“Fat butt Michelle Obama,” Grisham says. “Look at her. She looks like she weighs 185 or 190. She’s overweight.”

“Big fat gorilla,” a male voice agrees.

“I’m serious,” Grisham continues. “Y’all, our country is, is, is going in the wrong direction.”

“It’s going straight to hell,” another person on the tape adds.

“Things won’t get better until there’s a change in some areas and stuff. And you know what [President Barack Obama's] platform was? Change,” the high school coach points out. “Y’all can get pissed off at me or not. You can go tell the principal, you can call the superintendent and tell her.”

“I don’t believe in queers, I don’t like queers,” he continues. “I don’t hate them as a person but what they do is wrong, it’s an abomination against God. I don’t like being around queers.”


Raw Story (http://s.tt/1zcbv)

GOP Propaganda Group?

Monday night Rachel Maddow expanded on her Friday report about the weird ad running in opposition to Chuck Hagel's nomination. The group running the ad calls themselves "Use Your Mandate" and claims to be a group of liberals -- gay liberals, even -- who are afraid to come out into the light for fear of White House retribution.

Because this White House has been so bitterly retributive, don't you know? When I first heard about it I thought it was bull too, because liberals tend to oppose nominations loudly and without any guise of secrecy. In fact, I can't think of a time where any liberal group I've had contact with has been secretive about who they are and why they're running an ad. That seems to be the province of the US Chamber of Commerce and Koch-funded front groups..

Rachel's instinct seems to be right on the money. As she reports, "Use Your Mandate" used a media buyer in San Diego to place the ad by the name of Del Cielo Media, LLC*. Del Cielo Media is the company name for Sarah Linden, who is the west coast media director for Smart Media Group.


http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/maddow-liberal-opposition-group-running-ads

Republicans can't win national elections anymore, having lost the popular vote in five of the last six, and with demographics shifts moving solidly against them, rather than try to better represent the will of the American electorate, they're instead going to try to break the system so that the will of the American electorate no longer matters. And it would be perfectly legal, because we choose our presidents through the Electoral College, and there are very few rules about how the electors are allocated. Make no mistake: This is a war on the very concept of democracy and republic. This is a war on the very nature of our system of governance. If it succeeds, it will tear this country apart.

Last week, while much of the country was focused on President Obama's second inauguration, or was distracted by a three-day weekend, a quiet coup by Virginia state Senate Republicans disappeared a Democratic state Senate seat. ...........


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/27/1182006/-If-it-is-not-stopped-the-Republican-war-on-democracy-will-tear-this-nation-apart

When you’re wasting time on Facebook, don’t forget that the boss of the company, Mark Zuckerberg, is funding the destruction of teacher’s unions, and supporting a politician who is strongly against marriage equality.

It’s beyond me why any liberal would want to help fund Zuckerberg and his destructive politics but then again, it’s beyond me why liberals support quite a few anti-liberal Democrats.


http://americablog.com/2013/01/facebooks-zuckerberg-to-host-fundraiser-for-chris-christie.html

Is he a naive, silly old man that that just bought some swamp land in Florida from the GOP?

The Texas Democratic Party truly believes that an electoral coup in the state, led by Latinos, would deny conservatives access to the White House for a generation or more — potentially forever, a spokesperson told Raw Story this week.

For future presidential contests, the Republican Party’s plans significantly hinge upon keeping Texas the deepest shade of red on the map, but Democrats are feeling confident fresh off their fifth popular vote victory in the last six presidential elections. That’s got Republican leadership looking to polish their images with immigrant communities, a daunting task given their recent history. Members of the Washington-based conservative group The Ripon Society watched that chill creep up House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) spine on Wednesday as he warned that the president intends to “just shove us into the dustbin of history.”


Raw Story (http://s.tt/1yWx1)

‘sordid swamp’


The New York Times published some superb investigative reporting by the team of Eric Lipton and Kevin Sack, and their revelations were hard to forget, even at a time of celebration.

The story told us of a pharmaceutical giant called Amgen and three senators so close to it they might as well be entries on its balance sheet: Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY), Democratic Senator Max Baucus (MT), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and that powerful committee’s ranking Republican, Orrin Hatch (UT). A trio of perpetrators who treat the United States Treasury as if it were a cash-and-carry annex of corporate America.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/25/senators-secret-plan-to-give-amgen-half-a-million-in-fiscal-cliff-deal-reveals-capitol-hills-sordid-swamp/

Paul Ryan Breaks Down Under Wonkterrogation [Updated]


Paul Ryan’s great genius has not merely been that he has united conservative Republicans around a single vision — several Republicans have done this before — but that he has simultaneously persuaded moderates that he shares their beliefs as well. That is how Ryan has pitched himself to America, not as a right-wing ideologue but as a thoughtful numbers guy. Literally every piece of evidence in Ryan’s career — from his formative infatuation with Ayn Rand to his indoctrination in the works of supply-siders to his mentorships under Jack Kemp and Sam Brownback to his entire voting record in public life — says that Ryan is a hard-core supply-sider whose overarching goal is to reduce tax rates on the rich, far more than it is to bring budget deficits to heel. Nevertheless, Ryan has managed to persuade legions of moderates and moderate conservatives — see James Stewart, Ruth Marcus, and Ross Douthat, to take a few examples — that he is secretly willing to raise tax revenue as part of some bipartisan agreement.


Here Ryan is descending into word salad, which impresses observers because he is using terms that pertain to tax policy — “statically,” “Joint Tax Committee” — but he is not using them in a way that makes any sense.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/01/paul-ryan-breaks-down-under-wonkterrogation.html

Maddow was unenthused with Reid. She replayed comments he made about the specific changes needed for filibuster reform, contrasted with Thursday's deal.

"The problem in the Senate has been that they are not able to get anything done. The improvement on that today is that now, they're not going to be able to get anything done faster." She added, "No body was anybody talking about taking the filibuster away completely. The idea was to make it something that hurt a little. That actually required some commitment ... It will still be a routine 60 vote supermajority for everything, and this is now it for two years."


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/25/rachel-maddow-harry-reid-filibuster-reform_n_2549826.html?utm_hp_ref=media

House GOP passes weak debt ceiling extension

"Bush, more spending. Obama, less spending. That is what is true." Rachel Maddow reveals that contrary to Republican talking points on their debt ceiling dereliction, President Obama has actually reduced federal spending in his first term, unlike his Republican predecessor.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/50568909#50568909