The Fine White Whine of the Day is Emanating from My Alma Mater

A little bit of background first: Rutgers University invited one of the Iraq War principals, Condoleezza Rice, to be the 2014 commencement speaker. She may not ooze the same stench of pure evil that follows Donald Rumsfeld and Dick "Dick" Cheney in a thick visible cloud, but there should have been no surprise that offering her an honorary degree and $35,000 to speak would engender some protest from students and faculty and alumni. The invitation to Dr. Rice was not withdrawn by the University after growing protests, but she withdrew magnanimously over the weekend, "Commencement should be a time of joyous celebration for the graduates and their families. Rutgers' invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time."

Her supporters are shocked and stunned. In the following video we have a right-wing hack Steve Malzberg interviewing the head of the Rutgers College Republicans, Donald P. Coughlan, who states that "an overwhelming majority of students seemed to be really excited to see her" and that there was only a small vocal minority of 50-100 students protesting her appearance in the past week:
 

Even better is the young Republican's open letter to the University President Robert Barchi itself in which this statement appears: "As the protests escalated to your office, university property was damaged further frightening students who do not share the opinion of the protestors and preventing them from voicing a counter opinion." The "overwhelming majority" of more than 30,000 Rutgers students were "frightened" to speak in defense of Dr. Rice because of the actions a handful of people who broke a pane of glass and wrote on a wall? That's some fine white whine. (Maybe not a fine as the vintage white whine coming from Rutgers' New Jersey neighbor Princeton this week, but still some good stuff.)

Oh, unsurprisingly, Fox is all over the young Republicans' outrage and Newt Gingrich has piped in to say that Dr. Rice's decision not to appear at Rutgers is a result of "liberal fascism." Those liberals at Rutgers should just forget, or at least remain silent about, the hundreds of thousands killed and wounded and tortured under the Bush administration's wars (in the same way conservatives are forgetting the four Americans personally killed by Hillary Clinton in Benghazi).

The 2016 Clown Circus Casting Couch is Open!

Before any of them actually arrive for their first auditions, here are the very early TrueBlueLiberal.org front runners for the 2016 GOP Clown Circus:

• In the role of Michele Bachmann, we'll see the return of Sarah Palin.
• In the role of Herman Cain, we'll have the inimitable Allen West.
• In the role of boring Jon Huntsman, we will see boring Tim Pawlenty.
• In the role of boring Tim Pawlenty, we will see boring Jon Huntsman.
• In place of Rick Perry, Texas will be represented by Ted "Tail Gunner" Cruz.
• In the role of Mitt Romney, we will have the sixth Romney son, Paul Ryan (but only if Tagg, Trigg, Tugg, Tigger, and Craig Romney refuse the honor of defending the honor of car elevators and the beleaguered 1%).
• In the role of Newt Gingrich, we'll have the even more corpulent and egotistical Chris Christie.
• In the role of Rick Santorum, John Bolton will be the one to inject a frisson of real fear into the race.
• In the role of Game Show Host Donald Trump, we will see Game Show Host Chuck Woolery (unfortunately dropping out before the first debate to the chagrin of true aficionados of world-class slapstick clownfoolery).
• In the role of Ron Paul, we will see Rand Paul.

And stepping in to pick up the royal family banner with a minimum of effort after the inevitable entertaining clownpocalypse, the statesmanlike pandering flip flopper John Ellis "Jeb" Bush.

SpreadingGingrich.com needs your submissions in redefining 'gingrich'

Newt is playing catch-up with "romney" (canine defecation in terror) and "santorum" (that classic frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter), and now there's a contest to come up with a definition for "gingrich" by the people who are developing http://spreadinggingrich.com/.  You can make your submissions by clicking here.

Here's my first crack at one:

gingrich (v.) Get going when your spouse gets old or sick (from the German, ging [past tense of gehen, to go] + rich [archaic abbr. for Zurich, the quickie divorce capital of the medieval germanic world]).

These webmasters need to hurry though and pick a gingrich definition and get their site up and running, because the GOP primary contest is quickly becoming a two-man race.

Enough's Enough. There Are No Liberal Republicans. Period.

Today the nonsense reached a crescendo in the Republican Primary campaigns (again), so as a self-appointed guardian of liberalism, I have to speak up and proclaim that liberals do not "heart" either Romney or Santorum.

A production of "Newt 2012" - 14 February 2012

Newt 2012 launched a splash page under the URL liberalsloveromney.com on which you can mouse over cartoonish representations of representative "liberals" to see what their out-of-context dialog bubbles say: Glenn Beck's bête noire Saul Alinsky ("He Likes My Book!"), SLC Mayor Rocky Anderson ("Thanks for the Endorsement!"), Barack Obama ("Obamneycare!"), George Soros ("Same as Obama!"), Planned Parenthood's Cecile Richards ("Thanks for Romneycare Funds!"), and Al Gore ("He Believes Me!"). Five of them should sue and the ghost of Saul Alinsky should haunt Newt Gingrich and the rest of the GOPpers who have been distorting and defaming his community-organizing legacy.

It's bad enough that the Newt is calling Mitt Romney a liberal today, but it's no surprise because he's been beating the Massachusetts Moderate/Liberal label as his main line of attack since it brought him short-lived success in South Carolina.  But now the Party of No has  gone too far.  Romney's mouthpieces and his SuperPac are trying to pin the "liberal" label on Rick Fucking Santorum, their new major competition, and one of the least liberal GOPpers who has ever drawn breath. "Mitt Romney has a much more comprehensively conservative record than Rick does," says Romney surrogate Jim Talent (former Missouri Senator) who argued that Santorum's Senate voting record "shows he's been in the liberal wing" of the GOP.

Neither Romney nor Santorum has a liberal bone in his body, they have not earned the label, and I'm using the power invested in myself to revoke their right to use and abuse it.

A Formal Thank You to Florida Republicans From Mitt Romney's Liberal Cabal!

Newt Gingrich told you on your Fox News that "the only effective way to stop a Massachusetts liberal from becoming our nominee is to vote for Newt Gingrich", but you either didn't believe the little fat man any more than either of his first two wives did, or you did believe him and you've finally decided to join us in our flag-burning Christmas-killing crusade to turn the United States of Real Americans into the European Wannabees of Hippie Abortionists.



Mitt's Magic True Blue Massachusetts Liberal Underwear

Now that Mr. Inevitable Willard "Mitt" Romney is finally --- thanks to Florida's Republican voters this evening -- really Mr. Inevitable, we in America's Secret Liberal Headquarters can reveal the real magic underwear that has helped propel our rich handsome mouthpiece to the top of the GOP ranks. Magic Mormon Underwear? No, that was always just a smokescreen. He's wearing what we all wear, Magic True Blue Massachusetts Liberal Boxer Shorts (except for sometimes when he's in a fashionably adventurous mood).


Now it's clear that we in the Cabal can't lose. It will be a Massachusetts-Michigan-Mexican Mormon GOP Liberal versus an Hawaiian-Kenyan-Illinois Muslim Democratic Liberal in November.  What are you Teapartiers going to do about it? Vote for Ron Paul?

If the remaining GOP Presidential candidates were characters in novels.

Chickenhawk Newt

I don't want to be accused of not being evenhanded in my coverage of the GOP Presidential candidates.  I know I've been spending too many entries on Mitt Romney lately, but he's made himself such an easy target. Releasing his tax returns on the day that President Obama is delivering a State of the Union speech concentrating on our inequitable tax system written by and for the rich? What was he thinking? Why wasn't he thinking?  But this isn't about Mitt.  This is about Chickenhawk Newt.
You need to read this Vanity Fair article by Peter Boyer from 1989, "Good Newt, Bad Newt," about how Newt was horrible long before his Freddie Mac lobbying and his recent race baiting, but the story that needs to be as well known as Romney's Dog on the Roof is the story of hawkish Newt's Vietnam War experience.  He was old enough to serve, but he didn't.

Sure enough, he found himself listed among a sizable group of noted conservative hawks (including George Will and Richard Perle) who had managed to avoid the war-the "war wimps," as they came to be called. In 1985, he told Jane Mayer of The Wall Street Journal that he still believed that "Vietnam was the right battlefield at the right time." Why didn't he go? "Given everything I believe in, a large part of me thinks I should have gone over," he allowed. But, recovering, he added, "Part of the question I had to ask myself was what difference I would have made."

What if every young draftee and volunteer asked what difference they would make in the course of any war.  You're young. You're patriotic. You're cannon fodder. You don't ask questions. Newt's sense of grandiosity is not a new thing. It's hard to imagine him volunteering for any military service as less than commander in chief (maybe, in a pinch, head of the joint chiefs of staff).

What are your drinking words for tonight's GOP Debate?

True Blue Florida Liberal Stein

The debates aren't quite as much fun since the Cain, Bachmann, and Perry busses have left the Clown Caravan, but there should still be some entertaining moments among the final four at tonight's GOP Debate at the University of South Florida in Tampa.  If you want to get drunk tonight (I'll be filling my stein with Hurricane Kitty), then take a drink every time one of the following all-too-predictable phrases is uttered.

Newt Gingrich: "I worked with Ronald Reagan," "The Elites in Washington and New York," "Saul Alinsky Radicalism,"  or "Food Stamp President"

Mitt Romney: "Attacks on Free Enterprise," "Crony Capitalism" (in a sentence referring to Barack Obama)

Rick Santorum: "Faith" and "Family" in a single sentence, or "I'm In The Final Four!"

Ron Paul: "I'm a Doctor," "End the Fed," or any single sentence that contains three (or more) repetitions of the word "Liberty"

I'll be tweeting with a #GOPDebate hashtag as @TrueBlueLiberal during the debate until I'm too drunk to control my fingers.

Remember Bush's War on Iraq when you think about who to vote for in 2012.

It's important for everyone to remember that the Bush/Cheney Administration was planning their attack on Iraq before 9/11/2001 and before they even took office. Don't believe anyone who now says they didn't know they were electing potential war criminals in November 2000.

There are four contenders left for the 2012 GOP nomination as the South Carolina primary results coming in  tonight. None of them has left any doubt about where stand on the question of war with Iran.

The Winner of Iowa, Rick Santorum, doesn't see any need to wait for formal US aggression to commence.  In the meantime, he's a supporter of terrorism within Iran. "On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead. I think that's a wonderful thing," Santorum says in the following video. Since Republicans hate science just as much as they hate Iran, this type of terrorism is especially satisfying to someone from the Neanderthal wing of the party like Rick.



The Winner of New Hampshire, Mitt Romney, who has been running for President for much of the last decade, is on the record in this debate from 2007 saying that he would not take tactical nuclear weapons off the table when dealing with Iran:


Tonight's Winner in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich, hasn't been running for President quite as long as the man he's beating tonight, but he has been just as bellicose as the men who won Iowa and New Hampshire:


There is a fourth member of the final four, Ron Paul, who hasn't won any GOP primaries, and probably won't win any.  I don't agree with him on many domestic issues (other than the civil liberties and drug law issues where he's 100% right), but he deserves to be heard putting his fellow Republicans in their place on the issue of war and peace.  He's schooling Rick Santorum in the following video, but he could be talking directly to Newt or Mitt just as easily:

Callista Gingrich one step closer to being First Lady

With Newt Gingrich's victory tonight in South Carolina, Callista Gingrich is one step closer to completing her long-range plan to become The First Lady as well as The Third Wife.
 The last time she got into the White House, she did so by preying on the lust of Martin Short. This time the Martians are using Newt Gingrich's unusual sexual tastes as the key to their path to US and World domination.

Has Newt Gingrich been vetted by a qualified graphologist?

I found this signed "Personhood Republican Presidential Candidate Pledge" of Newt Gingrich's on the PersonhoodUSA.com website. This is the personhood group that wants personhood for zygotes, not personhood for corporations, though the overlap between right-wing groups that want to award personhood to both (while removing it from Mexicans, students, and elderly African-American voters) is large.

But this post isn't about strange pledges from fringe groups or the even stranger GOP compulsion to sign them all. This is about the handwriting on Newt's form. I'm not a trained graphologist, but I don't want the hand that held this pen anywhere near any nuclear buttons or any other lever of power: 

Massachusetts Moderate Mitt Romney does NOT want to lower his own tax rate to zero (Newt does).

By the way, those speakers' fees that don't amount to very much mentioned in the last line have been reported to amount to a mere $374,000 last year.  
Here's the full transcript for those of you who can't watch a video at work:

ROMNEY: I also think that the Speaker’s [Newt's] plan to eliminate the capital gains tax for high-income individuals--capital gains, interest, and dividends--would not only be a very expensive decision in terms of having to fill an even larger budget, but would provide people with very high income the possibility of no tax at all. You’d have individuals -- the Warren Buffet argument -- Warren Buffett, Bill Gates [AND ME] would probably pay no taxes at all. And today they probably pay 15 percent. Very high-income people in this country probably pay 15 percent taxes if their resources are coming from investments. And under their plan it would go to zero.I just don’t think that’s the right course. With our precious dollars, we should focus on providing relief, tax relief, in two areas: one is for middle-income Americans, who have been hurt the most, and the other is to bring our corporate rates to a level where we could draw people from other countries to bring their funds back in this country.

QUESTION: What’s the effective rate you’ve been paying?

ROMNEY: What’s the effective rate I’ve been paying? It’s probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything, because my last 10 years, I’ve...[BEEN RETIRED AND RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT AS A HOBBY] my income comes overwhelmingly from investments made in the past, rather than ordinary income, or rather than earned annual income. I get a little bit of income from my book [THAT NOBODY BOUGHT] but I gave that all away. And then I get speakers’ fees from time to time but not very much. Ha Ha.

And if Mitt Romney's tax advisors were doing their job, they would be telling him that it would be fiscally imprudent for Romney to vote for himself. He gets a better tax deal under any of his competitors' schemes, not just Newt Gingrich's.

Language Matters: What adjective do you put before "Capitalism"?

If you answered that question with anything other than the word "Crony" you haven't been paying attention to the 2012 GOP Presidential Primary (a.k.a., Clown Circus).

Newt Gingrich today is quoted as saying that "Crony Capitalism is not Free Enterprise" when talking about Willard "Mitt" Romney's brand of vulture capitalism.  (LA Times)

Michele Bachmann (how we miss you!!) invoked crony capitalism as a charge against Rick Perry in late December when talking about his campaign contributors and favor seekers in Texas (National Journal)

Mitt Romney jumped on the CroCap bandwagon a few days ago when talking about President Obama's recess appointments to the NLRB, stating: "This president is a crony capitalist. He's a job killer." I'm not sure how the "socialist" President or the socialist Unions he was serving could also be capitalists, but you'll have to go to Mitt for clarification. (CBS News)

Jon Huntsman worries about how "we have crony capitalism in Congress" because of the lack of term limits and the revolving door between K Street and Capitol Hill. (Investors.com)

Herman Cain jumped on the anti-crony capitalism express back in September when leaping onto the pile of conservatives gleefully swarming over the corpse of Solyndra. (ThinkProgress)

Ron Paul calls lots of people crony capitalists and he made it clear what CroCap isn't in early November: "Crony capitalism isn't when somebody makes money and they produce a product." I don't think anyone's accusing either Mitt Romney or Rick Perry of producing a product. (Politico)

It all seems to have started back in early September when their intellectual leader, Sarah Palin, first starting trotting out the Crony Capitalism label in association with Rick Perry. (firedoglake)

I personally can't think of a better adjective to be inextricably linked with  the word "Capitalism", but why is the GOP doing our work for us?  Did they check with Frank Luntz first before making "Crony Capitalism" (which always reminds me of Bushie and Brownie and Katrina) the unforgettable alliterative enunciation of the year?

Rick Perry, the original target of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann's "crony capitalism" jibes, went one step further in an interview with Fox today, accusing Mitt Romney of being a "vulture capitalist: "There’s a real difference between venture capitalism and vulture capitalism. I don’t believe that capitalism is making a buck under any circumstances." (FoxNewsInsider)

If they keep this up, "Capitalist" will be a worse insult than "Socialist" in their political lexicon (just as it always has been in mine).

I'm sorry, but somehow I seem to have forgotten Rick Santorum.

Who Knew Newt Was Into Sharing the Wealth With the Poor

Daily Negations by
Lagowski & Mumma

I picked up this old book from 1996 this morning to look for the Daily Negation for January 5th (maybe because I was simply in too good a mood today). It seems that Newt Gingrich was a good tool for bringing a person down even 15 years ago. Here's the negation for January 5, "Entitlements", starting with a quote from Newt delivered before the House Ways and Means Committee on January 5, 1995.

And in 2012 he just wants to give them jobs as janitors.

Liberal War On Christmas Anagrams of the Day

Newt Gingrich = Grinch Twinge = Grinch Get Win!
Callista Gingrich = 'Tis Glacial Grinch

Inspired by this:

Language Matters: Liberal Environmental Hysteria!!!

It really struck me during the most recent debate of the GOP presidential candidates that there is no surer way to throw red meat to a Republican crowd than to attack those who would defend the environment against drillers and miners or any other business interests.  Here, from that Fox News Sioux City debate, was temporary-frontrunner Newt Gingrich in the middle of a rant about opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline:

"... and the president of the United States cannot figure out that it is – I’m using mild words here – utterly irrational to say I’m now going to veto a middle-class tax cut to protect left-wing environmental extremists in San Francisco, so that we’re going to kill American jobs, weaken American energy, make us more vulnerable to the Iranians and do so in a way that makes no sense to any normal, rational American."

TBL.org sidebar  12/19/2011

Newt's "left-wing environmental extremists in San Francisco" came to mind just now when I was looking at my blog and ran across the attached selection of articles with the keyword "liberal" selected by Google for the trueblueliberal.org sidebar. "Liberal Insanity on Light Bulbs" from the Washington Examiner and "Keystone XL: Liberal Histrionics Answered" from Forbes are not at all uncommon uses of  "liberal" as an adjective in the center-right press. Look back at Newt's quote and see how he ends his rant with an appeal to the common sense of  "any normal, rational American."  You don't have to search far in the right-wing and mainstream media to find the same opposition between "insane," "hysterical," "histrionic," "left-wing," "liberal," "extremist" defenders of the environment and those level-headed, normal, rational, mainstream defenders of the bottom line and real (i.e., monetary) concerns over anything that might seem squishy or fuzzy-headed.


We can all see how the GOP is purposely using and abusing the language in a Luntzian manner (and being parroted by a lazy press), but I still can't -- on any emotional level -- understand why anyone, even Tea Partiers, would have the same visceral reaction against environmentalists that the Occupiers have against the billionaires hanging onto their low tax rates as a birthright. I don't have a lot of understanding for other red-meat conservative issues (executions, torture, anti-gay prejudice) either; maybe it's just because I don't eat red (or any other color of) meat.   And that's an environmental issue too.

Strange Things Come in Sevens

Strange things come in sevens. The seven samurai, the seven words you can't say on television, the seven chakras, the seven deadly sins, and, of course, the seven dwarfs and the seven survivors left on clown island. 

Can you match the correct dwarf with the correct clown?

Bashful.......            .......Rick Santorum
Doc.......                 ........Ron Paul
Dopey.......              .......Rick Perry
Grumpy.......             .......Mitt Romney
Happy.......               ....... Jon Huntsman
Sleepy.......                ....... Michele Bachmann
Sneezy.......              ....... Newt Gingrich

I know, there should be more than one "Dopey" and more than one "Grumpy" in order to make approriate matches, but that's where the fun comes in. Who's the Dopiest? And who's the Grumpiest? Answer those questions and you'll have the winner of the GOP primaries!

Christmas Week in the GOP Clown Circus

Be sure to wish "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" to your favorite conservative teabagger this week.  Chances are 95% or better that they'll respond to you with a "Merry Christmas" that has an edge to it.  But back to the clown circus  updates . . .

Michele Bachmann and her spouse disputed the Kinsey Report research on the percentage of gays in the American population because it doesn't agree with their views on the subject. Disagreeing with mainstream science is always a winning position when dealing with the GOP primary voters. (via Advocate.com)

Newt Gingrich has a novel solution for federal judges who would rule against mentions of religion in public school ceremonies: Arrest them.  (Wonkette)

Rick Perry chose to emphasize the dynastic nature of the North Korean leadership when he referred in a campaign email to the recently departed "Dear Leader" as Kim Jong II (the second) rather than Kim Jong Il (eye-el). Might seem a minor typo, until you realize that if he made such an error as "The Leader of the Free World" when referring to the unstable leader of a nuclear power ... well ... (via ThinkProgress)

Mitt Romney the flip-flopper has picked up a flip-flopping semi-endorsement from Ann Coulter. (via Fox Nation)

John Huntsman, who sometimes tries to appear moderate in this crowd of clowns, gave an interview to RedState today in which he parroted every right-wing talking point. When asked if he would veto any Federal budget that contained funding for Planned Parenthood, even if he agreed with all its other particulars, he answered with a resounding "Uh, yes I would." (via RedState)


Ron Paul wants to restore America's "right to drink raw milk anytime you like!” (via Bloomberg Businessweek)

And all the gods are lining up behind Rick Santorum, who just got the endorsement of Thor, a thriller writer named Brad Thor. (via Politico)

Fight Night On Fox!

I was TV free during the last GOP Presidential Debate, but I hope to be watching Fox News tonight with the anticipation of a NASCAR fan hoping for a violent track-clearing conflagration (that is why they watch those rolling billboards driving around in circles for hours, isn't it?).

I want to see Willard "Mittens" Romney and James Richard "Rick" Perry coming to physical blows over who stole who's hairdo. I want to see Richard John "Frothy Mix" Santorum and Michele Marie "Crazy Eyes" Amble Bachmann arguing over which of them will create the most inventively medieval method for imposing the death penalty on abortion providers. I want to hear the crowd singing (Beach Boys style) "Bomb Bomb Bomb / Bomb Bomb Iran" when Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich rails against President Obama for not "taking out" our stray spy drone or the nuclear facilities Newt imagines in Iran's mosques. With any luck Ronald Ernest "Grandpa" Paul and Jon Meade "John [sic]" Huntsman, Jr. will be the only survivors of tonight's carnage, leading to a long-lasting and endlessly-entertaining clown circus all the way to the Republican convention.

I'll probably be live tweeting over at @TrueBlueLiberal, so if you're on Twitter, I'll see you there at nine using the #GOPDebate hashtag.

This Week in the GOP Clown Circus

Rick Perry has upped the Culture-War ante by claiming in his new ad that President Obama has not only declared War On Christmas, but has declared War on Religion. (Washington Post)

Michele Bachmann has been helping the Democrats in the general election by calling Newt Gingrich an "influence peddler" and Mitt Romney a "chameleon" this week. (Miami Herald)

Jon Huntsman has shown he's finally serious about seeking the GOP nomination by showing that he can be a climate-change skeptic. Can doubts on evolution be far behind? (ThinkProgress)

Newt Gingrich, the front-runner of the week, hasn't made any new child-janitor proposals this week, but his speaking contract rider has been published online, asking for (along with the normal first-class accoutrements of a first-class celebrity speaker) two bathrooms in his hotel room. (The Smoking Gun)

Ron Paul has started marketing himself as a Ford F-150 to the pickup truck crowd. (Mother Jones)

Rick Santorum criticized President Obama for revealing that our military had killed Osama bin Laden. (Talking Points Memo)

Mitt Romney would probably like us to forget all of President Obama's foreign policy successes by accusing the President of "appeasement" and doing so on Pearl Harbor Day. (LA Times)

We were sad to see Herman Cain leave the circus this week, but there's hope for an even more entertaining replacement...

Donald Trump has said once again that "I would certainly think about running as an independent candidate" if he's not happy with the GOP nominee. (Wall Street Journal)

I can't wait to see who ends up showing up at The Donald's debate on December 27. He may try to anoint the winner and avoid that whole primary/caucus thing that begins in Iowa on January 3.