The Republican Party: consistently inconsistent

Just when you thought there was no way this party could be more full of shit, the Times Square wannabe terrorist turns the whole damn country upside down.  New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, announced that he wants to restrict the sale of firearms to people on the government's "no-fly" list.  It seems like a pretty logical restriction, if you're considered too dangerous to get on a plane, you probably shouldn't be allowed to buy a gun.  Ah, but we must remember that Republicans love them some guns; they don't care about any of the other amendments in the Constitution, but the Second must be preserved at all costs!  Restrict free speech, allow for unreasonable search and seizure, but they can't even restrict the sale of guns to suspected terrorists!

Why?  Because it may affect law-abiding citizens.  Yes, that's the Republican excuse, normal everyday folk might be inconvenienced by this law.  Meanwhile, these exact same buffoons are jumping for joy over the Arizona racial profiling law, which allows the police to harass law-abiding American citizens.  Americans must have unrestricted access to firearms at all times, even if you're on the government's no-fly list, but if you're brown and in the state of Arizona, you may have to take a trip to the police station if you don't have your papers in order.

And not satisfied with being completely insane, the GOP has to take this to "holy fucking batshit insane" levels by saying that suspected terrorists shouldn't be read their Miranda rights.  Now this may sound confusing, because Republicans have lost their damn minds, but let me try to get this straight: suspects on the no-fly list should have access to guns, but when they're arrested, even if they're an American citizen suspected of committing a crime on American soil, they should not have the rights guaranteed to every other American citizen?  Huh?!

This is why I cannot take this party seriously, even when you think they've hit rock bottom, they manage to find a way and set the bar even lower for intelligence and decency.

Enemy of intelligence

So yesterday, you may have heard about some idiot on Facebook posting a poll called "Should Obama be killed?" Pretty serious stuff, but it's the internet, right? People post crazy stuff all the time and it's not fair to make assumptions about many people based on the actions of one. But what happens when an elected official does something similar, just less blatant?

Here's congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ), calling the President of the United States an "enemy of humanity."



What kind of message does that send to the lunatics from the teabagging crowd? You know the people with their signs like "We came unarmed... this time!" and "Obama's Plan = White Slavery," how do you think this kind of statement resonates with them? This goes beyond the right-wing's efforts to make the President seem illegitimate by saying things like he's "exotic" or "different," this is a government official telling people that the President of the United States is an enemy to our very existence.

Think I'm overreacting? What about the census worker who was found bound, gagged and hanged with the word "FED" carved into his chest last week? This, just a month or so after congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) claimed that filling out the census could lead to Americans being sent to internment camps, much like we did with Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Trent Franks is walking on very dangerous ground here. This is worse than the birth certificate numbskulls and makes "YOU LIE!" seem tame in comparison, Congressman Franks isn't saying Barack Obama is unfit for office, he's saying he's unfit for life. This isn't just a political disagreement, Franks is dehumanizing our democratically elected President, illustrating him as an evil monster. When you start using language like that, you're essentially telling people that it would be okay to assassinate the President. You're giving them the idea that they would be the hero, saving the "real Americans" from the threat of an enemy to humanity. With rhetoric like this, and the non-stop comparisons to Hitler, all it's going to take is one unbalanced lunatic to hear Trent Franks' words and create a very dangerous situation. Franks should resign immediately or be removed from office by the people of Arizona, language like this cannot be tolerated.

FOX News: US Needs another terrorist attack.

Absolutely disgusting:



Why does Glenn Beck hate America? And FOX News is just as guilty by giving him a platform to agree with this disgusting rhetoric. Sponsors should pull their advertising from FOX and Glenn Beck should be fired... this goes beyond your typical idiot right-wing fear/hate mongering, this is calling for an attack on the United States of America simply because your guy didn't win an election.

It's time for right-wingers to grow up and accept the fact that sometimes you lose, but that's not an excuse to say the only way to fix it is for people to die. Seriously, this is the kind of lunacy usually reserved for whoever is behind the conspiracy on this season of 24. But of course, we all know Republicans get most of their policies from whatever Jack Bauer is up to. How anyone can take these scumbags seriously is beyond me.

Domestic Terrorism

We were warned, but the right-wing media didn't want to listen. Two times in two weeks, terrorism on American soil, but clowns like Joe Scarborough just laughed off the warnings. How funny is it now, Joe?



Why can't the neocons just distance themselves from these murderers? Instead, they try to project it onto the Democrats, even going so far as to call the Holocaust Museum shooter a "leftist." James von Brunn (the shooter) called President Obama a "creation of the Jews," who was coming for his guns. Yeah, real bleeding-heart liberal.

Have the Republicans officially lost their minds? Instead of just coming out, condemning the tragedy and moving on, they have to play the blame game? Is Rush Limbaugh truly so desperate for attention that he thinks simply saying Von Brunn is a "leftist" will make it true? Anyone with half of a functioning brain (okay, that eliminates 90% of elected Republicans and right-wing commentators) can see this guy's political ideology is more in-line with hardcore Libertarianism. Not the fiscal conservative who wants to smoke pot Libertarian, I'm talking about the Libertarian living in a bunker surrounded by gold and various assault rifles.

Von Brunn is not a Republican, and no one is even suggesting he is. The reason the Republicans are so defensive right now is because they threw a fit over the DHS report that was 100% accurate. Republicans tried to use it as a wedge issue and make it sound like Barack Obama and Janet Napolitano were targeting anyone who identifies themselves as conservative. Never mind the report was authorized by the Bush Administration, the neocons saw it as a chance to gain some political points and now it has exploded in their collective face.

While the adults were talking about real threats facing our country, the Republicans were turning it into a spectacle, trying to find something (anything) that could maybe get them back in the driver's seat in Washington. By coming out against the report, Republicans inadvertantly aligned themselves with people who would shoot up a museum or assassinate a doctor in a church. Make no mistake, the museum shooting and the assassination of Dr. Tiller are acts of terrorism, but instead of fighting it, the Republicans continue to play political games.

Neo-McCarthyism

In case you haven't heard by now, McCain adviser Charlie Black recently said that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto was a "positive event" for resurrecting John McCain's presidential bid and that another terrorist attack would be a "big advantage" to him.

Okay, so let's just ignore how fucking horrible that is to say and let's move onto the fact that a terrorist attack would be good for John McCain. As much as I hate to admit it, whenever your average voter worries about terrorism, they go running to the Republicans. For fuck's sake, they almost nominated Rudy Giuliani for president despite the fact that he's never done anything besides have a corrupt police department get rid of sex shops in Times Square and look like he was doing something while standing on a pile of rubble.

Actually, while I'm talking about Rudy, do you mind if I rant for a second? It'll seem a bit off-topic, but I'll bring it all around, trust me. It's okay with you? Cool.

Okay, so you remember the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, right? Well a few years after that, Rudy decided to build a command center for his Office of Emergency Management to be ready in the event of another terrorist attack. The funny part is, everybody involved told him to put it underground in Brooklyn - where does Rudy put it? The 23rd floor of World Trade Center 7, which collapsed on 9/11. All that parading around in the rubble on 9/11, yeah, that was because Giuliani's Emergency Management Office was destroyed and he had nowhere to coordinate any sort of plan. So while he came out looking like the hero, photographed "in the thick of it," it was because he was too stupid to put himself in a position where he actually could have put together a relief effort. And where is this Office of Emergency Management now? Underground in Brooklyn. Remember friends, this man was largely considered to be the next president of the United States about a year ago.

So what does this have to do with McCain's adviser talking about terrorist attacks being a "big advantage?" Because I don't have a fucking clue how anyone in their right mind could ever think that after the last seven years, the Republicans are the ones to go to when it comes to terrorism. Giuliani is just one example and he's not even a real politician - take a look at Bush. Okay, let's remember - 9/11 happened on Bush's watch after his administration received a memo titled "Osama bin Laden determined to attack within the United States." Now, I'm not some idiot conspiracy theorist that says it was an "inside job" or anything stupid like that, but what I am saying is that they were just really lazy.

"Oh but Razor, 9/11 happened just a few months after Bush took office, it was Clinton's fault!" Oh, so we want to play that game? Okay then, the first WTC attack in 93 happened right after Clinton took office, so that was George HW Bush's fault. And we know Daddy Bush was Reagan's Vice President and I know you conservatives won't ever admit Reagan made a mistake, so we probably don't want to go down that road.

"Oh, but Razor, we haven't been attacked since 9/11!" You're right! And you know what else? I wear the same pair of underwear everyday and I've never been mugged by a group of Bisexual Hookers with meth problems, it's clearly my lucky underwear keeping that from happening. Pardon the sarcasm, and while I'm trying to illustrate that correlation does not imply causation, we seem to forget that we are being attacked every single day in Iraq by terrorists we helped put there after demolishing the country's entire infrastructure.

Regardless of all that, just look at the last seven years of Bush rule and really think for a second, are these the people you want protecting you in the event of another terrorist attack? If you answered yes... really? These assclowns? I hate to pile on Bush because it's such a cliché these days, but he truly is the worst president in modern history. I wouldn't trust this guy to water my fucking plants when I go on vacation, let alone try to keep me secure from the threat of "the evil-doers" and "the freedom-haters."

Really, George W. Bush and John "The Sequel" McCain are the guys you would want to trust your safety to? Just run the gauntlet of fuck-ups and then ask yourself one more time: the complete bungling of helping those in need after Hurricane Katrina, outing a CIA agent, declaring "mission accomplished" in Iraq five years ago, the politicization of the Justice Department, Abu Graihb, the Walter Reed scandal, the suspension of habeas corpus, practically forgetting Osama bin Laden exists, using fear for political gain and claiming "God" told him to invade Iraq.

These are the policies you want to continue for another four years? These are the guys that you think can stop terrorism? These are the guys voters would be more inclined to go with in the event of another attack? I'm sorry folks, but if this is the way your mind works, then there is no hope for you. You have been brainwashed into voting against your own self-preservation by the people that have made you less safe in the last seven years. If you vote against your own self-interests out of fear, then you have truly let the terrorists win. I'm not saying that for a cute spin on Bush's words - you have allowed these people to achieve political goals through fear, the very definition of terrorism.

We've been down this road before with McCarthyism. The Neo-Cons don't have to actually combat terrorism, they just have to paint their opponents as weak, sympathizers, appeasers, or even terrorist themselves. Manufacture outrage, muzzle dissent, play on people's fears - these are the very methods used by Senator McCarthy sixty years ago and here we are, falling for it yet again. The Republicans somehow have the populace convinced that they are the party to combat the commies terrorists, but this time, we don't have an Edward R. Murrow to call them out on their bullshit, most reporters today just accept it as fact - "terrorist attack? Oh yeah, totally beneficial to McCain."

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men.
Good night and good luck.

-Edward R. Murrow