Politics: All liberal Democrat all the time. 8/1/2022 1 of 3

 

Why is this...

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won’t pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

Here's why...

We often wonder what a conservative paradise would really look like on the liberal blogs, and it looks like Colorado Springs---home to many defense contractors and to Focus on Family---has become a shining star in the much-desired collapse of basic government services that Grover Norquist and other anti-government fanatics have always wanted. Unfortunately, it seems less paradise to have much-slashed government, and more stinky, ugly, boring, and scary.

Read more HERE...
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Explaining the tea-baggers

Another great post from the J-Walk blog...

Question: Why do people often vote against their own interests?

Last year, in a series of "town-hall meetings" across the country, Americans got the chance to debate President Obama's proposed healthcare reforms. What happened was an explosion of rage and barely suppressed violence.

But it is striking that the people who most dislike the whole idea of healthcare reform - the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state - are often the ones it seems designed to help.

Why are so many American voters enraged by attempts to change a horribly inefficient system that leaves them with premiums they often cannot afford?

Why are they manning the barricades to defend insurance companies that routinely deny claims and cancel policies?

Thomas Frank, author of "What's the Matter with Kansas," explains it like this:

He believes that the voters' preference for emotional engagement over reasonable argument has allowed the Republican Party to blind them to their own real interests.

Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America's poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.

Dictionaries back in the news

A few days ago I posted about parents who wanted to ban dictionaries from the local school because they defined "words."

Now there's an update - cooler heads prevail - but they still knuckle under to parents who like their kids ignorant and stupid.

From Gawker - click the link to read more.

The dictionary that was banned from a California school for having the definitions of sex words in it is back to corrupt our youth. Although parents will have the option of denying their kids access to this filthy smut.

There were two great joys for us back in the day - looking up dirty words in the dictionary and browsing magazines for the bra ads. We had no access to computers and porn.

Conservatives - bad apples all around.

A week or so ago I read that ACORN had filed a lawsuit against the two conservatives who secretly recorded a meeting while posing as a pimp and a prostitute in order to defame and de-legitimatize ACORN. Seems it is against Federal law to film or tape someone without their permission.

Now the clown of a conservative who masterminded that job has been arrested while trying to bug the phones of a U.S. Senator. This guy was probably born a loser.

4 charged in phone scheme at La. senator's office

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- A conservative activist who posed as a pimp to target the community-organizing group ACORN and the son of a federal prosecutor were among four men arrested and accused of trying to tamper with phones at Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's office.

Activist James O'Keefe, 25, recorded two of the other suspects with his cell phone as they walked into the office dressed like telephone repairman and said they needed to fix problems with the phone system, according to an FBI affidavit.

Read more HERE.
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Trouble In Gov. Paterson's Home

From the Daily News via Gawker

Gov. David Paterson's 1415-year-old son was arrested taken into custody for possession of a stolen credit card after cops caught him shooting dice near his Upper West Side school, law enforcement sources confirm.

The governor’s son, a student at Beacon High School on W. 61st St., was arrested at about 3 p.m. and taken to the 20th Precinct.

Cops spotted the teen shooting dice on the sidewalk near his school. When officers searched his belongings, they found a credit card in someone else’s name, traced it and determined it had been stolen, the source said.

Paterson's press office has not yet returned a call seeking comment.

The DN's Rocco Parascandola and Bill Hutchinson are working on this developing story.

UPDATE: Paterson spokeswoman Marissa Shorenstein released the following statement:

"Earlier today, Governor Paterson's son was taken into the 20th precinct and subsequently released to his parents. The Governor and the First Lady ask that their privacy is respected during this personal time."

UPDATE2: An aide to the governor called in to say: "The governor's son was not arrested. No criminal charges were filed." (Hence, the change in headline).

Tea Party Members Are Going On Strike

From the J-Walk Blog (this is a good blog)

On January 20, this country will come to a standstill: Tea Party Planning National Strike.

As President Barack Obama's first year in office draws to a close, Tea Party groups are planning to mark the occasion with a national strike - something local leaders say could demonstrate the conservative groups' burgeoning strength.

The strike, planned for Jan. 20, the first anniversary of Obama's inauguration, is being promoted online through Facebook and Web sites run by various national Tea Party groups.

"What's proposed is a nationwide strike by all Tea Party members, no matter where they are," said Lloyd Rekstad, an organizer of the Yucaipa Tea Party. "The idea is to strike where we are, in our communities, at our employment, to make an impact that will be diverse and spread out."

That would mean, Rekstad said, not going to work, not buying groceries, not going to restaurants or movie theaters.

"You just stay home," he said, "so that the person participating would become, for that one day, a nonentity - that they would give no support to the economy."

The strike even has a Web site: National Strike - January 20, 2010.

Bachmann - losing support?

From Acerbic Politics

Running the Republican Election (News)

I would imagine the Republicans, famous for their dirty tricks and the lies they make up about their opponents, will have some fun in this next presidential election whether they run against the woman or the African-American. This could be very interesting to watch.

From The Politico...

Top Republican strategists are working on plans to protect the GOP from charges of racism or sexism in the general election, as they prepare for a presidential campaign against the first ever African-American or female Democratic nominee.

The Republican National Committee has commissioned polling and focus groups to determine the boundaries of attacking a minority or female candidate, according to people involved. The secretive effort underscores the enormous risk senior GOP operatives see for a party often criticized for its insensitivity to minorities in campaigns dating back to the 1960s.

Katie Couric Has No Balls

Without A Doubt - Make It Up

Presidential candidates like to look cock-sure about everything. How awful if they waffle on an issue (look at how the Republicans beat up on John Kerry over his flip-flopping in the run-up toe the 2004 election). But here's a good one from Hollywood Fred just over a couple of weeks ago.

"If you look back over our history, it will not take you long to realize that our people have shed more blood for other people's liberty than any other combination of nations in the history of the world." -- Fred Thompson, stump speech in Iowa, September 6, 2007.

Fact Check: While heavy, U.S. military casualties are still relatively low in comparison to the military casualties of its World War II and World War I allies. In World War II alone, the Soviet Union suffered at least eight million military deaths, or ten times the number of U.S. deaths in all wars combined.

From the Washington Post's Fact-Checker

Another One

Yep, another "holier-than-thou" hypocrite caught in a sex scandal. Must be the season for assholes to come out of their burrows.

A U.S. Justice Department official has been arrested on suspicion of traveling to Detroit over the weekend to have sex with a minor.

John David R. Atchison, 53, an assistant U.S. attorney from the northern district of Florida, was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Detroit Monday afternoon.

Read more at Click On Detroit

More Republican Hypocrisy

I keep the focus here on the hypocrisy of the Republicans...they really don't believe in anything. They just blow whichever way the political winds blow them...

Now:

"It's bad enough when politicians turn their backs on a war they voted for and supported when it was popular," Cheney said Monday. "But no one in politics, regardless of party, should hesitate to object when an American soldier at war is mocked and insulted."

Then:

Delegates to the Republican National Convention found a new way to take a jab at Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's Vietnam service record: by sporting adhesive bandages with small purple hearts on them.

Do they even believe the shit they say?

From Daily Kos