May Be Stripped By Senior Dem, Sources Say

                So, if you’d like to stick to the subject at hand and stand by your original statement, knock yourself out. It still won’t make what you say true.

                1. .

                  But I was paraphrasing the headline, the first thing that comes up, when I click the link that PR had in his 10:42:00 AM post for the parody advocacy group “Republicans for Rape.”  It says:

                  Senator Daniel Inouye: An ally across the aisle?

                  Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 12:20PM

                  Great news, folks!

                  We might be a minority in Congress, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get our way!  Senator Daniel Inouye, Democrat from Hawaii, may be intervening on our behalf.

                  Now, in the context of the rest of the post, I came pretty close to that in my paraphrasing, won’t you concede ?

                  .

                  I admit to not following your admonition to “Stick to the subject at hand.”  From Northeast Colorado Springs, it looks like I stuck pretty close to the subject in the post I was responding to, the one from Paul at 14:45:56 PM, which responded to mine at 14:28:34 PM.  

                  Just to be clear, I was not responding to your post where you changed the subject and interjected with a link to the “serious news site” HuffPost.  

                  As a wanna-be politician, I won’t stand by any previous statement.  If challenged, I will even repudiate data on my filings with the Secretary of State, things like my name and date of birth.  But for the life of me I cannot figure out what statement above you think I ought to weasel out of.  

                  Could you possibly be suggesting that Democratic elected officials would not condone war profiteering, and would not accept contributions from or engineer earmarks for DoD contractors ?  

                  I don’t think this Pols community would support that.  They suffer from unfettered access to the Internet and the burden of critical thinking.  You need to have those discussions over at DKos.

                  .  

                  1. .

                    I meant “not understanding,” as opposed to “not complying with.”

                    Really poor choice of words.  

                    kinda makes my point about how I can’t avoid everything I’m not good at, or I’d starve.

                    Well, maybe eating is one thing I can do satisfactorily.

                    You get the point.

                    .

          1. Chilling and most reasonable thought. Do we really want to be represented in the world by cold blooded mercenary thugs beyond the reach of any nation’s law, including our own? Do we expect people subjected to these thugs to look to us as an example of any sort of ideal to aspire to? What’s the difference to any civilian population between our thugs, the corrupt thugs we support and the other side’s thugs?  

    4.    Not yet….it’s too soon.  They need to further purify themselves before they can realize what’s gone wrong and raise the Big Tent.  

        What is going on in that special election in upstate N.Y. is a fascinating example of how much further to the right the GOP needs to go before it moves to the middle.

      1. What do you think about the line of reasoning that says the Republicans just ran their most moderate, rino-istic Presidential candidate ever and got whupped?

        Not saying it’s my line of reasoning, just curious.

        1. You know McCain lost all credibility with moderate Republicans and Democrats who voted for him in 2000–and for good reason. The John McCain who was the GOP nominee for President last year couldn’t have been more different from candidate McCain in the 2000 election.

          From picking Palin as his running mate, to picking Rovians to run his campaign, to changing many of his fiscal and social stances, he tried as hard as he could to paint himself as a conservative Republican.

          McCain’s loss had little to do with his previous status as a RINO-ish Republican, and everything to do with Rush Limbaugh rooting against him, and doing everything in his power to tear apart McCain’s portrayal of himself as a right wing conservative.

          1. Late in the campaign he was still trying to appeal to the Party “base” – way past the time a candidate should have solidified their base.  And by continuing to focus on the extremist base, he was eliminating the possibility of getting enough moderate support to win.  

            1. But wouldn’t that just disprove the original point you made that I was responding to?

              We can go on and on about hypothetical things that might have happened to sway the outcome of the election (how about if Bush wasn’t one of the most hated presidents leaving office, and people didn’t want to punish Republicans for his mistakes?) but all we have to work on is what actually happened.

              You seem like you’re insinuating that the GOP needn’t worry about any backlash from its year of crazy, and all I’m saying is that despite Obama and the Democrats not living up to their potential thusfar they could still lose because of Limbaugh and Beck preaching to the Tea Party choir.

        2. I don’t think so.

          Let’s see, Nixon signed the EPA into law and opened the door to China.

          Poppy agreed to tax hikes to reduce growth of the deficit (and got crucified by the base).

          I think over the past 20 years the Republicans have slid so far right that even Reagan would be called a RINO today.

          1.    Bonzo did raise taxes in ’82 after slashing them in ’81 (although the spin doctors in his White House put out the talking points memo that said the increases were to be referred to as “revenue enhancers”!)

              And he did make nice-nice with Gorby and the other Commies.

              Yeah, even Reagan would probably be considered a RINO today.

            1. Using the logic they apply to today’s Republicans, he probably should be. However, that’s not the case. He’s an idol to the tea partiers.

              The myth of Reagan, and how his policies would add up under the scrutiny of today’s Republican microscope don’t add up.

                  1.    He even drank beer with Tip O’Neill.  It started to change when Daddy Bush turned Lee Atwater loose.  Then Newt Gingrich and the wing nuts who got elected in ’94 cranked it up several notches with their villification of the Clintons which reached its climax (no pun intended) with the ’98 impeachment vote.  And, of course, Karl Rove & Co. just kept stoking the fire in order to energize the base.

        3. He forgot to steer out of the hard right turn after the primary, picked a fringe loon Barbie doll for VP and ran straight hard right.  If he had run as the old rogue McCain, popular even with many Dems, chosen a credible VP, and refrained from stunts like rushing to Washington to lead and then sitting around saying absolutely nothing, he  probably would have won.

          1. He wouldn’t have won.

            Too much of the base would have stayed home, and no where near enough of the PUMAs and team Obama would not have been pickoffable.  

            (Ok so I made up a word-leave me alone, I’m tired)

            1. There may have been a lot of Indies who would have been happy to vote for the old McCain, the 2008 version, not so much.  But hindsight is 20/20.  In any case he certainly didn’t run as a moderate and he picked the most extreme (not to mention just plain silliest) VP he could possibly have chosen.

        4. Although McCain is not a moderate by any means (he voted to abolish the minimum wage!), he does somehow have that reputation.

          Now Sarah Palin, that’d be a good candidate. If you can get the right-wing whackjobs behind you, well then everyone else will just instantly fall in line behind them. Mike Huckabee might be another good choice. But even Palin and Huckabee might be too tainted (Palin from her association with extreme moderates like McCain and Huckabee because he’s sometimes unhappy about poverty).

          Really, if you want to get the base motivated, how about someone with a positive demonstrated record of achievement for Americans like Doug Bruce?

  2. Going through Romanoff’s quarterly filing two things jumped out at me. One is that there were no expenses at all for staff. I’d guess getting in so late in the month he just put off paying until after the reporting period for any staff he hired. The expense I found interesting was a reimbursement to him for $27,500 for a payment to Global Strategy Group for polling. Since his campaign hasn’t put out any news about the results they must not be too great but if he had polling done before he announced maybe he did have something that showed him he could win. Then “could win” is a long way from “will win” and with what we’ve seen so far out of Camp Romanoff it could be over before it really begins. Going through Bennet’s next and will post anything that jumps out. His last report was pretty much what I expected and just showed a lot of staff and big checks to RBI and some DC consultants.

    1. Took a while to go through Bennet’s 500 page filing and the biggest thing I got was that Bennet’s campaign is spending money on raising money which looks like it’s working. Bennet spent over $100k for the quarter on fundraising consultants including 60k to HM Consulting in DC, around 20k to Straus Baker in New York and 25k to Golden Gate Strategies in California. Like Romanoff, Bennet spent money to find out what people are thinking with a 40k payment to Harstad Strategic Research of Boulder for a survey. On top of the campaign staff he gets for regular 9k payments to RBI it looks like Bennet had around 8-10 paid staff last quarter. Will be interesting to see what his staff numbers are now that Romanoff is in.

      My favorite expense was over 3k to the Yale Club of NY for catering along with tens of thousands more in catering. Clear that Bennet’s supporters eat well and that feeding them and the fundraising consultants paid off for Bennet last quarter.

  3. Good bye, and good freaking riddance,  John Corzine.

    In the words of NRO, “Happy October Surprise, [soon to be former] Governor Corzine”.

    Today a jury found Joe Ferriero, former chairman of the Bergen County Democratic Organization, guilty of one count of conspiracy to defraud and two counts of mail fraud.

    Guess how much money Jon Corzine and his family gave to Ferriero over the years?

    $441,600.

    1. Your posting does not fit with the widely acknowledged fact that no Republican can ever win an election again and all Democrats are innocent even when proven guilty.  You’ll just have to self delete that LB!

    2. It’ll be entertaining when Corzine wins re-election. Not so much because I support Corzine, but because it’ll make Republicans (especially the NRO) look stupid.

      And after all, isn’t that what blog-politics is all about? Not so much caring one way or the other what happens or why, not so much supporting one policy or the other, but just pissing off your opponents?

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