Is the GOP tampering with Florida elections? The New York Times reports that State police officers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogated them as part of an odd "investigation" that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November.
Also, see
here and
here.
Why do we even put up with this?
posted by black8
on Aug 16, 2004 -
61 comments
Bush camp solicits race of Star staffer. President Bush's re-election campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney.
The jounalist's name was Mamta Popat. She sure
sounds like a terrorist.
posted by JeffK
on Jul 31, 2004 -
30 comments
Failure is not an option, it's mandatory. "For more than three decades, the Republican Party has relied on the "culture war" to rescue their chances every four years, from Richard Nixon's campaign against the liberal news media to George H. W. Bush's campaign against the liberal flag-burners. In this culture war, the real divide is between "regular people" and an endlessly scheming "liberal elite." This strategy allows them to depict themselves as friends of the common people even as they gut workplace safety rules and lay plans to turn Social Security over to Wall Street. Most important, it has allowed Republicans to speak the language of populism."
An opinion about how the surety of losing wins votes for the Republican party.
posted by Dipsomaniac
on Jul 16, 2004 -
61 comments
The Blissful Life in Utopia SUGAR LAND, Tex. -- This is the home of Britton Stein, who describes George W. Bush as "a man, a man's man, a manly man," and Al Gore as "a ranting and raving little whiny baby."
Forty-nine years old, Stein is a husband, a father, a landscaper and a Republican. He lives in a house that has six guns in the closets and 21 crosses in the main hallway.
Diary of a Freeper. Fascinating read. Insightful.
posted by nofundy
on Apr 28, 2004 -
130 comments
"Just consider what you're doing now. You don't want to have the freakin' president of the United States mad at you for the rest of your life...If you step off this cliff, gravity never goes up, it goes down." Those were the words of,
Larry Telford, of the National Republican Congressional Committee threatening a Texas citizen who dared to run in the Republican primary for the US House of Representatives.
posted by EmoChild
on Mar 9, 2004 -
23 comments
The Republican National Committee is warning television stations across the country not to run ads from the MoveOn.org Voter Fund that criticize President Bush, charging that the left-leaning political group is paying for them with money raised in violation of the new campaign-finance law.
posted by jasenlee
on Mar 8, 2004 -
74 comments
God loves Republicans...
Governor Huckabee of Arkansas, while speaking to the Republican Governors Association meeting
pretended to get a phone call from God, who seemed really friendly to the Republicans.
Isn't this blasphemous? And why can't I find any other reporting of this amazing display of religious fanaticism in any other outlet of the "liberal media?" [more inside]
posted by jpburns
on Feb 26, 2004 -
84 comments
Republican Dirty Tricks "From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics.
The office of Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle has already launched an investigation into how excerpts from 15 Democratic memos showed up in the pages of the conservative-leaning newspapers and were posted to a website last November." They just can't get Nixon out of their system, huh?
posted by owillis
on Jan 22, 2004 -
124 comments
The Wingnut Debate Dictionary - spice up your political screeds with some colorful new terms like
Colmestrato (n.) - an emasculated, harmless "liberal" stand-in included for purposes of fairness and balance and
Condiment - a statement that needs to be taken with a heavy pinch of salt. I am
so adding
Deus ex rectum and
Stepford Democrat to my vocabulary. And how is it that
fucksimilie hasn't found it's way here long before now?
This is a game that MeFi wags of all political persuasions can play...anyone have any terms to add to the lexicon?
(compiled by Ethel the Blog)
posted by madamjujujive
on Nov 7, 2003 -
25 comments
Republicans for Dean... but not in the way you might think. An interesting op-ed piece by David Brooks on why a Dean candidacy might be good news for the Bush team. (NYTimes, but no registration required.)
posted by UKnowForKids
on Sep 16, 2003 -
60 comments
The Young Hipublicans. "Still searching for their identities, many of these kids are not yet prepared to declare a particular political affiliation. This is where the conservative campus activists come in. Having recognized the importance of conservativism to their own lives, they have committed themselves to the task of bringing out the unacknowledged conservatism in other students. The mission of today's activists involves less an act of persuading their peers to accept an ideology than in awakening them to the fact that they already embody it." Welcome to Room 101.
posted by The Jesse Helms
on May 23, 2003 -
32 comments
“There has been a cover-up of this.” Ah, well, why should we be surprised. The Republicans already have decided to co-opt September 11 to their political advantage by rescheduling their convention in New York so close to the anniversary of that day, so why not keep the report on the actual events of September 11 secret - to avoid any sort of embarassing political fallout?
posted by kgasmart
on May 1, 2003 -
35 comments
WhatSpeak? Republican pollster Frank Luntz realized he had a problem. Many of his GOP clients had a consistently bad rap on the environment. Word on the street was they took in millions in contributions from polluting industries, and either sat idly by while environmental safeguards were weakened or, worse, led the charge to undermine decades of protections.
What to do? Instead of counseling his clients to take a principled stand against these polluting policies, Frank simply wrote a memo and invented LuntzSpeak - an exciting new way to put a positive spin on an abysmal environmental record.
Of course, this memo was supposed to be confidential. But lucky for us, Jennifer 8. Lee at the New York Times was given a copy by the Environmental Working Group. Now all of us can learn how to decode and use LuntzSpeak for ourselves!
Submitted in belated recognition of Earth Day. Hope you enjoy.
posted by nofundy
on Apr 23, 2003 -
10 comments
Democrats finally speaking out? "Today the Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives announced that -- and I quote -- 'Nothing is more important in the face of war than cutting taxes.' Let me make this clear: Never in its history has the United States passed a big tax cut in a time of war. We have always believed in shared sacrifice. " Sen. John Kerry's speech at the Jefferson Jackson Dinner April 3 in Georgia.
(Salon article, click the free day pass to view)
posted by Espoo2
on Apr 6, 2003 -
29 comments
Political Fratricide: The GOP is reportedly [
+] proposing $15 billion of cuts — or is it $25? — in veterans' benefits between now and 2007, and groups like the
Veterans Against the Iraq War are hopping mad. Hell, I imagine the pro-war wing is pretty peeved, too. It's part of a plan
with delusions of grandeur to deliver massive tax cuts AND kill the deficit ... you know, the one that did not exist before W was elected, as I understand it ... in six years. The original tip is from
Stand Down. The actual status of the cuts is nebulous at this point, however, with the
SF Chron reporting that they will likely fail in the Senate as the tax cut is halved and
others reporting that the die is not yet cast. The House budget resolution, for metafilter accountants who like these things, is
here.
posted by hairyeyeball
on Apr 1, 2003 -
12 comments
Spinning the Environment One section of the memorandum, "Winning the Global Warming Debate," asserts that many voters believe there is a lack of consensus about global warming among scientists. "Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly," it says. "Therefore you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue."
Among the ways to "challenge the science," the memorandum says, is to "be even more active in recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view and much more active in making them part of your message" because "people are more willing to trust scientists than politicians."
So much for science based decisions regarding the fouling of our nest. Sounds Green = Is Green in the bizarro world of spin.
posted by nofundy
on Mar 4, 2003 -
35 comments
Powell's address to the UN. In a direct, long and rich presentation, Colin Powell has laid the cards on the table, and presented what's likely to be our most explicit case for war. While it's difficult to separate the larger issue of War on Iraq from just this presentation, I'm interested in other takes on Powell's speech. Anything substantially new? Truly irrefutable? Strong enough to justify immediate action? Does this have more heft coming from Powell (considering
he's more trusted than Bush on this issue), or is he acting as a mouthpiece? Or, to be succinct, did Colin change anyone's mind? At the very least, he satisfied my need to know more about why our administration is acting so urgently.
posted by kokogiak
on Feb 5, 2003 -
227 comments
Republicans and Civil Rights A somewhat opinionated but generally fact- and history-based (which is why I found it unusual enough to post) look at the place of the Republican party in the history of American civil rights.
posted by oissubke
on Dec 15, 2002 -
61 comments
What the hell? Republican leader of the Senate, Trent Lott, says that the United States would have been better off if then-segregationist candidate Strom Thurmond had won the presidency in 1948. Wow...I want to hear Fox News, Rush, etc, spin Lott's way out of this. Also, does saying this have anything to do with the election in Louisiana on Saturday?
posted by BarneyFifesBullet
on Dec 6, 2002 -
61 comments
Strange Bedfellows fight tyranny? - Bob Barr, Dick Armey to join ACLU Quoth James Madison: (Federalist Papers #47) - "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." and Benjamin Franklin:"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
William Safire
Slammed the Bush Adminstration (Nov 15) over John Poindexter's
Total Information Awareness program. NOW:
Bob Barr, a gun-rights anti-gay firebrand conservative to join the ACLU? Dick Armey's joining as a consultant? Say that again?
And Nat Hentoff reports that the Journal Gazette of Fort Wayne, Indiana ran a broadside called (sept. 8) "Attacks on Liberty" - "In the name of national security, President Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and even Congress have pulled strand after strand out of the constitutional fabric that distinguishes the United States from other nations. . . . Actions taken over the past year are eerily reminiscent of tyranny portrayed in the most nightmarish works of fiction" MEANWHILE...
an email of an editorial by right wing radio personality Chuck Baldwin, "Bush Government 'Out of Control' ("The Bush administration seems determined to turn our country into the most elaborate and sophisticated police state ever devised") first published in an
online Christian Fundamentalist antiabortion newpaper is making the (right wing) rounds. It asks: "Does that mean one must leave the Republican Party in order to fight for liberty?" [antitroll protection dislaimer:
most Democrats signed the Patriot Act, the principle cause of concern behind the statements and editorials linked to on this post]
posted by troutfishing
on Nov 27, 2002 -
25 comments
Return of the vast right-wing conspiracy? Al Gore is quoted in the New York Observer: "Fox News Network, The Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh—there’s a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy ultra-conservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican administrations and the rest of the media …. Most of the media [has] been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks—that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points into the definition of what’s objective as stated by the news media as a whole."
Has Al Gore lost his mind?
posted by Durwood
on Nov 27, 2002 -
114 comments
'Come Out To Vote On November 6th' In Baltimore, Republicans are accusing Democrats of paying people to canvass African-American neighborhoods on Tuesday. Democrats are accusing Republicans of intimidating minority voters by planning to use members of the Fraternal Order of Police to serve as GOP poll workers. Meanwhile, a
flyer being circulated in African-American communities 'reminds' readers to vote on November
6th - but only if all outstanding tickets, warrants, and outstanding rent payments have been paid.
posted by tpoh.org
on Nov 4, 2002 -
34 comments
Making Rehnquist Proud Just like Rehnquist and his earlier political service, Jim Crow is still hard at work.
"Tim Hutchinson and the Republican Party have claimed that they want to reach out to African-American voters, but when election time comes they have nothing to offer but intimidation and harassment," Cook said. "We ask Tim Hutchinson and his party to stop disenfranchising African-American voters and obstructing the democratic process."
posted by nofundy
on Oct 25, 2002 -
15 comments
They don't mean it Maureen Dowd suggests an Orwellian vision in Washington, wherein the Democrats and their Republican opponents say what they don't mean and mean what they don't say.
posted by Postroad
on Oct 14, 2002 -
29 comments
Republican Insider Hint #1: Apply foot to mouth and win. America ain't no democracy. Trent Lott on
McDermott: "For him to be in Baghdad, the center of one of the most dangerous dictators in the world, with
all kinds of weapons of mass destruction, to be questioning the
veracity of our own American president, is the height of irresponsible," said Lott, R-Mississippi. "
He needs to come home and keep his mouth shut." Yes, yes, we have
three traitorous democratic congressmen in Baghdad presently, who are lobbying that government to allow the return of UN weapons inspectors.
posted by crasspastor
on Sep 29, 2002 -
94 comments
Welcome to the State Department... I mean, the Republican Party. "For some time, travelers browsing the State Department Web site for helpful tips about Guadalajara, Mexico, found much more than they bargained for when they clicked on a photograph of President Bush. The click transported them to a partisan playground, where they were told how to get involved with the Republican Party and even how to donate money to it."
(Why does nytimes.com have all the good stories?- metafilter, metafilter)
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy
on Sep 13, 2002 -
11 comments
Does invading Iraq require more than declaring Saddam Hussein "evil"? The New York Times reports public opposition from people not easily labeled Brie-sucking scared-of-war libyerals -- people like Henry "Bombs Away" Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft. Meanwhile, hawks argue that
not attacking after all Bush's rhetoric would "produce such a collapse of confidence in the president that it would set back the war on terrorism."
[registration required]
posted by sacre_bleu
on Aug 15, 2002 -
62 comments
