Political Jackass

The Republican Road to Recovery must be some kind of sick joke. It includes a huge tax cut for the wealthy, reducing their taxes another 10% from what it is now, which had already been reduced 5% by Bush. Do these people not realize the tax cuts didn’t work during the past 8 years. What makes them think they will work this time? Especially such a drastic cut.

House Republican leaders called a press conference Thursday to unveil their “alternative budget.” While it was thin on specifics, it does include one major policy proposal: a huge tax cut for the wealthy.

Under the Republican plan, the top marginal tax rate would be slashed from 35 to 25 percent, facilitating a dramatic transfer of wealth up the economic scale. Anyone making more than a $100,000 would pay the top rate; those under would pay 10 percent. Source

How will the country run without all this tax revenue? Do the Republicans really want to see America crumble? It appears so.

I’ve not blogged about politics for a while, mostly because I’ve been burnt out on the subject since the election.  I get this way after every national election and can’t write about politics for a long time after.  Lately, there have been things that have been bugging me though, so I’m going to go on a little rant.

Republicans
Republicans need to grow up.  I’m so sick of them publicly announcing that they want President Obama to fail.  Seriously.  How patriotic is that?  That is disgusting.  You may not agree with the guy’s policies, but he’s doing what he thinks is best for America and by wishing he fails you are wishing that America fails.  Rush Limbaugh needs to shut the hell up (so does Ann Coulter) and the Republicans actually need to reach out to the other side.  The Dems and Obama have reached out numerous times (even when I wish they hadn’t) but each and every time the hand comes across the aisle the Republicans slap it.  It’s no wonder that the polls are showing that people have a more favorable opinion of the Dems than the Republicans.

Democrats
Grow up.  You are also having problems.  Pay your taxes.  Don’t show up to the big dance with the hot date and then brag the entire time.  Yeah, you have reached across the aisle, but you have done it with a bit of smugness that you don’t really need.  I know, I know, the Republicans were like that when they were in power.  But they aren’t anymore.  There’s a reason for that.  Don’t get to cocky.

President Obama
Mr. President, you’re making some great speeches and getting some things done, but I do have some issues with you.  Stop being so eager to get support from Republicans.  They are just going to burn you.  You’ve gotten a little better lately with not caring what the Republicans think.  You even reversed Bush’s policy on funding for stem cell research, which is a definite “F You” to most Republicans, and that’s good.  Play hardball with them, especially when they aren’t doing anything to give you support and are publicly bashing everything you (and your wife) does.  They aren’t the only ones you need to play hardball with though.  Start playing hardball with Wall Street.  It is time to say no more.  Giving them more and more money isn’t going to help.  They will keep asking for more and more.  Instead, give stop giving to Wall Street and give to the people.  How about a stimulus check please?  Hell, you give me $600-$800, I know I’m going to spend that a lot more wisely than Wall Street bankers.  I’ll do something to stimulate the economy of real people.  Not the economy of corporate jets and retirement packages.

That’s all I got.  It’s a scary time right now and I’m sick of all the right-wing rhetoric being blasted my Limbaugh, Coulter, CNBC, and anyone else who wants to see the President fail.  At least when Bush was in office we didn’t want to see him fail (we knew in the back of our minds that his policies would anyway).

Another quick though. If Obama wins this election will the historical Republican base take back over the party? I’m talking about the small-government, fiscal conservatives and libertarians. Or will the social conservatives and radical right be the dominant force? Perhaps they should split. The religious right can create their own party that is true to their mission, a Theocracy Party. It’s a shame what they’ve turned the GOP into, and if they rally around Palin after this election it will only get worse.

It’s amazing how much blatant racism the Republicans can get away with. I’m not talking about McCain calling Obama “that one.” I honestly don’t think McCain is dumb enough to make a racist remark like that on a live debate (though I do think John McCain is a racist). A group of Republicans in California have made their racism blatant.

The latest newsletter by an Inland Republican women’s group depicts Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama surrounded by a watermelon, ribs and a bucket of fried chicken, prompting outrage in political circles.

The October newsletter by the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated says if Obama is elected his image will appear on food stamps — instead of dollar bills like other presidents. The statement is followed by an illustration of “Obama Bucks” — a phony $10 bill featuring Obama’s face on a donkey’s body, labeled “United States Food Stamps.”

The GOP newsletter, which was sent to about 200 members and associates of the group by e-mail and regular mail last week, is drawing harsh criticism from members of the political group, elected leaders, party officials and others as racist. Continue reading.

Here is the image:

Unbelievable.  McCain will stop at nothing to win.  He has no honor or dignity.

Michigan Republicans plan to foreclose African American voters
The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.

State election rules allow parties to assign “election challengers” to polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter provided they “have a good reason to believe” that the person is not eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a “true resident of the city or township.”

The Michigan Republicans’ planned use of foreclosure lists is apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being “true residents.”

One expert questioned the legality of the tactic.

“You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,” said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based public-interest law firm. “I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.”

As for the practice of challenging the right to vote of foreclosed property owners, Hebert called it, “mean-spirited.”

GOP ties to state’s largest foreclosure law firm

The Macomb GOP’s plans are another indication of how John McCain’s campaign stands to benefit from the burgeoning number of foreclosures in the state. McCain’s regional headquarters are housed in the office building of foreclosure specialists Trott & Trott. The firm’s founder, David A. Trott, has raised between $100,000 and $250,000 for the Republican nominee.

The Macomb County party’s plans to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African-Americans who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. More than 60 percent of all sub-prime loans — the most likely kind of loan to go into default — were made to African-Americans in Michigan, according to a report issued last year by the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Growth.

Challenges to would-be voters

Statewide, the Republican Party is gearing up for a comprehensive voter challenge campaign, according to Denise Graves, party chair for Republicans in Genessee County, which encompasses Flint. The party is creating a spreadsheet of election challenger volunteers and expects to coordinate a training with the regional McCain campaign, Graves said in an interview with Michigan Messenger.

Whether the Republicans will challenge voters with foreclosed homes elsewhere in the state is not known.

Kelly Harrigan, deputy director of the GOP’s voter programs, confirmed that she is coordinating the group’s “election integrity” program. Harrigan said the effort includes putting in place a legal team, as well as training election challengers. She said the challenges to voters were procedural rather than personal. She referred inquiries about the vote challenge program to communications director Bill Knowles who promised information but did not return calls.

Party chairman Carabelli said that the Republican Party is training election challengers to “make sure that [voters] are who they say who they are.”

When asked for further details on how Republicans are compiling challenge lists, he said, “I would rather not tell you all the things we are doing.”

Vote suppression: Not an isolated effort

Carabelli is not the only Republican Party official to suggest the targeting of foreclosed voters. In Ohio, Doug Preisse, director of elections in Franklin County (around the city of Columbus) and the chair of the local GOP, told The Columbus Dispatch that he has not ruled out challenging voters before the election due to foreclosure-related address issues.

Hebert, the voting-rights lawyer, sees a connection between Priesse’s remarks and Carabelli’s plans.

“At a minimum what you are seeing is a fairly comprehensive effort by the Republican Party, a systematic broad-based effort to put up obstacles for people to vote,” he said. “Nobody is contending that these people are not legally registered to vote.

“When you are comprehensively challenging people to vote,” Hebert went on, “your goals are two-fold: One is you are trying to knock people out from casting ballots; the other is to create a slowdown that will discourage others,” who see a long line and realize they can’t afford to stay and wait.

Challenging all voters registered to foreclosed homes could disrupt some polling places, especially in the Detroit metropolitan area. According to the real estate Web site RealtyTrac, one in every 176 households in Wayne County, metropolitan Detroit, received a foreclosure filing during the month of July. In Macomb County, the figure was one household in every 285, meaning that 1,834 homeowners received the bad news in just one month. The Macomb County foreclosure rate puts it in the top three percent of all U.S. counties in the number of distressed homeowners.

Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Kent and Genessee counties were — in that order — the counties with the most homeowners facing foreclosure, according to RealtyTrac. As of July, there were more than 62,000 foreclosure filings in the entire state.

Joe Rozell, director of elections for Oakland County in suburban Detroit, acknowledged that challenges such as those described by Carabelli are allowed by law but said they have the potential to create long lines and disrupt the voting process. With 890,000 potential voters closely divided between Democratic and Republican, Oakland County is a key swing county of this swing state.

According to voter challenge directives handed down by Republican Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, voter challenges need only be “based on information obtained through a reliable source or means.”

“But poll workers are not allowed to ask the reason” for the challenges, Rozell said. In other words, Republican vote challengers are free to use foreclosure lists as a basis for disqualifying otherwise eligible voters.

David Lagstein, head organizer with the Michigan Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), described the plans of the Macomb GOP as “crazy.”

“You would think they would think, ‘This is going to look too heartless,’” said Lagstein, whose group has registered 200,000 new voters statewide this year and also runs a foreclosure avoidance program. “The Republican-led state Senate has not moved on the anti-predatory lending bill for over a year and yet [Republicans] have time to prey on those who have fallen victim to foreclosure to suppress the vote.” Source

Since John McCain can’t run on his policies in this election (he’s agreed with Bush over 90% of the time when Bush’s approval ratings are the lowest they’ve ever been), he decided to run on personal attacks and fear. The Republicans attack over everything, even if their own candidates can be attacked using the same criteria. They took it to a new low at the RNC. The taboo of American politics is using footage from 9/11 to further your political party’s cause. They did it. I’m completely disgusted by it. How dare them use that footage to drum up support for McCain. McCain should denounce it right now. Those people did not die so John McCain could be president. The entire Republican party should be ashamed of themselves. From the Boston Globe:

One of the most enduring taboos in American politics, the airing of graphic images from the September 11 attacks in a partisan context, died today. It was nearly seven years old.

The informal prohibition, which had been occasionally threatened by political ads in recent years, was pronounced dead at approximately 7:40 CST, when a video aired before delegates at the Republican National Convention included slow-motion footage of a plane striking the World Trade Center, the towers’ subsequent collapse, and smoke emerging from the Pentagon.

The September 11 precedent was one of the few surviving campaign-season taboos. It is survived by direct comparisons of one’s opponents to Hitler.

From Daily KOS:

John McCain has been ballyhooing his national experience as a mark of his superiority to Barack Obama, but according to Taegan Goddard he may just have plagiarized parts of his speech on Georgia from a Wikipedia article. He copied Wikipedia at least three times.

First:

one of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion (Wikipedia)

vs

one of the world’s first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion (McCain)

Second:

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Georgia had a brief period of independence as a Democratic Republic (1918-1921), which was terminated by the Red Army invasion of Georgia. Georgia became part of the Soviet Union in 1922 and regained its independence in 1991. Early post-Soviet years was marked by a civil unrest and economic crisis. (Wikipedia)

vs

After a brief period of independence following the Russian revolution, the Red Army forced Georgia to join the Soviet Union in 1922. As the Soviet Union crumbled at the end of the Cold War, Georgia regained its independence in 1991, but its early years were marked by instability, corruption, and economic crises. (McCain)

Third:

In 2003, Shevardnadze (who won reelection in 2000) was deposed by the Rose Revolution, after Georgian opposition and international monitors asserted that the 2 November parliamentary elections were marred by fraud. The revolution was led by Mikheil Saakashvili, Zurab Zhvania and Nino Burjanadze, former members and leaders of Shavarnadze’s ruling party. Mikheil Saakashvili was elected as President of Georgia in 2004. Following the Rose Revolution, a series of reforms was launched to strengthen the country’s military and economic capabilities. (Wikipedia)

vs

Following fraudulent parliamentary elections in 2003, a peaceful, democratic revolution took place, led by the U.S.-educated lawyer Mikheil Saakashvili. The Rose Revolution changed things dramatically and, following his election, President Saakashvili embarked on a series of wide-ranging and successful reforms. (McCain)

Straight Talker? More like straight copier.

Representatives of John Mellencamp have contacted the McCain campaign to ask them to stop playing Mellencamp’s music at McCain campaign rallies. John Mellencamp is a Democrat who had been supporting John Edwards’ presidential race until Edwards dropped out of the race last week. Mellencamp songs such as “Our Country” and “Pink Houses” have been commonly heard at McCain rallies. But Mellencamp hopes that is coming to an end.