“Pay no attention to what the RNC is cooking up for the platform in Tampa!”, Mitt and Ryan say, while waving their hands, Jedi-style. “These aren’t the ideas you’re looking for!” It’s a little hard to claim the things you’re claiming on the one hand while the other is rustling up a platform of exactly the opposite. Women’s rights, immigration, Islamophobia and general craziness abound in that platform. That’s what you believe, right there, and trying to convince anybody that it doesn’t really apply to you isn’t going to fly. Speaking of flying, how’s that hurricane going for ya?
Shorter Question Everything
• Still just rounding up his circle of bully-boys first before taking action: Romney’s response to the Akin drama shows that he is willing to stand up to a member of his own party – but only if just about everyone else in his party is already doing it.
• The Republican Party has officially endorsed its backing for Arizona-style state immigration laws, adding into its platform language that such laws should be “encouraged, not attacked” and calling for the federal government to drop its lawsuits against the laws. That language and other provisions were widely approved by the party after being introduced by the co-author of the Arizona law, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R).
• Frank Szabo, Republican candidate for Hillsborough County Sheriff said Wednesday that he believes elective abortions are unlawful and he wouldn’t reject the use of deadly force to stop them. Szabo apologized for remarks Thursday. Szabo said he doesn’t have any background in law enforcement, but he said his business background gives him the experience to run for the position of sheriff.
• What is going to take for people to accept the fact that the modern Republican Party is just plain batshit crazy? This isn’t borderline anymore. Tom Head is an actual judge, not the kind on People’s Court. And the GOP aversion to taxes is apparently flexible enough to be waived if the money is used to fund a military response to an imaginary United Nations assault on Lubbock. Really?
• Newsweek isn’t apologizing for their coat hanger cursor, with which they mocked women’s lives. Instead, they send US customers to an anti-Obama article on the Daily Beast. Newsweek reacted to Huff Post by changing their moustache cursor to a coat hanger because nothing is funnier than sending women back to the days of back alley abortions and coat hangers right. Obviously, someone’s intelligence and compassion quotients measure in single digits. If you somehow saw something resembling humor or good taste in celebrating coat hangers, good luck subscribing or for that matter, if you wish to manage your subscription in any way, like perhaps unsubscribing. Newsweek has a special treat for its U.S. and Canadian customers, instead you’ll find yourself staring at Niall Ferguson’s widely debunked anti-Obama article on the Daily Beast.
• Rush Limbaugh claims hurricane is an Obama conspiracy to cancel GOP convention.
LIMBAUGH: So we got a hurricane coming. The National Hurricane Center, which is a government agency, is very hopeful that the hurricane gets near Tampa. The National Hurricane Center is Obama. It’s the National Weather Service, part of the commerce department. It’s Obama. The media, it’s all about the hurricane hitting next week, and they’re not talking about Biden, they’re talking about this Hurricane Isaac thing. Well, you know, we who live in south Florida become experts. We don’t need the National Hurricane Center, and we don’t need all these weather dolts analyzing this for us. Well, we need the center, we can look at their charts and graphs, we know what to do, we can read the stuff. I’ve been tracking the charted forecast track of the storm, and they’re moving it sometimes to the east. The latest, 11 o’clock, they moved it to the west as a cat 1 impact in Naples, Fort Myers area.
This morning at five a.m., the impact was Miami. We’re still not talking about ’til next Tuesday, so it’s gonna be all over the ballpark between now and then. We don’t know where this thing is gonna hit. The models are moving it more and more out into the Gulf. I wouldn’t be surprised if this thing hits in Louisiana someplace when it’s all said and done. Just kidding. Nobody knows, but they’re desperately hoping, they’re so desperately hoping for Tampa. The media, you know, I can see Obama sending FEMA in in advance of the hurricane hitting Tampa so that the Republican convention is nothing but a bunch of tents in Tampa, a bunch of RVs and stuff. (laughing) Make it look like a disaster area before the hurricane even hits there.
• Obama: Romney’s cuts would cripple schools: Speaking at campaign rally in Las Vegas, President Obama says Mitt Romney’s spending cuts would cripple schools while his tax cuts shower more breaks on millionaires. Watch his entire speech.
• In Tampa this week, GOP leaders adopted a plank to their platform supporting a ban on foreign law and aimed at Shariah, the Islamic religious law that many conservatives insist is secretly insinuating itself in the U.S. The platform still has to be approved by the entire convention in a vote next week, but generally, most things approved by the platform committee make it into the final platform.
• Fox anchors are suggesting that the issues of rape, women’s reproductive rights, and education are “distraction[s]” from the real issue of the campaign: the economy.
• Dr. Willke, upon whose theories Akin’s remarks were based, served as a campaign advisor and “important surrogate” to Romney in 2008, according to the New York Daily News. Also, the two men met in 2011 ahead of Romney’s entry into the 2012 Republican primary. Dr. Willke told the U.K. newspaper The Daily Telegraph that he and Romney have had several private meetings, after one of which, Romney thanked Willke for his support and said, “We agree on almost everything.”
• The leader of metal group Twisted Sister blasted Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan for using their signature song at a campaign appearance earlier this week. “I emphatically denounce Paul Ryan’s use of my band Twisted Sister’s song, ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It,’ in any capacity,” singer Dee Snider told Rolling Stone in an interview published Wednesday. “There is almost nothing he stands for that I agree with except the use of the P90X.”
• Given Israel’s stance on South African apartheid, I find this laughable, and that’s the kindest thing I can say about it: Israel called a South African Cabinet decision to mandate special labels on goods from West Bank settlements “racist” and “unacceptable.”
F.D.Brightly
It’s all happening in Tampa!
“Pay no attention to what the RNC is cooking up for the platform in Tampa!”, Mitt and Ryan say, while waving their hands, Jedi-style. “These aren’t the ideas you’re looking for!” It’s a little hard to claim the things you’re claiming on the one hand while the other is rustling up a platform of exactly the opposite. Women’s rights, immigration, Islamophobia and general craziness abound in that platform. That’s what you believe, right there, and trying to convince anybody that it doesn’t really apply to you isn’t going to fly. Speaking of flying, how’s that hurricane going for ya?
Shorter Question Everything
• Still just rounding up his circle of bully-boys first before taking action: Romney’s response to the Akin drama shows that he is willing to stand up to a member of his own party – but only if just about everyone else in his party is already doing it.
• The Republican Party has officially endorsed its backing for Arizona-style state immigration laws, adding into its platform language that such laws should be “encouraged, not attacked” and calling for the federal government to drop its lawsuits against the laws. That language and other provisions were widely approved by the party after being introduced by the co-author of the Arizona law, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R).
• Frank Szabo, Republican candidate for Hillsborough County Sheriff said Wednesday that he believes elective abortions are unlawful and he wouldn’t reject the use of deadly force to stop them. Szabo apologized for remarks Thursday. Szabo said he doesn’t have any background in law enforcement, but he said his business background gives him the experience to run for the position of sheriff.
• What is going to take for people to accept the fact that the modern Republican Party is just plain batshit crazy? This isn’t borderline anymore. Tom Head is an actual judge, not the kind on People’s Court. And the GOP aversion to taxes is apparently flexible enough to be waived if the money is used to fund a military response to an imaginary United Nations assault on Lubbock. Really?
• Newsweek isn’t apologizing for their coat hanger cursor, with which they mocked women’s lives. Instead, they send US customers to an anti-Obama article on the Daily Beast. Newsweek reacted to Huff Post by changing their moustache cursor to a coat hanger because nothing is funnier than sending women back to the days of back alley abortions and coat hangers right. Obviously, someone’s intelligence and compassion quotients measure in single digits. If you somehow saw something resembling humor or good taste in celebrating coat hangers, good luck subscribing or for that matter, if you wish to manage your subscription in any way, like perhaps unsubscribing. Newsweek has a special treat for its U.S. and Canadian customers, instead you’ll find yourself staring at Niall Ferguson’s widely debunked anti-Obama article on the Daily Beast.
• Rush Limbaugh claims hurricane is an Obama conspiracy to cancel GOP convention.
• Ryan backed more than one ‘forcible rape’ abortion bill.
• Obama: Romney’s cuts would cripple schools: Speaking at campaign rally in Las Vegas, President Obama says Mitt Romney’s spending cuts would cripple schools while his tax cuts shower more breaks on millionaires. Watch his entire speech.
• In Tampa this week, GOP leaders adopted a plank to their platform supporting a ban on foreign law and aimed at Shariah, the Islamic religious law that many conservatives insist is secretly insinuating itself in the U.S. The platform still has to be approved by the entire convention in a vote next week, but generally, most things approved by the platform committee make it into the final platform.
• Fox anchors are suggesting that the issues of rape, women’s reproductive rights, and education are “distraction[s]” from the real issue of the campaign: the economy.
• The Obama campaign releasted a statement yesterday saying Biden would be traveling to Florida for “campaign events” next week — the same time as the Republican National Convention.
• Dr. Willke, upon whose theories Akin’s remarks were based, served as a campaign advisor and “important surrogate” to Romney in 2008, according to the New York Daily News. Also, the two men met in 2011 ahead of Romney’s entry into the 2012 Republican primary. Dr. Willke told the U.K. newspaper The Daily Telegraph that he and Romney have had several private meetings, after one of which, Romney thanked Willke for his support and said, “We agree on almost everything.”
• The leader of metal group Twisted Sister blasted Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan for using their signature song at a campaign appearance earlier this week. “I emphatically denounce Paul Ryan’s use of my band Twisted Sister’s song, ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It,’ in any capacity,” singer Dee Snider told Rolling Stone in an interview published Wednesday. “There is almost nothing he stands for that I agree with except the use of the P90X.”
• Given Israel’s stance on South African apartheid, I find this laughable, and that’s the kindest thing I can say about it: Israel called a South African Cabinet decision to mandate special labels on goods from West Bank settlements “racist” and “unacceptable.”