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Florida Republicans go ga-ga for gazillionaire!

Posted on August 25, 2010 By

RickScott

John McCain can go back to playing Maverick on the TeeVee Box, with or without Jim Garner’s help.

Lisa Murkowski up in Alaska, however, may have to chew for a while on Mama Grizzly gristle.

But the big story of Tuesday’s primary elections is down in Florida where the entire Republican Party establishment is waking up this morning with a bad case of the WTF?s.

Despite pre-primary polling indications, Gazillionaire Rick “Skeletor” Scott spent $50 million of his own cheese and grilled long-time Republican Party of Florida darling and sitting Attorney General Bill McCollum for the RPOF nomination for guv’nah.

The Republican Party of Florida establishment and all its interwoven business interests and lobbying kingpins long ago anointed McCollum to succeed current Guv’nah Charlie Crist after Crist was kicked out of the party for being, well, too not-right-wing-crazy-enough.

Now, what’s a party to do?

It was just 10 short years ago, the Republican Party of Florida was handing the presidency of the United States to George W. Bush. They were riding high. So confident were they that Republican leaders of the Florida Legislature were prepared to completely ignore the outcome of any silly presidential ballot recounts and send all 27 Electoral College delegates to vote for Bush anyway…even if the recount had shown Al Gore won Florida.

But that’s a distant memory now.

Faced with a serious and substantive Democratic candidate for guv’nah in Florida’s current Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, Florida Republicans must now confront the mega-rich juggernaut that just bought and paid for the party’s nomination.

Sure, the Sunshine State’s newspapers and teevee stations love the guy for boosting their bottom lines by $50 million in the primary but even the staunchest Republicans question the morality of that kind of spending and display of wealth given the hard economic times everyone else is facing.

Republicans tend not to be comfortable with general election campaigns set as morality plays.

Then, there is Teabagger favorite Marco Rubio who, as expected, won the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by former Sen. Mel Martinez. Rubio is also a RPOF insider, former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives. RPOF insiders don’t like and don’t trust the Gazillionaire who made his fortune on the backs of Medicare payments to his chain of hospitals – and the violations for which his company was forced to pay $1.7 billion in fines for the fraud on taxpayers.

Teabaggers, gazillionaires, indicted former party officials and the disgruntled Charlie Crist fans will make for an uneasy and fractious fall for Florida Republicans.

The Democrats, on the other hand, have the best statewide ticket in Sink for Governor, Kendrick Meek for the Senate and Dan Gelber for Attorney General since Bob Graham and Lawton Chiles were on the ballot.

The Florida Republican leadership must be sitting around, this morning, replaying the final scene of the 1972 Robert Redford movie, “The Candidate,” and asking, “what do we do now?”

This just in: what they WON’T do is, apparently, hold a Unity Rally as they usually do.

Send in the clowns…

Posted on July 21, 2010 By

scaryclown

The only thing more pathetic than white folks whining about charges of racism is Christians whining about Muslims wanting to build a mosque.

And, very often, it’s the same whiners whining about both!

Grow up, people. You are not the only ones on this planet and you don’t have all the answers.

It never ceases to be amazing how white people react with such venom when anyone points out obvious racism.

Some redneck spits, “Obama plan: white slavery!”

Someone else points out the obvious.

Then some other redneck says, “Why that’s racism, accusing me of racism. You racist!”

Ha-ha-ha! It’s almost laughable, really…except it’s so sad.

The NAACP calls out the obvious racism of TeaParty chants and signs and messages and the teabaggers get their lily white noses outa joint and say, “it’s racist to call us racists.”

The next thing you know some right-wing kook with a blog and TV show puts out a video tape of a USDA official – who just oh so coincidentally happens to be African-American – and gets the NAACP all twisted up and playing defense.

By this time, the racists are demanding today’s equivalent of a lynching as sacrifice to the white power structure and the USDA official is fired.

Oh…but, gosh, who could have seen this coming? The racists edited the tape, told a big ol’ whopping bald-faced lie and now everyone is sorry and the USDA is taking everything back. Sorry. Our bad.

“They just want to stir up some trouble, it seems to me in my opinion,” said a humble Georgia white farmer of the right-wing attempts to seek retribution against African-American public servants.

“Stir up trouble.” That’s the age-old tactic for fighting back from a place of cowardice.

And racists are world-class cowards.

So are fundamentalist Christians and Bumper-Sticker ‘Murkins who get outa joint about Muslims wanting to build an Islamic Center in Manhattan, near the former site of the World Trade Towers and everyone goes postal. Sad.

Oh…but wait…this just in…

Maybe there IS something more pathetic than all that. It’s the Florida Legislature!

The Republican majority Legislature took less than an hour on Tuesday to tell former Republican Gov. Chain Gang Charlie Crist to take his proposed offshore oil drilling ban and stick down the Deepwater Horizon drill hole.

Crist, now an independent and running for the U.S. Senate, called the lawmakers to Tallahassee for the express purpose of drafting a constitutional amendment for Sunshine State voters that would have, if adopted on the ballot in November, placed a permanent ban on oil drilling in Florida waters.

No matter that over 70 percent of Florida voters favor an oil drilling ban, the Republican majority in the legislature was having nothing to do with impeding the ability of Big Oil to foul the coasts.

Well, that and the fact that oil barons gave legislators nearly $300,000 between January 2009 and March 2010…with an additional $185,000 to the Florida GOBP. (And, for the record, $77,000 to the Florida Democratic Party.)

Miffed that Crist continues to lead the U.S. Senate race even after they kicked him out of the GOBP, the Republicans in the legislature said the special session was “because of politics.” Imagine that.

Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the leading Democratic candidate to replace Crist at the governor’s mansion called the legislature, “a complete failure.”

“Instead of action, the tone deaf Florida Legislature has been twiddling their thumbs,” she said, pointing out the lawmakers should have also addressed the severe economic hits taken by people and businesses in the Florida Panhandle because of the oil spill.

Gulf of Mexico: America’s sewer!

Posted on April 30, 2010 By

The good news about the massive oil spill in the northern Gulf of Mexico is that it will cover up and make us forget about the massive dead zone in the northern Gulf of Mexico.

Oh…and, by the way, you’ll hear the word, “massive,” a lot in the coming days.

But what the hell, right? It’s just the Gulf of Mexico. We’ve been using it as America’s sewer for years now, flushing all kinds of poisons down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico.

Just like Colonel Jackson in Johnny Horton’s song.

So, let’s rewind back to the Republican National Convention of 2008. What’s that, you chant…loudly?

“Drill, baby, drill! Drill, baby, drill! Drill, baby, drill!”

Yea, seemed like a good slogan at the time. So, Sarah, how’s that, “drill, baby, drilly-thingy workin’ out fer ya?” Wink-wink.

“Globs of roofing tar” reported washing up on the Chandeleur Islands, according to the Christian Science Monitor. But, heck, that could be left over from Katrina. No, not really.

The infamous Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone, you see, is a 7,000 square mile area, generally just west and south of the…here it is again…massive oil spill. Nothing lives in the dead zone. Nothing can live in the dead zone because pollutants – nutrients, fertilizers, all sorts of chemicals – sucked up all the oxygen years ago.

Flushed down the Mississippi River from our nation’s heartland, the Gulf of Mexico dead zone was created by our nation’s ongoing, greatest (and massive) bowel movement.

But now we have a 2,000 square mile oil slick washing toward the Louisiana marshes and, should the wind shift and regular currents pick it up, the island and beaches of Mississippi, Alabama, the Florida Panhandle and possibly even to the Florida Keys eventually.

Ain’t that just great? Drill, baby, drill! Pump 200,000 gallons of oil each day into the Gulf of Mexico from a broken well head!!

Some experts predict it could take as long as 3 months to cap the leaking well. Let’s see…200,000 gallons a day times 90 days…carry the 1…why that’s close to 18 million gallons of black gold spread across the Gulf of Mexico in three months!

We’ll all be rich!!

Oh, what the hell, we’ll just burn the Gulf of Mexico…and Mexicans could then walk to Florida and avoid Arizona altogether!

Oh yea…and President Obama let it be known this morning he is rethinking his whole notion of allowing more offshore oil drilling. Good call, Mr. President.

Back on dry land, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist reversed himself after reversing himself and finally decided, “offshore drilling…bad.”

He also decided, “Republican Party…bad,” as he officially proclaimed his independence making for a man-to-man-to-man three-way for election to the U.S. Senate in November. We’ll see who ends up spooning who.

Florida grateful for Arizona.

Posted on April 28, 2010 By

The people of Florida would like to thank the people of Arizona for taking some of the heat off.

Whew, it is tough trying to live up to the mantle of the screwiest state in the nation and the Sunshine State is certainly grateful to Arizona for answering the call, “hey, li’l help?”

Just in case you’ve been under a rock, the Arizona Legislature passed a new law requiring anyone with brown skin be stopped by police under suspicion of not being ‘Murkin.

That’s right. Arizona law now requires police to stop anyone they think might be an undocumented resident or visitor to the USofA. And that means all people of darker-than-pink skin. Sales of self-tanners and visits to tanning salons dropped off immediately.

The same Arizona legislature rejected a bill that would have moved the Statue of Liberty to the high desert: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free; the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Emma Lazarus would not have been welcomed in the Arizona Legislature.

You gotta admit, though, protesting the new law by painting swastikas on the capitol in black beans…well, that’s pretty clever.

But not to worry, Florida. You still have a chance. Charlie Crist is gonna run for the U.S. Senate as an independent and it’s gonna be a great campaign season! We’ll have the tea baggers, Marco “Polo” Rubio, Charlie and the steady and solid Kendrick Meek seeking to become the first African-American elected to the Senate from Florida.

One black, one Latin, one white-n-tanned-n-exceedingly-neat. It’s the Mod Squad campaign season in Florida!

Maybe Marco Rubio should avoid Arizona for a while; maybe Charlie, too.

Note for the rest of the nation: Charlie Crist first rose to political prominence in the early 90s as a tough “law and order” candidate and state senator advocating for the return of roadside chain gangs. He was immediately dubbed “Chain Gang Charlie.”

Now, it appears, what he has here is a failure to communicate.

At least in Alabama, they speak English. That’s the summation of another wing nut running for office on the backs of those who aren’t white and rich.

Alabama Republican goobernatorial candidate Tim James proclaims in a TeeVee Box ad, for all the world to hear, “In Alabama, we speak English,” while railing against laws which require driver’s license tests to be offered in a variety of languages.

One could argue, however, about the ability of Alabamians to speak English. But that’s another story.

Finally, thank God the U.S. Senate is finally doing something to help real Americans on Main Street. Stalled in financial reform, mired in immigration and greenhouse gases, a few brave Senators are coming out strong against…Facebook!

Sens. Shummer, Franken, Bennet and Begich will stand firm against any attempts by the giant social network to further invade our privacy!

Facebook responded by immediately un-friending Sens. Shummer, Franken, Bennet & Begich…but kept their profiles online for advertisers.

Right Wing Cartoons abound…

Posted on March 10, 2010 By

Memo to Right-Wing Nut Jobs: you really need to calm down a little.

Seriously, we all appreciate good debate on issues of great concern. But, really, guys & gals of the knuckle-dragging variety, you really need to install mirrors. You’re starting to look and sound…well…let’s face it…like cartoons; like parodies of yourselves.

You’re really starting to look Homer-ish. DOH!

Take, for example, these Homers who now think the good ol’ US of A is so bad they want nothing to do with it. Where once folks of this ilk might proclaim, “America: love it or leave it,” they’re now willing to simply leave it.

A whole bunch of Homers up in Indiana have declared themselves no longer a part of the U.S. and, instead, claim they are something called, “sovereign citizens” of…of…of…themselves, I guess.

They’ve printed up their own ID cards, declared their homes to be embassies and will refuse to pay taxes.

“It gives me diplomatic immunity,” said Hoosier Homer Donald Moore. “The way I understand it, the federal government is incorporated, and all the states are incorporated. This takes me out of the corporation.”

Alrighty, then!

Picking up on that sentiment is good ol’ Douche Limpbranch, long a cartoon on the radio, who now says he will leave the country and move to Costa Rica if we adopt reform of our nation’s health care system.

First of all…hey Douche, don’t let the door hit your butt on the way out. Second – and, Douche, you’re gonna really like this – Costa Rica has the very best nationalized health care system in Latin America and is ranked among the top three in the world. Heck, you don’t even need a prescription for Viagra in Costa Rica!

This might tie in nicely with Sarah Palin’s recent admission her family took advantage of the national health care program of Canada when she was growing up in Skagway, Alaska. Maybe she’ll now quit railing against health care reform in the U.S…probably not.

Speaking of media clowns, there’s always the cartoonish Gin Beck’sBeer.

With advertisers running from his show like rats on a burning ship, he’s happy to get revenue from folks like the “small, fiercely independent farmers” who will sell you “survival seeds” as a hedge against the impending…meltdown…something…dunno know, exactly.

While the farmers may be small, short maybe, their visions of Mad Max time are grand and you can help them prepare for it by sending them lots of cash in return for survival seeds.

There is the U.S. Senate race in Florida where Gov. Charlie Crist accused his teabagger-buddy opponent, Marco! Polo! Rubio!, of spending $130 in state GOP party money on a haircut or a back wax or something.

Rubio (Marco!) denies this, through a spokesman: “Marco paid $20 for a haircut with a razor on the neck, and he bought some items that went into a silent auction, including gift certificates. Charlie Crist’s obsession with making up things about other people’s grooming habits is bizarre for anyone, especially the sitting governor of Florida. It’s also a shame he cares more about what’s in Marco’s personal bills than what’s in the stimulus bill he supported.”

Finally, we have the right-wing rebirth of the Holy Roman Empire in Florida, Ave Maria University, which now wants its female staffers to wear only skirts and dresses, no pants (and, we presume, tops of some type). We like to see leg at Ave Maria!

Cartoons…and it ain’t even Saturday morning.

One weekend of bipartisanship…yea, right!

Posted on February 1, 2010 By

Okay, so this great attempt – one more time – at bi-partisanship in Washington which began Friday will end today.

The President will release today his budget for 2011, a hefty little $3.8 trillion document with a running deficit of $1.3 trillion.

What fun!

After crashing the Congressional GOP retreat on Friday and asking them politely – sorta – to cut it out and try to be reasonable for a change and all the Republicans then mobbing the President to get his autograph – because he’s a rock star – look for them today to lash out at the budget proposals as a Bolshevik plot!

“We gotta close the gap a little bit between the rhetoric and the reality,” said the President on Friday.

And while the President’s budget for 2011 will close the gap a little on the deficit ($1.6 trillion to $1.3 trillion) look for the rhetoric-to-reality gap today to widen to Grand Canyon proportions.

Yea…that’s more fun: to demonize the other side so much it’ll make it tough to get things done.

That’s the kind of government we like!

No matter that most of the $1.6 trillion budget deficit in the current year is left over from the previous 8 years of Bush & Company and the 2011 deficit will be lower than the deficit of the current year, this gives partisans in Washington something really spectacular over which to fight…and do nothing…and bore us all to death!

Meanwhile, flights of the critically sick and injured from Haiti to Florida and other states will resume today after Florida Gov. Charlie Crist balked last week and forced a temporary halt to the emergency flights.

Crist asked the appropriate question in a tragedy of this magnitude: “Hey, who’s gonna pay for all this?” And answered for all Floridians, “we ain’t.”

Nice. Maybe next time a massive hurricane hits Florida and Floridians are suffering without the basic necessities, someone will ask, “hey, who’s gonna pay for all this?”

And speaking of Haiti, a bunch of Baptists from Idaho and Texas were arrested over the weekend as they were transporting a bunch of kids over the border to the Dominican Republic. They said they were trying to get the orphaned kids back to the U.S. and to safety.

The only problem, according to plenty of press reports, is that at least half the kids still have parents in Haiti. Oops. Oh well, the LOOKED like they needed to be baptized.

Finally, can’t remember the last time Barbara Walters rushed to interview a newly-elected nekkid senator from Massachusetts. Oh wait, it might have been the last time Massachusetts had a Republican senator!