…and the elected GOP establishment is nothing more than their personal representatives.
Adolphus Busch IV requested the NRA immediately cancel his lifetime membership, one day after the U.S. Senate rejected a bill that would have expanded background checks on guns:
“…One only has to ask why the NRA reversed its original position on background checks. Was it not the NRA position to support background checks when Mr. LaPierre himself stated in 1999 that NRA saw checks as ‘reasonable’? [...]
I am simply unable to comprehend how assault weapons and large capacity magazines have a role in your vision. The NRA I see today has undermined the values upon which it was established. Your current strategic focus clearly places priority on the needs of gun and ammunition manufacturers while disregarding the opinions of your 4 million individual members.
One only has to look at the makeup of the 75-member board of directors, dominated by manufacturing interests, to confirm my point. The NRA appears to have evolved into the lobby for gun and ammunition manufacturers rather than gun owners.”
jetgirl78: “I’ve heard some say the blocking the step would be a victory. My question is victory for who? Victory for what? All that happened today it was the preservation of the loophole that lets dangerous criminals buy guns without a background check. That didn’t make our kids safer.”
jetgirl78: “I’ve heard folks say that having the families of victims lobby for this legislation was somehow misplaced. A prop, somebody called them. Emotional blackmail, some outlets said. Are they serious? Do we really think that thousands of families whose lives have been shattered by gun violence don’t have a right to weigh in on this issue?”
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“I have something I want to say to the victims of Newtown, or any other shooting,” Davis said. “I don’t care if it’s here in Minneapolis or anyplace else. Just because a bad thing happened to you doesn’t mean that you get to put a king in charge of my life. I’m sorry that you suffered a tragedy, but you know what? Deal with it, and don’t force me to lose my liberty, which is a greater tragedy than your loss. I’m sick and tired of seeing these victims trotted out, given rides on Air Force One, hauled into the Senate well, and everyone is just afraid — they’re terrified of these victims.”
“I would stand in front of them and tell them, ‘go to hell,’” he added.
“They were having in event in Bettendorf, Iowa. And they—if you went online, you could get these free tickets, so we decided we would go. And I was seven rows from the podium that he stood behind. And I asked him, “Will you please come to Freeport, Illinois, and help Sensata employees save their jobs?” At that point, we were removed. And as we were being removed, his supporters are screaming—first they start a “U.S.A.” chant. And we’re like, “Yes, we agree.” And then they started calling us communists for trying to keep our jobs from going to China. And I have never understood that yet.” — Tom Gaulrapp, who worked at Sensata Technologies for 33 years.
These are people who are too stupid to realize they’re next.
LIKE AN ORWELLIAN FEVER DREAM, the following song played at the end of a Mitt Romney campaign rally in Iowa last month: “I want my label to say: Made in the USA.” You can watch a clip here. The lyrics:
THE FAMILY IS POOR WHEN THEY GET BACK HOME ♪♪ WE GOT TRACTORS, WE’VE GOT PLOWS, WE’VE GOT TO KNOW HOW ♪♪ KEEP YOUR REGULATIONS UP IN D.C. ♪♪ YEAH I WANT MY HOME TO SAY BUILT IN THE U.S.A. ♪♪ SO PAY OUR MINERS TO DIG OUR COAL ♪♪ BUT THEY’LL TURN RIGHT UP THERE AND HIDE THE AIR ♪♪ SOLAR ENERGY, THEY DON’T CARE ♪♪ TODAY IN THE U.S.A. ♪♪ YEAH, IN THE U.S.A. ♪♪ YEAH I WANT MY LABEL TO SAY MADE IN THE U.S.A. ♪♪ WE’LL BUILD THE BEST DAMN CAR ♪♪ WORKING WITH YOU, YOU WORKING WITH ME ♪♪ JOBS TODAY IN OUR COUNTRY THAT’S WHAT I SAY ♪♪ I JUST WANT TO BE BETTER, THAT’S FOR SURE, IT’S STILL MADE BY THE NEIGHBOR NEXT DOOR ♪♪ HEY I WANT MY LABEL TO SAY MADE IN THE U.S.A. ♪♪ U.S.A. ♪♪ AMERICAN JOBS IN THE U.S.A. ♪♪ AMERICAN JOBS IN THE U.S.A. ♪♪ – via: CSpan
Who wrote the song, who’s singing it? I can’t find it on teh google. If anyone knows, please comment — I’m interested.
So the King of Bain — the man who, for years, leveraged and destroyed American businesses for profit, the guy who outsourced and off-shored American jobs to China and everywhere else around the globe for profit and who wanted to let Detroit go bankrupt, the multi-millionaire who says half the country is dependent on government and won’t take responsibility for their own lives while he pays a lower tax rate on his income than most working people pay on theirs and hides his wealth in secret accounts in the Caymans, Bermuda, and Switzerland to avoid taxes — has the cojones to play that song at one of his political rallies.
This proves two things: 1) Romney thinks the Republican base rubes are such complete idiots, so overcome with Obama Derangement Syndrome and lacking in basic information about him and his background (with zero desire to learn more), that they’d vote for Satan himself if, on the ballot, there was an “R” behind the name “Satan,” and 2) Mitt Romney knows his base rubes pretty well.
Huffington Post: URBANDALE, Iowa, Sept 1 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama tried to bolster his re-election campaign on Saturday with a fierce critique of the Republicans’ convention and a plea to supporters to cast their ballots as early as possible.
“Speaking to a crowd of 10,000 in the battleground state of Iowa, Obama said rival Mitt Romney and his fellow Republicans had offered no new ideas when they held the national spotlight for three days during their convention in Tampa.
“”What they offered over those three days was more often than not an agenda that was better-suited for the last century,” Obama said. “We might as well have watched it on a black-and-white TV.”
“Obama criticized Romney for failing to mention the war in Afghanistan or his plans for veterans care in his speech, and said he had failed to outline a credible plan to boost the economy.
“”There was a lot of talk about hard truths and bold choices … but no one ever actually bothered to tell you what they were,” Obama said.
“Obama is gearing up for his own star turn next Thursday at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he will lay out his argument for re-election in a football stadium that can hold almost 75,000 people.
“The speech is likely to offer few surprises: Obama has been arguing since June that the election is a choice between continuing the policies he enacted in his first term, such as keeping his health reforms in place and bolstering education spending, and returning to policies enacted under Republican President George W. Bush that hollowed out the middle class in order to cut taxes for the wealthy.”
That is, if the Voter ID laws in other states don’t turn things around for Romney…
While Obama has a clear advantage given his incumbency, Romney does have a path to victory — though it’s a steep climb. He must win most of the seven most competitive states — Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire and Virginia — in order to reach the magic number. For instance, he can lose Ohio’s 18 electoral votes and still become president if he wins the other six and hangs onto those already in his grasp. It’s difficult to see a scenario where Romney wins without a victory in Florida, which offers 29 electoral votes. — Obama-Romney race is focused on 7 states – SFGat
THE GOO-GOO SYNDROME: Paul Weyrich, father of the right-wing movement and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority and various other groups tells his flock that he doesn’t want people to vote. Here’s the problem with fundies in politics:
Mike Turzai: “Voter ID, which is gonna allow Gov. Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, DONE.” Watch:
…
Here is how the Justice Department explains Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: “…a nationwide prohibition against voting practices and procedures, including redistricting plans and at-large election systems, poll worker hiring, and voter registration procedures, that discriminate on the basis of race, color or membership in a language minority group. It prohibits not only election-related practices and procedures that are intended to be racially discriminatory, but also those that are shown to have a racially discriminatory impact.”
RNC Platform Formally Backs Voter ID Laws— The GOP platform committee adopted language on Tuesday supporting states that have passed voter ID and proof of citizenship laws. The citizenship amendment, proposed by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), would support laws that make voters prove their citizenship before they are allowed on the voter rolls.
Voter ID laws: Why do minorities lack ID to show at the polls? – Slate Magazine— Because a lot of minorities don’t have much use for them. The most common voter ID is a driver’s license, and minorities are less likely to drive… Minorities are less likely to have driver’s licenses because they are more likely to be poor and to live in urban areas. If you can’t afford a car, or if you don’t need one because you take the bus or subway, you are less likely to have a driver’s license. Students are less likely to have driver’s licenses for the same reasons (plus the fact that they can sometimes rely on student IDs, and may just have not gotten around to getting a driver’s license yet). [...] Of course, minority voters aren’t the only group likely to be disenfranchised. Seniors, for example, are also less likely to drive. Academic studies suggest that voter ID laws do probably reduce turnout, both among Democrats and Republicans, but not by more than about 2 percent.
“… What makes the voter ID law special is that they propose to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. We have empirical data proving that essentially no one is showing up to the polls and impersonating a legally registered voter. Runaway slave laws were racist and wrong, but at least there occasionally was a runaway slave!” — Bill Maher, from his Friday night monologue, via: Daily Kos
The Real Cost of Voter Id Laws — In 2011, Republicans have advanced photo ID legislation in at least 35 states. The report concluded that if these 35 states enact a photo ID law, they collectively will spend at least $276 million, and possibly as much as $828 million, in the first four years alone. At a time when states are experiencing huge budget shortfalls, it would be an enormous waste to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to disenfranchise voters.
“Cockblock the vote”/ “Paid for by people who want Romney to win”
‘There’s a conspiracy among those who want to steal the election,’ says Jennifer Granholm — In Texas, a gun permit is a valid voter ID, but a university ID is not. Wait, what? Jennifer Granholm says the system of catch-22s and unconstitutional fees being enacted by Republicans who claim to be fighting voter fraud is having a very real effect on real people whose votes are being suppressed. “By using this pretense of voter fraud and the weapon of voter ID laws, the Republicans are systematically snatching away people’s rights,” Granholm says.
Something big is happening in Philadelphia ahead of this fall’s presidential election – the first in the state since a stringent new Voter ID law was passed earlier this year – although people there concerned about it are having a maddeningly hard time putting their finger on the precise size of the problem. The city has just over 1 million registered voters. About 800,000 of them are considered “active.” […]
The Pennsylvania Department of State recently released two lists of the Pennsylvania residents whose state IDs have expired since last November (and thus can’t be used to verify their identity at the polls this fall), as well as a list of the active voters whose names don’t match up with the PennDOT database as currently having an ID. This second list is terribly sloppy (one database spells names like McCormack as “Mc Cormack,” and there’s all kinds of chaos with hyphens and apostrophes). But nonetheless, the best official data available suggests that as many as 280,000 voters in Philadelphia may need to get an ID between now and November to have their votes counted.
“Nearly 500,000 eligible voters in 10 states with restrictive voter ID laws live in households without vehicles and reside at least 10 miles from an ID-issuing office open more than two days a week, a new Brennan Center for Justice study found. Because many of these voters may not have driver’s licenses — and nearly all live in rural areas with dwindling public transportation options — it could be significantly harder for them to get an ID and cast a ballot. The Brennan Center’s study undercuts the claim by many politicians in restrictive ID states that eligible voters can easily obtain a free ID to vote. A federal court considered this issue last week during a trial over Texas’s voter ID law, and Pennsylvania’s ID law will go before a state judge next Wednesday…. The Center’s research shows 1 in 10 eligible voters lack the necessary government-issued photo ID required by new restrictive voter ID laws, including 25 percent of African-Americans and 18 percent of Americans over 65.” — Study: 500,000 Americans Could Face Significant Challenges to Obtain Photo ID to Vote | Brennan Center for Justice
Metromix Des Moines reports: “Country legend Hank Williams Jr. played to a crowd of nearly 8,500 at the Iowa State Fair Grandstand Friday night. [...] Following the song “We Don’t Apologize For America” a chant of “USA, USA” broke out amongst the crowd. Williams smiled, telling the crowd that he was their mouth piece and adding: “We’ve got a Muslim president who hates farming, hates the military, hates the US and we hate him!” The cheers that followed were loud and enthusiastic.”
How these people survive each day without falling from the toilet and sustaining fatal injury is anyone’s guess. All of them decided to ignore actual events which occurred in their state — at their fair — last week:
1)The President stopped by the Iowa State Fair and then toured drought-stricken crops with Iowa farmers. Last week it was reported that the Obama Administration, via the USDA, will buy up to $170 million worth of pork, lamb, chicken and catfish to help drought-stricken farmers. But Obama hates farmers! and ‘merica! and baby Jesus!
2)Conversely Paul Ryan, the Republican VP candidate, also visited the Iowa State Fair to give a stump speech. Afterwards, reporters asked him about the drought and dead crops and whether he supported federal aid to farmers. Ryan’s reply was: “We’ll get into all those policy things later,” adding, rather unbelievably, “Right now I just want to enjoy the fair.” Please note that drought-stricken crops and the farmers who are suffering are not as important to Master Ryan as his fair-going. Also it’s highly likely that he and Mittens, in fact, would not support such federal aid (that would take away from those tax cuts for the wealthy!). But Paul Ryan is the real ‘merican though, ain’t he Hank?!
Be sure to show up in November and vote against anyone who these idiots support.
WASHINGTON (AP) – The government will buy up to $170 million worth of pork, lamb, chicken and catfish to help drought-stricken farmers, the White House said Monday as President Barack Obama brought his re-election campaign to rural voters in Iowa. The purchase for food banks and other federal food nutrition programs is expected to help producers struggling with the high cost of feed during the worst drought in a quarter-century. Federal law allows the Agriculture Department to buy meat and poultry products to help farmers and ranchers affected by natural disasters.
If you’re a tea party farmer who is going to benefit from the USDA now, don’t take the money! Live up to your ideology and worry about the President’s birth certificate and gay marriage. Don’t be a hypocrite.
Or if you decide to take the money, maybe you ought to take a closer look at who’s helping you out.
Des Moines Register: “The president stepped off his all-black motorcoach with the presidential seal on the side at 7:24 p.m. and walked down 33rd Street on the fairgrounds, shaking hands, hugging and posing for pictures before ending up at the The Bud Tent almost an hour later, where he ordered a Bud Light and accepted a pork chop from the president-elect of the Iowa Pork Producers Association. Upon entering the fair, Obama immediately was given a navy-blue Iowa State Fair baseball cap, which he accepted and wore throughout the visit.”
beaumontenterprise: President Barack Obama is given an Iowa State Fair hat as he visits the Iowa State Fair, Monday, Aug. 13, 2012, in Des Moines, Iowa. The president is on a three-day campaign bus tour through Iowa. Photo: Carolyn Kaster / AP
beaumontenterprise: Cole Nelson, nine months, held by his mother Deborah Nelson, inspects President Barack Obama’s face as during a visit to the Iowa State Fair, Monday, Aug. 13, 2012, in Des Moines, Iowa. The president is on a three-day campaign bus tour through Iowa. Photo: Carolyn Kaster / AP
beaumontenterprise: President Barack Obama has a beer with Mike Cunningham III, left, and another worker at the beer stand during a visit to the Iowa State Fair, Monday, Aug. 13, 2012, in Des Moines, Iowa. The president is on a three-day campaign bus tour through Iowa. Photo: Carolyn Kaster / AP
Ryan, in a trying-too-hard outfit of blue jeans, wide leather belt and red-and-white checked shirt, began with a painful effort to establish common ground with the locals.
“What a beautiful day to be at the state fair,” he said. “We have fairs. Do you have Wristband Day here?”
Apparently Iowans do not have Wristband Day, because the crowd was quiet.
“That’s the favorite day for my kids, because Wristband Day, you can buy a wristband and ride all the rides with just one wristband for the whole day.”
The Iowans stood like corn stalks on a still morning.
“So it’s just from a Wisconsinite to a neighboring Iowan: Have Wristband Day. Your kids will love it.”
If there were crickets at the Iowa State Fair, you would have heard them chirping.
Just about then, some in the crowd suddenly came to life. Unfortunately for the candidate, they were hecklers, and they were charging the stage.
“I heard President Obama is starting his bus tour today, and I heard he wasn’t going to come to the Iowa State Fair,” Ryan attempted, but the protesters were shouting slogans — “Are you going to cut Medicare?” “Stop the war on the poor!” “Hands off Social Security!” — too loud for him to deliver the punch line.
“I think it’s because — so — ha! You know what? It’s funny,” Ryan continued, although he did not at the moment appear to be having fun. “It’s funny, because Iowans and Wisconsinites, we like to be respectful of one another and peaceful with one another and listen to each other. These ladies must not be from Iowa or Wisconsin.”
wcfcourier: Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., makes an appearance at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Monday, Aug. 13, 2012. (AP Photo/Robert Ray)
Apparently Mitt Romney is too “exhausted” to stop in Orlando today, and Paul Ryan has been removed from the ironically named ”Romney Plan For A Stronger Middle Class” tour bus and flown to Iowa.
Is the Romney campaign worried that Paul Ryan’s presence might inspire Florida’s seniors to ask questions about Ryan’s views on what he calls “entitlement programs” like Medicare, which could lead to some really bad PR if any are mocked and arrested again?
ABC: “Romney is said to be exhausted after 48 hours of promoting his new vice presidential pick, Paul Ryan, the Orlando Sentinel reported. Romney’s Florida tour begins in St. Augustine, before heading to Miami this afternoon. However, his new vice president running mate Paul Ryan will be in Iowa attending the Iowa State Fair. Democrats suggest Ryan’s presence on the ticket could hurt Romney among Florida voters because of Ryan’s well-known budget proposals. They include drastic changes in the Medicare and social security programs.”
Orlando Sentinel: “Romney and his newly named running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, had been traveling by bus for the “Romney Plan For A Stronger Middle Class” tour, which got rolling Saturday in Virginia and continued Sunday in North Carolina. Romney was to stop in Orlando between the events in St. Augustine and South Florida at about 12:30 p.m. Monday. Instead, after an event in Wisconsin Sunday night, Romney will campaign Monday in Florida, while Ryan will travel to Iowa, Bechdel said.
“During Sunday’s Democrat rally in south Orlando, Democratic speakers seized on the schedule change to make light of Ryan’s absence from the Sunshine State. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schulz was at the event in Orlando and said she wouldn’t blame Romney for canceling a visit to Orlando because his new running mate has proposed redefining Medicare in ways that would add more costs to seniors.”
His butler must call them something else. That clip is like Mr. Burns having dinner with the Simpsons.
After sitting around with the poorz for a spell, Mittens then had the nerve to say, “[Obama] said the private sector is doing fine. Is he really that out of touch? I think he is defining what it means to be detached and out of touch with the American people.”
Right. Obama’s the one who’s detached and “out of touch” with American people, not the multi-millionaire with five (more?) mansions who has bank accounts in places like the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, and says he likes to fire people, isn’t concerned about the very poor, and thinks corporations are people — definitely not that guy.
And then there’s this: Mitt Romney held a roundtable discussion at an Iowa restaurant but the Des Moines Register reports that security ushered the owners and staff “to a back portion of the restaurant and they were unable to meet the former Massachusetts governor.” Perfect.
Romney gave a speech at Otterbein University in Ohio today, and the crowd was…less than enthralled. It did however provide a stark contrast to President Obama’s recent college appearances, including one just yesterday at the University of Iowa. Compare the two events below (click for larger):
Metromix Des Moines
