Republicans: "closed-minded, racist, rigid, old-fashioned"

That's according to the College Republican National Committee's own latest survey, or autopsy, explaining the Regressive Party's failure to attract younger voters last November.

It was a 95-page report that combined a series of surveys and focus groups that were taken before as well as after the Presidential election six months ago.  The survey, which compiled responses from young Republicans 30 years of age and under, showed that "rich" and "religious" are two words that best describe the party; "open minded, caring, cooperative" were the words that least describe it.

When asked who comes to mind as a leader in the party, the top responses were Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and Bill O'Reilly -- rightwing media blowhards, and not a legislator among them.

The steady stream of outrageous statements and polarizing rhetoric that came from one Republican candidate after another last year led to those under 30 describing that party as "closed-minded, racist, rigid and old-fashioned."

The bottom line shows that if the Regressive republican party is going to ever attract younger voters again, it's going to have to change its stance on most issues.

It needs to stop attacking teachers, cops and firemen and labeling them "thugs" as was the case every day and every night on Fox last year when Republican governors cut so many of their jobs, leading to huge demonstrations, mainly in Wisconsin.

It needs to stop being the party of "legitimate rape," a phrase uttered by one Todd Aiken who claimed that if a woman is "legitimately raped," she can't get pregnant because "the female body has ways of shutting that whole thing down."

Another Regressive, Richard Murdock, who ran for US Senate in Indiana last year, described a pregnancy resulting from rape as "something god intended."

Virginia's Regressive republican governor, Bob McDonnell, known as Governor Forced Ultrasound, or "Trans-Vaginal Bob", actually signed a bill requiring medically unnecessary, invasive ultrasounds to be forced on women -- at their expense -- before being allowed to have a legal, Constitutional abortion.

The Republican platform itself, adopted at Willard Romney's convention, stated that the party was against all abortions, with no exception for incest or rape.

After all of this, anytime a Regressive was asked about their party's War on Women, they'd put on the confused face and ask, "what war on women? Why, whatever do you mean?"

Perhaps if Regressives were serious about attracting women voters, they'd disband their Legitimate Rape Caucus and stop the attacks on women's reproductive health.

Maybe they should also drop their rabid opposition to marriage equality, which is embraced in overwhelming numbers with those under 30.

Their own presidential candidate, Willard Romney, expressed vile contempt for half the country during a candle-lit fundraiser for the wealthy in Boca Raton, when he thought no one was recording his comments. Referring to 47% of Americans as a bunch of deadbeats who won't take responsibility for themselves is not the way to win friends and influence people -- or get them to vote for you.

Making life so miserable for undocumented Hispanics in hopes that they "self-deport" is not the way to attract Hispanics.

Maybe Regressive governors in dozens of states should stop shortening early voting hours and cutting early voting days in hopes of suppressing "the wrong people from voting."

If the Republican party wants to stop being referred to as The Regressive Party, perhaps it should immediately stop being overtly hostile toward women, gays, Hispanics, blacks and young people.

Louisiana's Governor, Piyush Jindal even told his party point blank: stop being the stupid party.

That means stop denying science and math and embracing superstition.

Will they change their attitude and public image to keep from going extinct, based on the results of their own survey? Probably not, since they haven't changed a thing since their last autopsy right after the election. And not changing will mean people under 30 will continue to stay away in droves from the party they see as being represented by Mr. Burns from The Simpsons.

Hillary "mopped the floor" with Republicans

At the Benghazi hearings / witch-hunt, Hillary "mopped the floor with Republican congressmen and senators." -Lt Col Ralph Peters, on Fox. "She made them look like weenies."

"That Happened!" by Rachel Maddow

That happened! That really happened. We are not going to have a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe versus Wade. There will be no more Antonin Scalias and Samuel Alitos added to this court.

We`re not going to repeal health reform. Nobody is going to kill Medicare and make old people in this generation or any other generation fight it out on the open market to try to get themselves health insurance.
We are not going to do that.

We are not going to give a 20 percent tax cut to millionaires and billionaires and expect programs like food stamps and kid`s insurance to cover the cost of that tax cut.
We`re not make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control under the insurance plan that you`re on.

We are not going to redefine rape.

We are not going to amend the United States Constitution to stop gay
people from getting married.

We are not going to double Guantanamo.

We are not eliminating the Department of Energy or the Department of
Education or housing at the federal level.

We are not going to spend $2 trillion on the military that the
military does not want. We are not scaling back on student loans, because
the country`s new plan is that you should borrow money from your parents.
We are not vetoing the DREAM Act. We are not self-deporting. We are
not letting Detroit go bankrupt.

We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January.
 We are not going to have, as a president, a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared, gay kid, to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help and there was no apology, not ever.

We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolton.
We are not bringing Dick Cheney back.
We are not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraq war. We are not going to do it.
We had the chance to do that if we wanted to do that, as a country.
And we said no, last night, loudly.

Now, to be fair:  If you are a conservative or if you are rooting for
the Republicans, a few things did go your way.
Republicans did not lose that Senate seat that they might have lost in
Arizona. Jon Kyl`s old Senate seat goes to another Republican, to Jeff Flake.
Also, Republicans did not lose that other Senate seat they might have
lost in Nevada, the old John Ensign seat that was given to Dean Heller.
It stays with him. It stays Republican just barely.

And while President Obama carried 28 states last time, he carried 25
or 26 states this time, depending on how Florida goes. That means
Republicans did lose everything else, but they got back Indiana and also
North Carolina.

So it was not a totally hopeless night for Republicans.

Big picture in the House, thanks mostly to redistricting the
Republicans were not in danger of losing the House, and they didn`t, even though the Republican majority appears to have shrunk there.


Republican Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts lost by a lot to the nation`s foremost authority on the economic rights of the middle class.

After marriage rights for same-sex couples were voted down in state
after state after state for years, more than 30 times in a row, this year,
all change in Maine, they voted on marriage equality and they voted for it.
In Maryland, they voted on marriage equality and they voted for it.
In Minnesota, they were asked to vote against marriage equality, and
Minnesota refused to ban it.
In Washington state, the vote is not called yet. They are still counting the vote and we will be watching it closely, but if you are on the pro-gay right side in Washington state, it should be noted that it is looking pretty good.

Nevada elects its first African-American congressman this year.

America gets our first openly gay United States senator.

America gets our first-ever Asian American woman senator from Hawaii.

Her seat in the House, I should note, gets filled by this woman, a
Democratic Iraq war veteran. I`m going to tell you right now that her name
is Tulsi Gabbard, because she is on the fast track to being very famous
some day. Tulsi Gabbard.

Speaking of Iraq war veterans, Tammy Duckworth, veteran helicopter
pilot, she lost both her legs in Iraq. She is going to Congress and she is
sending home the opponent who mocked her for her war record, Joe Walsh.
California relaxed its "three strikes you`re out" law and rejected a
law to cripple the power of unions.

Decriminalization of marijuana was approved in Washington and in
Colorado.

The astonishing tide of dark money spent against Democratic Senators
Jon Tester in Montana and Sherrod Brown in Ohio turned out to be pointless.
Both those Democratic senators won, they held on to their seats.
Democrats won a Senate seat in North Dakota, of all places, a seat
that nobody thought they could win.

All of these states that had this hugely aggressive total Republican
takeover from the 2010 elections, Ohio and Wisconsin, and Michigan, and
Pennsylvania and Virginia and Florida, all of those states that went so red
in state government in these past couple of years and that then had these
big fights inside their states over how Republicans were governing there.
In Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and we will see about
Florida, last night not only did Republicans lose the presidential election
in every single one of those states, Republicans lost the Senate race in
every single one of those states too -- Sherrod Brown, Tammy Baldwin,
Debbie Stabenow, Bob Casey, Tim Kaine, Bill Nelson. Depending on Florida,
a Democratic sweep of the presidency, and definitely a Democratic sweep of
the Senate race -- in those states that the GOP was so excited to have
supposedly turned red in a way that was going to stick.

Last night, Democratic women swept every major office in New
Hampshire. Last night, California Democrats won Democratic super majority
in the state House and in the state Senate. Not just majorities in
California, but super majorities. Wherein, if the Republicans don`t turn
up, any of them, any day at work, nothing will be different in California.
They`re completely legislatively irrelevant.

Allen West lost a seat.

More women got elected to the U.S. Senate than at any time in U.S.
history.

The Republican presidential nominee and vice presidential nominee both
lost their home states.

Missouri and Montana and West Virginia chose Democratic governors.
West Virginia chose its first gay state legislature. So did North Dakota.
West Virginia and North Dakota? Yes, seriously.

Joe Lieberman`s old seat went to a real Democrat in Connecticut.

The proportion of young people voting compared to 2008, it went up,
same with African-Americans, up from 2008. Same with Latinos, up from
2008, not down, up.

If you are a liberal or if you are rooting for the Democrats, last
night was a very, very, very big night.

And, oh, yes, this happened. President Barack Obama, yes, will go
down in history as our nation`s first African-American president. But he
will also go down in history as the most successful Democratic presidential
candidate since FDR.

President Clinton got re-elected too, I know, but only Barack Obama
got re-elected with not just big Electoral College margins, but also with
majority wins in the popular vote, twice.

The guy who predicted this outcome, almost exactly, is Nate Silver, of
course, who writes the political statistics blog, "FiveThirtyEight" at "The
New York Times." For accurately predicting, it appears, the exact outcome
of the race, and I mean down to every single state. We`ll see about
Florida, Nate was, of course, pilloried, pilloried on the right and by
right-leaning beltway media types, including Politico., for having the
audacity to print what his poll averages told him was about to happen.
But Nate was right, the polls were right, even without Florida being
decided, we now know that President Obama won in pretty much exactly the
way the state-by-state polls said he was going to win. He won with more
than 300 electoral votes. It was not magic, it was just math. Math that
was completely invisible to the political right.

Republican Jackass of the Week

His name is Judd Gregg. He's from New Hampshire. ("Pepp-ridge Fahm Remembuhs") And he wants the Republicans in Congress to use every possible tool to keep Health Care Reform from passing. You may recall the Republicans ran Congress for 12 years and did absolutely nothing to reform health care in America. Now that Democrats run Congress, the Republicans' only goal is to stall and keep health care reform from passing. That way, during the mid-term elections next year, they can say "the Democrats didn't accomplish anything. Vote Republican." Of course, they are to blame for blocking health care.

Here's an excerpt from the Huffington Post:

Sen. Judd Gregg, (R-NH) has penned the equivalent of an obstruction manual -- a how-to for holding up health care reform -- and has distributed the document to his Republican colleagues.

Insisting that it is "critical that Republican senators have a solid understanding of the minority's rights in the Senate," Gregg makes note of all the procedural tools the GOP can use before measures are considered, when they come to the floor and even after passage.

He highlights the use of hard quorum calls for any motion to proceed, as opposed to a far quicker unanimous consent provision. He reminds his colleagues that, absent unanimous consent, they can force the Majority Leader to read any "full-text substitute amendment." And when it comes to offering amendments to the health care bill, the New Hampshire Republican argues that it is the personification of "full, complete, and informed debate," to "offer an unlimited number of amendments -- germane or non-germane -- on any subject."

Republicans Don't Trust the American Justice System

So the Obama Administration has decided to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 4 others in New York City for their 9/11 terrorist attacks. Finally, the people responsible for the biggest terrorist attack in American history -- which happened during the Bush/Cheney Administration -- will go to trial. Putting these people on trial right in the city they tried to destroy, while the whole world is watching, is great news, right? Not for Republicans, the party of "no"... the party that finds that dark cloud on a sunny day. And why not?

Apparently republicans have no faith in the American Criminal Justice System, the one that they're always touting as the best in the world; the one the rest of the world should emulate.

Why do republicans hate America?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/15/terrorism.trial/

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jujZxVn--lj_j5uwTTzPRreHxX1gD9C0888O0

Wanda Sykes on Health Care

Wanda takes on the republicans in Congress who have health care (that you're paying for) that they don't want anyone else to have.

They got it; why should you?

Why do republicans hate America?

Boehner's Latest Boner

Just what is it about republicans?

They can't tell the US Constitution from the Declaration of Independence. They can't recite the Pledge of Allegiance. They send the troops off to unnecessary wars, vote against military pay raises, shut down VA hospitals, and then claim Democrats "don't support the troops." They claim Democrats are "weak on terrorism," yet on 9/11 we had a Republican President, Republican Vice President, Republican House, Republican Senate, Republican Mayor of NY and Republican Governor of NY.

Well here's the latest gaffe from the Boner. He says he's quoting the Constitution, but it's really the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence. Wow. And he's even holding his tiny edition of the Constitution! Maybe too much time in the tanning salon fried his brains...

Michelle Bachman and Virginia Foxx don't seem to notice the screw-up either.


via videosift.com