Alaska Dispatch files for bankruptcy and falls into teabagger hands, essentially at the same time.

Courtesy of Alaska Dispatch:

Alaska's largest newspaper filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Saturday evening and new owners — an Alaska family that made its fortune hauling freight and tourists on the Yukon River and its tributaries, and a company that owns rural newspapers in the state — have been lined up. 

In a prepared statement Saturday, Alaska Dispatch News LLC owner Alice Rogoff, who also has served as publisher, said it was a "truly bittersweet" moment for her, though she is relieved the newspaper will live on under new ownership. Her four-paragraph prepared statement didn't name the new owners, though the group interested in buying the paper issued a statement Saturday. 

"We've worked hard to help illuminate the issues of our day and provide a platform for points of view from across Alaska," Rogoff said Saturday. "Yet like newspapers everywhere, the struggle to make ends meet financially eventually caught up with us. I simply ran out of my ability to subsidize this great news product. Financial realities can't be wished away."

I have not really been paying a whole lot of attention to the Dispatch these days so I have mixed feelings about this.

What I am not so mixed about is who the paper is being sold to.

The potential buyers, working together, are a company composed of siblings Ryan Binkley, Wade Binkley, James Binkley and Kai Binkley Sims, as well as Alaska Media LLC, which owns three rural Alaska newspapers. The group is led by Ryan Binkley and Alaska Media owner Jason Evans, according to a statement the group issued Saturday. Former Anchorage Daily News publisher Jerry Grilly, who retired as president and CEO of the Denver Post in 2012, is a consultant to the group, Ryan Binkley said.

These Binkley siblings are the children of former state senator John Binkley, a hard core teabagger who ran interference for Sarah Palin during the Troopergate fiasco.

Okay so people will likely say that just because the dad is a Right Wing douchebag does not mean that the kids have the same political outlook.

Sure, but this buy out is costing millions, and I am fairly certain that big daddy still controls the purse strings. Especially for s purchase this large.

Add to that the fact that Papa Binkley is seriously talking about running for governor of Alaska, and suddenly this seems like a Trumpian move to establish a propaganda outlet for Right Wing views and positive coverage of a preferred candidate.

Or hey, maybe I'm wrong and this is completely on the up and up.

(P.S. I'm not wrong.)

Politico reminds us that Donald Trump was not Stephen Bannon's first pick to destroy the country.

Courtesy of Politico: 

Steve Bannon thought he had found his perfect presidential candidate. This person was “an outsider,” someone who was “not part of the political establishment,” “not for sale,” with “an ‘America First’ foreign policy approach” and “a ‘Drain the Swamp’ mentality about Washington, DC.” What Bannon loved most was how this person seemed to “put the American worker—the little guy—first.” 

Except Bannon wasn’t thinking about Donald Trump. The dream candidate he had in mind? Sarah Palin.

Years before the partisan provocateur of the 2016 cycle hitched himself to the upstart populist billionaire from New York, Bannon openly fantasized about transforming the former governor of Alaska into the very kind of anti-politician who could humiliate the elites of both parties, the very kind of norm-defying outsider that Trump, with Bannon’s help, would ultimately prove to be. So he put all his energy into helping the self-described Mama Grizzly eat Washington’s lunch.

Politico then goes on to share with their readers information that is quite well known by those us here on IM.

In fact I wrote about that very fact way back in August when Bannon first jumped on board.

However Politco offers a little more information from behind the scenes:

This was back in 2011 and Bannon, a filmmaker whose credits at the time included an homage to Ronald Reagan and two films on the Tea Party movement, told the National Review that he saw “a direct lineage” between the Tea Party movement and the Reagan Revolution, and he was desperate to find a contemporary Reagan. For Bannon, the upcoming 2012 election was an opportunity to “fight for the soul of the Republican Party.” He told an audience in Chicago in July of that year, “If we want to get eviscerated and have another 2008, all we have to do is run an establishment Republican.” 

It was just a few months earlier that Rebecca Mansour, currently a writer at Breitbart and previously an aide and speechwriter to Sarah Palin, reached out to Bannon to ask if he would make some short videos for a potential Palin presidential campaign. Mansour told Politico recently that Bannon was enthusiastic about her boss’s potential candidacy; it was Bannon, she said, who identified Palin as an “outsider” with a “drain the swamp” mentality. Bannon saw in Palin someone who, in his own words, presented “an existential threat to not just the progressive left, but also to the entrenched country club Republican Party.”

Bannon as it turned out did not produce those short videos that Mansour requested, instead he produced "The Undefeated" which beatified, and white washed her faults, to the point that she no longer even resembled the person Alaskans knew her to be:

Appearing on The Palin Update, a radio show hosted by Sarah Palin obsessive Kevin Scholla on Scholla’s independent network Mama Grizzly Radio, in September 2011, Bannon remarked, “I couldn’t make this film about any other political leader in the country.” He added, “I love all things Palin…Whether she becomes a candidate or not for the presidency, I think these big broad themes of her life and her political life are going to play out on the national level over the next couple of years.” 

Despite the urging from Bannon Palin finally told her moronic followers that she was not going to run for president (You're welcome America.), but that did not stop Bannon from pining over her.

Which ultimately led to this:

On June 16, 2015, Trump announced his candidacy, and the very next day Sarah Palin heaped praise on the billionaire real estate mogul in a Facebook post, saying, “he’s doing something right.” 

Steve Bannon apparently took notice. On July 12, 2015, he penned another column for Breitbart, this one lauding Trump’s 2011 book Time to Get Tough: “Trump’s book clearly lays out serious policy solutions to vexing U.S. problems. Welfare reform, cyberwarfare, energy, illegal immigration and crime, taxes, healthcare, national defense—you name it, Trump offers his plans, often including specific bills and amendments. Best of all, Trump does it all in his refreshingly blunt and authentic voice—the very voice now resonating with a citizenry fed up with the Political Class and its conceits.” 

Then, two weeks later, Bannon made the Palin-Trump populist connection explicitly clear – with a dose of Reagan adulation for good measure. Trump appeared on The Palin Update hosted by Breitbart’s Scholla. During the show, Trump spoke of his admiration for Palin and drew comparisons between himself and the former Alaska governor, while Scholla added that Trump’s leadership style reminded him not only of Palin’s leadership but also of Reagan’s.

So as I have been saying sense the very beginning, without a Sarah Palin there would have been no president-elect Trump.

And now we have even clearer evidence as to how this all came to be.

• Bannon and the angry teabaggers love Sarah Palin.
• Sarah Palin decides not to run for president, but four years later endorses Donald Trump.
• Now Stephen Bannon and the angry teabaggerss, along with the neo-Nazis, racists, and uneducated simpletons love Donald Trump.
• They cannot have their dream of a Palin presidency, so they settle instead for helping (Along with Russia, the FBI, and Wikileaks of course.) this pussy grabbing megalomaniac win the White House instead. 

And now we all get to live in a country as imagined by the dumbest, most gullible, most easily manipulated Americans.

I feel like we're in one of those monster movies where the heroes band together to stop the creature only to learn afterwards that it laid an egg and now the creature 2.0 is descending on the town and they have no more resources to stop it.

New game pits "Avenger Jesus" against Donald Trump, the Teabaggers, and Sarah Palin.

Courtesy of OC Weekly:

Defeating Donald Trump, Sarah Palin and the Westboro Baptist Church God Hates Fags crew on screen is not enough for the creators of Avenger Jesus: The Social Justice Mobile Game. 

The Avenger Jesus Game Series company is also taking aim at teabaggers and assorted Christian conservatives with sale proceeds and advertising revenues, the founders claim. 

"We are using right-wing tactics, pushing the bounds of free speech to further the cause for equality before it's too late" is how co-creator Joey DeLoach puts it in a company press release.

Money from the app will go to LGBT and women's groups among others.

This is of course a little silly, but in the past I have enjoyed playing some silly politically inspired video games, so maybe this one will catch on as well.

Besides who doesn't think that if there were a real Jesus, and he came back today, he would not be going after these assholes who drag his name through the mud with a vengeance?   

Good question.

Source

What do YOU think?

Sarah Palin applauds newly elected Senator's guts after he suggests doing away with the Senate. Did I mention he is a newly elected Senator?

'Now that's guts! I also admire electricians who want to do away with electricity."

Courtesy of Glacier Gidget's Facebook page:  

This is why we respect this guy... his guts and gumption in expressing what many Americans recognize as a foundational problem resulting in an insolvent, less sovereign nation - and his commitment to taking action. 

I appreciate him taking responsibility "...to blow the whistle on these problems so Americans are aware of them." 

Thank you, Senator Ben Sasse. 

Now your first instinct after reading that Sarah Palin is impressed with somebody, should be "Oh what stupid thing did this Sasse guy do to deserve that?"

And if it was you have good instincts.

Palin's Facebook page then links to an article on the defunct Breitbart news site, and as it turns out THIS is what Ben "Soon to be out of a job" Sasse said during his maiden speech on the floor of the Senate:  

If the Senate isn’t going to be the most important venue for addressing our biggest national problems, where is that venue? Where should the people look for the long-term national prioritization? Or, to ask it of ourselves, would anything be lost if the Senate didn’t exist? Again, this a thought experiment, so let me be emphatically clear: I think a great deal would be lost if the federal government didn’t have a Senate, but game out with me the question of ‘Why?’ What precisely would be lost if we had only a House of Representatives, rather than both bodies? The growth of the administrative state, the fourth branch of government, is increasingly hollowing out the Article I branch, the legislature, and many in Congress have been complicit in this hollowing out of our own powers. So would anything really be lost if we doubled-down on Woodrow Wilson’s impulses and inclinations toward administrative efficiency by removing much of the clunky-ness of legislative process?

Now Ben Sasse is a former university president and has a Master's degree in Philosophy, so you would think he might know better than to introduce a topic as easily misrepresented as this one.

First he expects folks like Sarah Palin to understand what a "thought experiment" is when they really do not understand the concept of "thinking."

Second he is essentially attacking the very institution that he campaigned long and hard to join, which is never a good thing.

And thirdly, WTF is his point really?

Does he really think that the Congress, now overrun with moronic teabaggers, should be allowed to run amok without the checks and balances provided by the Senate?

What am I saying, this is a guy endorsed by Sarah Palin, of course he wants the government to fail.

I don't know what I was I thinking.

By the way Salon has decided that Palin would be a shoo-in as moderator of the GOP debates:   

Sarah Palin – This one seems so obvious I have to think someone has suggested it already. Palin’s proclivity for speaking in word salad that even the most powerful Star Trek universal translator likely couldn’t make sense of is well known. Anything she says would likely be a stream of babble that would trail off into nothing, leaving the candidates free to just opine about whatever talking points they would have spouted even if asked a coherent question.

They have a point.  If you wanted somebody who would not challenge the candidates with facts, or embarrass them by demonstrating a superior intellect, Sarah Palin would be the obvious choice.

God could you just imagine?

Two hours of Sarah Palin asking ignorant questions and the candidates trying to make sense of them, or just giving up and proselytizing to the flock instead? It would the TV equivalent of receiving a colonoscopy from a doctor who just found out you were banging his wife.

Asked to come up with one thing he can accomplish in the next six months Paul Ryan pulls a blank.

Courtesy of Think Progress: 

Appearing on Meet The Press, newly elected House Speaker Paul Ryan was directly asked by host Chuck Todd to name one thing he could accomplish in the first six months that “the country will be impressed with.” 

Ryan did not answer. 

Instead, Ryan went through a litany of Republican talking points. “Working families are falling behind, the economy is stale… our foreign policy is a disaster,” Ryan said.

Of course Ryan cannot answer this question, because the answer is that they will accomplish absolutely nothing.  Changing the Speaker, changes nothing about the dysfunction of the Congress.

The only way the Republicans can get anything accomplished, while they are in the middle of such all consuming internal strife, is by winning the White House.

And if they do that, then we are all well and truly fucked.

Support for the tea Party hits an all time low. Well finally some good news.

Courtesy of Gallup:  

Americans' support for the Tea Party has dropped to its lowest level since the movement emerged on the national political scene prior to the 2010 midterm elections. Seventeen percent of Americans now consider themselves Tea Party supporters, and a record 54% say they are neither supporters nor opponents.

The Tea Party emerged in 2009 in opposition to the fledgling Obama administration, and many Americans took sides for or against the movement in the midterm elections the next year. Support peaked at 32% in November 2010, just after those elections, in which Tea Party supporters were widely credited with helping the Republican Party gain control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

As support gradually eroded over the next year, opponents of the Tea Party gained the upper hand and have led supporters in all 10 Gallup polls measuring views of the movement since the start of 2012. Since August 2012, support has failed to reach 25%, and it has fallen below 20% in each of the last two polls.

Well that's all good news of course, and it explains why it appears that the moderate Republicans are starting to get the upper hand in the choosing of a new Speaker of House to replace John Boehner.

(Yes I know Paul Ryan sucks, but hey at least it's not Louie Gohmert!)

However here's the part that still bothers me.

If there is still 17% support for the Teabaggers, and 54% who seem agnostic towards them, then that leaves only 29% of us who are openly against them.

That seems like a much too low of a number to me.

I will not be happy until more than two thirds of the American people recognize that the Tea Party is made up of a bunch of ignorant racists, who could not pass a test on US History with a gun held to their head. 

Department of Justice finds IRS did nothing criminal in denying tax exempt status to Tea Party groups.

Courtesy Washington Times:  

The IRS did mishandle tea party and conservative groups’ nonprofit applications, but their behavior didn’t break any laws, the Justice Department said in a letter to Congress Friday that cleared the tax agency and former senior executive Lois G. Lerner of any crimes. 

“Ineffective management is not a crime,” Assistant Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik said in a letter to the House Ways and Means Committee. “The Department of Justice’s exhaustive probe revealed no evidence that would support a criminal prosecution. What occurred is disquieting and may necessitate corrective action — but it does not warrant criminal prosecution.”

What? You mean even though former IRS Director Lois Lerner plead the fifth before Congress, and the Teabaggers are completely convinced that she targeted them for ideological reason, she is not going to serve any jail time?

Right Wing freak out in 3...2...1

P.S. Boy has this been a bad week for the conservatives or what?

Our President.

Found this on Reddit. Thought it was worth sharing.

And I know just who he is talking to.

You know the knock against Obama from the Right is that under his administration things have become infinitely more partisan.

However the truth is that the President bent over backwards to include the Republicans on every major policy that he attempted to implement during his first term and was blocked, manipulated, and hung out to dry over and over again.

The partisanship is not the fault of the President but rather the conservatives who decided even before he took the oath of office, to block everything he tried to do during his presidency.

And what we are seeing today is the President simply circumventing the Republicans and doing everything pretty much on his own.

And do you know what? It is STILL benefiting even those people who continue to argue that he was not born in this country, is a closet Socialist, and of course a secret Muslim.

And that is because he is actually a great President. Whether his critics want that to be true or not.

Salon warns us that the Republican party is now run by extremists. Gee, really?

This is really quite a comprehensive and informative article, but I wanted to draw your attention to this part here: 

By the time of the George W. Bush administration, Movement Conservatives controlled the Republican Party, and they abandoned reality in favor of their simple story line. A member of the Bush administration famously noted to journalist Ron Suskind that “the reality-based” view of the world was obsolete. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” this senior adviser to the president told Suskind. “When we act, we create our own reality.” 

That is exactly what today’s Movement Conservatives are doing. After the last Republican debate, astonished observers noted that many of the candidates’ assertions were flat-out lies. The New York Times editorial board mused: “It felt at times as if the speakers were no longer living in a fact-based world.” But the lies are not random. They tell followers that America has fallen apart because enemies— minorities, women and liberals– have poisoned the government. Only a Movement Conservative leader can purge the nation of that poison and return America to its former greatness. Donald Trump, who currently commands a significant lead, is the salesman who puts it most clearly. He tells his followers that “the world is a mess.” He promises to work outside the old order and replace it with something new and wonderful. He tells them a story in which Christianity is under siege, President Obama is a foreigner, and that immigrants—who actually commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans– are criminals. He refused to contradict a follower who announced that Muslims are a problem that we must “get rid of.” And he promises to “Make America Great Again.” 

But Trump is not an outlier. Jeb! says that black people vote for Democrats to get “free stuff.” Mike Huckabee insists that the United States is criminalizing Christianity. Bobby Jindal promises to “fire” Congress. Ted Cruz hints that President Obama is a Muslim and warns that no Muslim should be president. All of the candidates demonize undocumented immigrants. 

And Carly Fiorina makes the outrageous claim, on national television, that political opponents murder babies to harvest and sell their brains. Think about that. 

The fantasy world of Movement Conservatives is no longer fringe talk. The leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination embrace it. They are playing to a chorus of true believers, and they are preaching what that choir wants to hear. They are following the same pattern Eric Hoffer identified as the path to authoritarianism. Last week, 43 percent of Republicans polled said they could imagine a scenario in which they would back a military coup. This week, Movement Conservatives in Congress knocked off a conservative speaker because he refused to sacrifice the American government to their demands.

You know over the years I have often described the Republican party as an asylum overrun by the inmates, and I don't think that has ever been more true than it is today. 

There is NOBODY in the party that has any hope of regaining control over what is now a runaway train filled with Right Wing zealots eagerly awaiting its eventual explosive crash into the mountainside.

These people were elected on the idea that government does not work, and arrived in Washington to prove that point.

Today there is no real bipartisanship, no compromise, and little getting accomplished that the President is not pushing through almost completely on his own.

Truly the only way to move beyond this paralysis is to either replace the saboteurs of the Tea Party with hopeful pro-government Democrats. Or to allow the Republicans to win the White House.

And if that latter choice does not send a cold chill right up your spine, then you my friend have simply not been paying attention.

I think this next election cycle is not only incredibly important for choosing who will lead this country for the next four years, but in setting the tone for politics in the years that follow.

Conventional wisdom dictates that after one party holds the White House for two terms that the other party almost always wins the next election. However for the sake of the country Democrats need to do everything in their power to buck that trend.

And not only that but to prove to the American people that government done right is not something to fear, but rather something that can have a real positive impact on their lives.

Now the only question is among the current Democratic presidential hopefuls, who has the best chance of accomplishing that feat? And why do I keep seeing the face of Elizabeth Warren?

Well it's about time they stood up for themselves.

You know I really hate to pick on these teabaggers all of the time but...uh...yeah, no I don't.

Sarah Palin provides the perfect example for why John Boehner wants to get the hell out of politics.

So apparently Breitbart was looking around trying to find the most insignificant person they could locate to give their opinion on John Boehner leaving Congress and his role as House Speaker.

They settled on Sarah Palin:

Palin noted, “The silver lining for the political establishment is that with all the time John Boehner has in the next year before he can legally become a lobbyist for special interests he represented as Speaker, he can work on his golf handicap.” 

When told the news of Boehner’s resignation, Governor Palin expressed astonishment and delight, “Holy! That’s huge. Let’s thank John Boehner for his service and wish him a long and peaceful retirement.”

Palin then decided to take a victory lap:

Here’s the deal: grassroots conservatives’ commitment to adhering to the Constitution and to restoring America’s freedom and free enterprise is very real. You can only thwart the will of the people for so long. First Eric Cantor, now John Boehner. Senate leadership that’s now on notice surely takes this seriously. The conservative grassroots is calling out the permanent political class and that’s reflected in the GOP presidential polls. Bold, independent Congressmen in Washington prove they’re to be reckoned with now, and they deserve voters’ thanks for doing what we sent them to do – shake up the status quo and get the country back on track. These Congressmen are in it for the right reason, and they ought to celebrate another victory for the grassroots! Thank them! 

Yes good job to Sarah Palin and the Teabaggers.

They have now broken the government so completely that Congress is now almost completely ineffective.

But hey do you know who is still getting things done at an almost startling rate?

Yep, this guy.

So you keep right on calling for infighting among Republicans and a do nothing approach to governance, because all that does is make the President's job that much easier. 

Glenn Beck calls Teabaggers liars and racists, and says he cannot understand the support for Donald Trump.

Courtesy of the Examiner: 

On Tuesday, radio talk show host Glenn Beck angered a number of people after he accused Tea Party supporters who like Donald Trump of being racists. He also questioned whether Trump supporters who align with the small-government movement are really "Tea Partiers." 

“If you were a Tea Party person, then you were lying," he said. "You were lying. It was about Barack Obama being black. It was about him being a Democrat, because this guy is offering you many of the same things, as shallow as the same way.” 

He also identified Fox News' Sean Hannity as a supporter of the Tea Party, but simply said he disagrees with the conservative talker. The comments were made during a discussion of Trump's Dallas rally, which attracted some 20,000 supporters. 

“Well, we can’t figure out, there’s a lot of people that we know, that we just cannot figure out," Beck said. "They say they were for the Tea Party, I mean, you know, I’ve had an open conversation with Sean Hannity. He is — he swears he’s a great guy, and everything else. I just disagree with him, on that. Sarah Palin is another one, who had him on the show, and just fell all over him, and just loves him. I don’t understand that.” 

Beck, however, wasn't finished. He seemed to echo statements made by Univision's Jorge Ramos, who has frequently compared Trump to South American dictators. 

“I cannot understand the Trump thing, and it scares the hell out of me,” Beck said. “If there’s anybody who would like the Greek columns, and the gold and the glitter, it’ll be Donald Trump.” Saying that Trump might have his name on a wall between the U.S. and Mexico is “what a dictator says. I mean, remember, it was Leningrad, and then it was Stalingrad. That’s what dictators do. That’s what dictators do. And we are — if it’s not him, it will be someone else, that steps into that role, if we don’t stop this right now.”

I cannot decide if Glen Beck has lost his mind here, or if he has suddenly been stricken with sanity.  (I'm leaning toward the latter.)

One thing is for sure and that is that there is simply NOT enough popcorn for this never ending GOP circus.

I also have to admit that I am not at all comfortable now that Glenn Beck and I see the Tea Party in much the same way.  I'm pretty sure that agreeing with Glenn Beck is one of the first signs of dementia.

John McCain calls Hillary Clinton a "rock star," slams the Tea party, and disses Fox News. Well good for him!

Courtesy of the Examiner: 

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., isn't making many friends among the conservative wing of the Republican Party these days. In an interview published Tuesday at the New Republic, he slammed the Tea Party, called Fox News "schizophrenic" on certain issues and called Hillary Clinton a "rock star." 

He also said that in a presidential matchup between Hillary Clinton and Rand Paul, he would have a tough time deciding who to support. 

"I think she did a fine job," he said of Clinton's performance as Secretary of State despite the scandal surrounding the Benghazi terror attack. 

"She’s a rock star. She has, maybe not glamour, but certainly the aura of someone widely regarded throughout the world. I do think it is interesting that the issues where John Kerry is engaging is where Hillary Clinton did not engage in, that those decisions were left to the White House and the National Security Council," he added. 

"When Hillary Clinton versus Rand Paul occurs in 2016, I guess you are going to have to decide who to vote for, huh?" the New Republic asked McCain. 

"It’s gonna be a tough choice," he said, laughing.

But ole Johnny didn't stop there:

The Arizona Republican also took a swipe at Fox News, calling it "schizophrenic." 

"I saw a guy on 'Hannity,' maybe 'Huckabee,' and the guy said, 'You know, the Chinese are coming across our border, and they are going to commit cyber attacks,'” he said. "Honest to God!"

As usual McCain resisted the urge to criticize his former running mate Sarah Palin. but he did express disdain for the movement she helped to create:

"Many in this group didn’t come to power to get things done. They came to power to keep things from getting done," he said.

What is not mentioned in this article, but is in the original New Republic article is this kind of passive aggressive remark about Palin:

She held her own and, some people said, won a debate with the vice president. 

So "some people said" she won that debate, but McCain himself seems unconvinced. 

Yeah that's going to leave a mark.

You know if this were ANY OTHER Republican Senator making these remarks Palin would be firing up her ghostwriter right now in preparation for a venom laden Facebook retort.

But because this is John McCain........

Ex-Marine who organized armed protest outside Arizona mosque tried to raise ten million dollars to either protect his family or to run against John McCain.

Courtesy of Mediaite: 

After announcing last week that he was going into “hiding” to protect himself and his family following an anti-Islam rally he organized in Phoenix, Arizona, ex-Marine Jon Ritzheimer tried to launch a crowd-funding campaign that aimed to raise $10 million. But now, it appears that the GoFundMe site he used has removed the page. 

According to KPNX reporter Brahm Resnik, the man said he planned to use the funds to either protect his family or run against Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in 2016.

Well there's a choice for you, hide my family away to protect them from my stupidity, or expose them to greater danger by openly running a campaign for the US Senate.

I am not sure if this chucklehead is more of a danger to himself, his family, or the Islamic community in Arizona. 

I don't blame GoFundMe for taking down his page.

Texas lawmaker almost starts fistfight on House floor when his attempt to control women's reproduction rights is stymied by three female legislators.

Rep. Jonathon Strickland

Courtesy of Raw Story:

An abortion battle in the Texas legislature nearly turned into a fistfight on Sunday night after several Republican women changed their mind about a bill that would ban health insurance from covering abortions. 

According to the Houston Chronicle, House sergeants had to stop Republican state Rep. Jonathan Stickland from attacking Rep. Byron Cook (R) after Senate Bill 575 did not make it to the House floor as he expected. 

 Cook had reportedly promised to move SB 575 out of the State Affairs Committee to the Calendars Committee if Stickland agreed to drop an amendment that would have banned abortions based on fetal abnormalities. 

Although Cook kept his word, three Republican women on the Calendars Committee — Reps. Sarah Davis, Debbie Riddle and Patricia Harless — backed out of supporting the bill at the last minute and sided with the Democrats, killing the measure with a 7-7 vote. 

At around 9:30 p.m., an enraged Stickland got in Cook’s face on the House floor. After a brief yelling match and nearly coming to blows, House sergeants got in between the two to prevent the scuffle from continuing, The Texas Tribune reported.

Yes you read that right this slack jawed asshole's original bill would have forced women to give birth to babies with birth defects. But he compromised, and instead settled for keeping insurance from paying for medically necessary abortions.

How big of him.

However when the Republican women saw what the bill would do they balked. And with good reason.

Rep. Strickland modeling his strap on.

And once this teabagging POS realized that he was not going to get the opportunity to further restrict Texas women's right to access abortion, he essentially lost his shit.

Damn it must suck when women refuse to stay silent and allow the men to run their lives and control their bodies for them.

Poll may show big problems for a Jeb Bush presidential campaign.

Courtesy of Game Changer PAC: 

In a poll by Game Changer PAC, surveying 2,226 likely Republican voters, 59.66% of respondents said that if Jeb Bush ends up as the 2016 Republican Presidential Nominee… they won’t vote at all in the 2016 General Election. 

The poll shows that Republican voters are tired of holding their noses and will no longer vote in lock-step with the party. 

Bush is seen as a fundraising powerhouse and is on track to raise over 100 million dollars by the end of May. This fact is causing the establishment wing of the Republican party to salivate more than Pavlov’s Dogs in a fire drill. The sad fact is that throughout recent history BOTH major parties have decided which perspective nominees will be endorsed by the full weight of their parties primarily on fundraising successes. 

The Republican party has been dealing with push-back from this model for the last few years with the rise of the Tea Party- and has seen some positive results and an energized base- though this is not the party’s doing or desire.

It should be noted that this Game Changer PAC is proudly swinging their teabags to and fro, and therefore represent the most Right Wing of the Right Wing.

In fact at the top of their poll is Rand Paul, followed by Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Scott Walker.

Jeb Bush comes in around eleven with .85%. And that is immediately following Sarah Palin with 1.16% and she obviously has no intention of running.

However it should also be noted that this fringe is rapidly absorbing the base of the Republican party like some grade B horror movie gone amok.

And even taking this poll with a giant grain of salt it is still indicative of the fact that Jeb Bush is the living personification with everything the Teabaggers believe is wrong with Washington, and it is very unlikely that he ever will earn their support.

Ever!

Paranoia pimping politician Ted Cruz, questions Pentagon about military exercises in response to internet driven fears of martial law.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said Saturday that he'd been hearing concerns about Jade Helm 15, a domestic military training exercise that has become a fount of conspiracy theories, and that he wanted questions about it to be answered. 

"My office has reached out to the Pentagon to inquire about this exercise," Cruz, a Texas senator, told Bloomberg at the South Carolina Republican Party's annual convention. "We are assured it is a military training exercise. I have no reason to doubt those assurances, but I understand the reason for concern and uncertainty, because when the federal government has not demonstrated itself to be trustworthy in this administration, the natural consequence is that many citizens don't trust what it is saying." 

The paranoia about Jade Helm, which started on websites like Alex Jones's InfoWars, had started with familiar fulmination about a mass seizure of firearms or a cover-up for American "death squads." This week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott channeled the concerns of voters in the Southwest, asking the Texas state guard to monitor the exercise for any violations of freedom. "It is important that Texans know their safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed," said the governor.

We mocked Governor Abbott last week for his response to the conspiracy theory crowd, but who among us is really surprised that Cruz so readily boarded this bandwagon?

After all without unsubstantiated fear and paranoia Cruz would never have been elected in the first place.

Once again Texas is pulling ahead in the "we're the most batshit crazy state in the country" sweepstakes.

Well it looks like Sarah Palin IS still making a difference.

I'm 29 years old, and since I was 18 have been a registered Republican. 2004 was my first election and I voted for George W. Bush. Followed by McCain in 2008. But in 2012, after I saw how my party stayed more like the party of Palin and less like the party of Eisenhower, I thought that I couldn't, in good faith, vote for Romney. So, as a registered Republican, I voted for President Obama, who I actually thought was doing a good job. In 2014, I voted for Mary Landrieu for Senate here in Louisiana and actually hoped the Democrats would maintain control of the Senate. I had hoped to see a change, a shift away from the tea party in the GOP, but with Cruz, Walker, Jindal, Paul and company running in 2016, I realize that won't happen this time or anytime soon. So today, I received my newly updated voter registration card which made it official-I'm now a democrat. I even donated $50 to the Hillary Clinton campaign in celebration of my new found home. In reality, I probably had been a Democrat for the last couple of years, as I actually consider myself a fairly liberal person. But it's now official. So I can't wait to start working on behalf of the Democratic Party and electing good Democrats from here on out. Clinton 2016!

The above is from a contributor to Reddit.

I think it is hard for those of us who spend a lot of time on this site to remember that the Republican party was not always quite the way it is today.

I mean sure there were always those on the fringe who were proudly racist, unabashedly anti-immigrant, and incredibly suspicious of the government, but nobody really listened to them.

But then Palin came along, and using her hot librarian image, made it all seem much more attractive and palatable.

The next thing you know the inmates are overrunning the asylum, and we have Ted Cruz reading from "Green Eggs, and Ham" on the Senate floor.

But I have always felt that if the radical right got their way, and actually were given the chance to govern, that it would not take too long for the more reasonable members of the Republican party to either rise up against them and start tossing them overboard or to leave the party altogether.

The commenter up above is clearly the latter.

Today we see a Republican party that is clearly at war with itself, and that means someday Sarah Palin may end up being seen as the catalyst that exposed the cracks in the GOP facade which could usher in its demise or its restructuring.

In other words, and try not to allow this to make your head explode, someday her contribution to the political landscape might be seen as positive. Though not purposefully of course.

Hey remember that guy who is heading up the most recent Benghazi investigation? Yeah, well the Washington police would like to have a word with him.

.@TGowdySC stopped by today and we got a photo with my AR-15 #2A #SecondAmendment @TPPatriots @TeaPartyExpress pic.twitter.com/FhnAlyqTeW
— Congressman Ken Buck (@RepKenBuck) April 16, 2015

Courtesy of The Hill:  

Police in Washington, D.C., have been referred materials for a possible investigation into two Republican congressmen who posed for a picture with an assault rifle in a House office building. 

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) last week tweeted a picture of himself and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the leader of the House's Benghazi investigation, holding an AR-15. 

Having the AR-15 in the District could be a violation of the city’s strict gun laws, and the city attorney general’s office has referred the matter to police, a spokesman told The Hill. 

"The matter has been referred to the Metropolitan Police Department for further investigation,” he said. 

Buck said in the tweet the assault rifle is his and the picture was taken after Gowdy “stopped by.”

According to Rep. Buck the gun is inoperable, and is really only a "beautiful, patriotic, paperweight."

A useless thing that keeps bills from moving through Congress? That sounds like every teabagging Republican in the House to me.

I seriously doubt anything will happen. After all these are Congressmen and nobody expects them to understand the law.

However I finally did put two and two together and figured out why Trey Gowdy looks so familiar.

I always wondered what happened to that kid from Deliverance.