Tag: GOP

I don’t have any special source within inner Republican Party circles. Nor do I have any particular new insight into the dynamics of how the GOP works out their policy. What I do have is the statement of the Republican minority opinion on the Senate Armed Services Committee’s “supposedly bipartisan” report, Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody. In the minority’s mix of apologia and attack, we see the outlines of the GOP game-plan for any investigations into Bush crimes under an Obama administration and a Democratic-majority Congress.

The minority statement is endorsed by only about half of the Republican Senators on the Armed Services committee: Saxby Chambliss, R-GA, James Inhofe, R-OK, Jeff Sessions, R-AL, John Cornyn, R-TX, John Thune, R-SD, and Mel Martinez, R-FL. As you read what follows, consider that all of the above voted for the unanimously released report. According to a Washington Post article at the time, the SASC report was originally “sent to the Pentagon with no dissenting views.”

Sarah Palin: GOP Welcomes All Muslims

Amid a growing distrust among her conservative Christian supporters of anything Islamic, Sarah Palin goes on record stating emphatically that Republicans and the McCain-Palin ticket welcome all Muslims, adding “it is not acceptable in my book” to discriminate on the basis of religion. Her message of tolerance comes amid a growing tide of Islamophobia at McCain-Palin presidential rallies in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio. How Christian fundamentalists interpret her remarks in the last days of the campaign is anyone’s guess.

The wingnuttery going well nuts, and the hypocrisy going well Into Overdrive!!

Nothing is more wrenching, more emotionally volatile than the story of prisoners of war, no matter what the country or the cause: the torture they endure (or endured), and the mind-numbing horror of contemplating the inhumanity of those who do the torturing. McCain is playing on his torture history as POW in his run for the presidency. On Tuesday night at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, also-ran former Senator Fred Thompson gave a speech lauding McCain, and describing the suffering of the GOP presidential nominee when he was held as a prisoner by the North Vietnamese from 1967-73.

There is much that could be made of the lies, exaggerations, and ordinary political mischief in Thompson’s speech. But one big lie stood out. In his narration of McCain’s torture story, he changed one important fact. And since it bears on the larger question as to whether torture “works,” it’s worth mentioning here.

In his speech, Thompson said the following:

Amy Goodman reported from the Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul), site of the Republican National Convention, September 1, 2008, Labor Day:

Armed groups of police in the Twin Cities have raided more than a half-a-dozen locations since Friday night in a series of preemptive raids before the Republican convention. The coordinated searches were led by Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher but conducted in coordination with federal agencies….

Minnesota Public Radio is reporting that the FBI is at least one of the “federal agencies” acting in concert with the Minneapolis/St. Paul police departments. A professor at the University of Minnesota has snapped a photo of FBI presence at one of the raids. Many of these police gestapo actions involved two dozen or more riot police entering private homes with guns drawn, handcuffing the residents, and rifling through the house to search computers, and political literature.

Post partisan my ass! That MIGHT be a good theme as a campaign strategy. It MIGHT appeal to an electorate tired of the incompetent,  ineffectual and just plain stupid brand of government they have been getting for the last ten years….you know, since the incredibly partisan impeachment of Bill Clinton by the Republican Congress….

It might sound … nice …and evenhanded and reasonable and mature and responsible and all that. But it ignores the simple and undeniable fact that since the Republicans lied, cheated and smeared (including smearing their current champion when he was running against Bush) their way into having full unfettered dominance of the government…..just about everything that could go wrong has gone wrong and the country is in sad, sorry shape.

Because of the Republicans.

Everything the Republicans has touched in the last decade has turned to crap. From the micro (life saving stem cell research) to the macro (Climate Crisis) the Republicans have had full power to implement their vision, programs and policies….and have gotten it disastrously wrong every single time.