Political Hippo Circle Jerk - America, farg YEAH!

[rjs246]

There was so much backlash about the fetal personhood thing that even the newly elected conservative standard bearer governor refused to sign the legislation unless the bill was changed.

Backwards ass motherfargers.

[Munson]

It really is scary how convinced the GOP was/is that the 2010 elections were some sort of plea for their policies.

[rjs246]

Not for nothing, but Democrats thought the same thing in 2008. This country craves the middle ground. A binary party system doesn't leave room for catering to that. Blow it up.

[Munson]

I think the country would love some sort of healthcare option (the only real far left policy the dems tried to undertake), but I think the right wing has done a superb job of dragging it through the mud and making it sound like it'd be the end of times.

[rjs246]

So Romney will win the popular vote in MI but Santorum will win more delegates because he won way more districts. farging weird system of elections we have here.

[Munson]

santorum's speech is giving me a headache.

[MDS]

I wonder if Dio realizes they have internet connections in Bermuda or New Zealand (both places I'd move to in a hot second)?

unless you are igy rich moving to an isolated island is the dumbest thing you could possibly. wait, a person whose life revolves around sports moving somewhere where everything interesting starts at 4am local time. now thats dumb.

[Rome]

Op-Ed Columnist

G.O.P. Greek Tragedy

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: February 28, 2012


Rick should scat.

Mitt Romney needs to be left alone to limp across the finish line, so he can devote his full time and attention to losing to President Obama.

With Sanctorum and Robo-Romney in a race to the bottom, the once ruthless Republican Party seems to have pretty much decided to cave on 2012 and start planning for a post-Obama world.

Not even because Obama is so strong; simply because their field is so ridiculously weak and wacky.

John McCain has Aeschylated it to "a Greek tragedy." And he should know from Greek tragedy.

"It's the negative campaigning and the increasingly personal attacks," he told The Boston Herald, adding, "the likes of which we have never seen." When a man who was accused of having an illegitimate black child in the 2000 South Carolina primary thinks this is the worst ever, the G.O.P. is really in trouble.

The Arizona senator, who's supporting Romney, grimly noted: "I know he's going to be the nominee, but I also worry about how much damage has been done."

As they battled for Michigan, Arizona and beyond, Romney called Rick Santorum an "economic lightweight," and Santorum called Romney "a lightweight on conservative accomplishments," "uniquely unqualified" and "a bully."

In the old days, the Republican ego had control of the party's id. The id, sometimes described as a galloping horse or crying baby, "the dark, inaccessible part of our personality ... chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations," as Freud called it, was whipped up obliquely by candidates. Nixon had his Southern strategy of using race as a wedge, Bush Senior and Lee Atwater used the Willie Horton attack, and W. and Karl Rove conjured the gay marriage bogyman.

Once elected, those presidents curbed the id with the ego, common sense and reason. But now the G.O.P.'s id is unbridled. The horse has thrown the rider; the dark forces are bubbling. Moderates, women, gays, Hispanics and blacks — even the president — are being hunted in this most dangerous game.

Asked in Michigan why he couldn't excite the base, Romney said he is not willing to make "incendiary comments" or "light my hair on fire."

In the latest sign that moderate Republicans feel passé, Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine shockingly announced her retirement, decrying " 'my way or the highway' ideologies" and a vanishing political center.

The apogee of apathy for Romney was on Friday, when the man who says he's an expert manager spoke to a mostly empty football stadium in Detroit. Stephen Colbert defended Romney, saying he connected with the sea of empty chairs because they, too, were "plastic and uncomfortable."

Some Republicans at the annual winter governors' meeting here murmured that it was over for Mittens even before he cited his wife's two Caddies and his Nascar team-owner pals, and awkwardly mocked the plastic ponchos of Daytona racing fans: "I like those fancy raincoats you bought. Really sprung for the big bucks."

They said Mitt was damaged as a contender against Obama when he was forced to admit that he had a 15-percent tax rate (given, as The Huffington Post points out, that Romney averaged $6,400 an hour at Bain Capital while creating lots of jobs with paltry wages).

Romney defended himself in an interview to Fox News on Tuesday, sitting in front of a poster of his dad with the slogan: "Romney Great in '68." Romney père lost his dream of becoming president when he claimed he was brainwashed on Vietnam.

Now Santorum should forfeit his chance after making a far dumber remark: Kids should beware of college because they'll get brainwashed.

Pandering to Tea Partiers, Santorum, who has a B.A., M.B.A. and J.D., and who supported higher education in his 2006 senatorial campaign, absurdly turned the American dream inside-out and into sauerkraut.

He called the president "a snob" for encouraging people to get more educated and asserted that Obama only wants Americans to go to college so they can be remade in his image, while being indoctrinated by liberal college professors.

Does he think that defining ambition down and asking kids to give up hope is a good mantra? Even Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, who was trying to mandate that women seeking abortions be shamed with vaginal ultrasounds that Democrats dubbed "legal rape," thought Santorum went too far.

As Mitt's remarks get curiouser, Rick's get creepier.

In an interview with ABC News's George Stephanopoulos, Santorum offended the Catholics he's courting by saying that the J.F.K. speech ratifying the separation of church and state made him want "to throw up" because Kennedy had thrown "his faith under the bus."

"I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state are absolute," Sanctorum said.

If he is willing to cross that line, the only two possibilities are that he doesn't understand the nature of the United States or that he wants to do damage to the United States. Neither is acceptable.

I love her.

[ice grillin you]

all this bashing of the gop is hilarious in that if you believe everything you hear they are completely out of touch and are the snake that is now coming around and eating itself by the tail....yet in november they could easily win and if they dont its going to still come down to a state or two

in other words all this talk about how awful mitt romney and rick santorum are while true is still much a do about nothing

and if the pubs had an even decent candidate theyed definitely win in november...so really how dead is the republican party??

[phattymatty]

i actually agree with most of the GOP bashing as i think it's a bunch of out of touch whack jobs also...however...it blows my mind that they can't find a single candidate who is even the slightest bit relatable. i mean yeah each one of them has their own little clicks that like them, but you have to figure out of the millions of republicans they could find one that could rally the whole lot a la obama 08.

i agree with igy that if someone not head slappingly out of touch or ignorant, or even someone boring and non-radical like mccain would run, obama would lose.

[Munson]

Fox exposed for how fair and balanced it is...yet again..

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-february-28-2012/i-can-t-believe-it-got-better-?xrs=share_copy

And Grover Norquist's tax idea is something he's had for a long time...since he was 12 years old

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-february-28-2012/grover-norquist-s-taxpayer-protection-pledge?xrs=share_copy

[Diomedes]

Rogaine is spending a lot of money on ads attached to Colbert and Stewart clips.

[ice grillin you]

What Florida is doing to its public schools
By Valerie Strauss
This was written by Jean Clements, president of Florida's Hillsborough County Classroom Teachers Association, representing more than 9,000 teachers and school personnel.


By Jean Clements

Horace Mann called public education the "great equalizer." Quite simply, he believed that without a strong system of public schools in this country, the elite would get an education while the middle class and poor would not.

This week, a vote by the Florida State Board of Education makes it nearly impossible for public schools to be "great equalizers" in the Sunshine State. This vote, along with education legislation pending in the state capitol, together threaten the future of Florida's public schools. The state's actions are "almost cataclysmic," said Okaloosa County Superintendent Alexis Tibbetts.

Horace Mann must be rolling over in his grave.

The proposed legislation, commonly called "the parent trigger bill," is a vehicle that allows parents of students at low-performing schools (so graded by the state) to petition the state or school district to allow these schools to be taken over by private companies or charter school operators.

Most major parent groups in Florida such as the Florida PTA, Orlando-based Fund Education Now, Support Dade Schools, Save Duval Schools, and 50th No More, oppose this measure. Research shows and parents know that real school improvement comes from strong collaboration with school leaders, teachers, parents and others. Reform should be a collaborative discussion and decision-making process.

In contrast, the parent trigger is designed to give private companies and charter management organizations an open invitation to exploit parents and take over schools — destroying school communities. Rather than a grassroots process, it's an Astroturf mechanism by which companies circulate petitions to take over schools. This idea is being pushed by former Florida governor Jeb Bush's education foundation, with support from the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the James Madison Institute.

The parent trigger becomes dangerous for Florida's public schools when it is combined with a State Board of Education rule change adopted this week. Board members changed the grading system for the state's schools, dramatically increasing the number of "F" schools, although not as severely as what was initially planned. Initial projections would have increased the number of schools receiving Fs from 38 to 268 — a 700 percent increase. The new rules will require full inclusion of the scores from the most challenged students, including those in their first year of speaking English, who used to be omitted from the totals, and students with disabilities.

"Schools with 30, 40, 50 or 60 percent of students who are not native English speakers are going to be at a disadvantage in terms of this as a performance metric," Miami-Dade School Superintendent Alberto Carvalho told The Miami Herald . "That does not mean there is not quality instruction taking place in that school."

These changes will immediately demoralize teachers, discourage students and their families and taint the great gains we have made in improving Florida's public schools. Equally significant, the grading change will ensure that more schools are seen as failing, thereby giving additional opportunities for private companies and charter management organizations to take over schools, as provided for in the parent trigger bill.

The trigger bill and the Board of Education's grade change, when considered together, constitute the education equivalent of a land grab. The changes to the grading system would guarantee that Florida's schools, even those heretofore very successful by the state's own definition, would be labeled as failures. The parent trigger bill would then allow corporations to take over the newly designated "failing schools."

Politicians say they are doing this "for the children." The real goal for some state politicians appears to be awarding favored business interests with state tax dollars while stripping a public institution of resources.

Private school operators see $30 billion in state funds and local property taxes as an untapped market. Private companies would not only get cash flow from every student captured in this process, they'd also get their hands on school land, buildings, equipment and other assets paid for by taxpayers.

Public schools educate all students. Private school operators can toss out students and parents who don't fit their criteria, undermining the efforts of real reformers who work every day to transform diverse, inclusive schools.

The parent trigger law is misnamed as a "Parent Empowerment bill." It should rightly be called the "Corporate Empowerment bill."

Florida parents don't want to see their children become pawns in a political game that benefits out-of-state interests and Tallahassee's corporate friends at the expense of local public schools.

Before any state government pulls the trigger, it should carefully consider the consequences of hitting its target.

so private corporations see public schools as an "untapped market"


wow....this will end well

[Geowhizzer]

Welcome to my world.

[ice grillin you]

yes we live in a country where a man who banged prostitutes is on the senate floor debating the merits of birth control for women