If Hillary runs in 2016 she could turn Texas into a swing state. That's right, Texas!

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What do you say Texas?

Courtesy of Real Clear Politics: 

“I think that in 2016 it will absolutely be considered a swing state in the sense that presidential candidates will have to campaign here, which they haven’t been doing for a long time,” Allison said. “If Hillary Clinton does run, she does really well in Texas.” 

Such an optimistic vision of the former secretary of state’s chances was fueled in part by a survey conducted last month by the Democratic-affiliated Public Policy Polling, which showed Clinton besting three hypothetical Republican opponents in Texas -- including Perry (by a margin of eight points). 

While the knee-jerk reaction among many Republicans would be to dismiss the idea that the state could be competitive in 2016 -- just four years after Mitt Romney carried it by 16 points over President Obama -- Texas GOP Chairman Steve Munisteri is in no mood to sneer. 

In an interview with RCP, Munisteri said that he has long taken seriously the possibility that Texas could become a battleground as early as 2016, particularly if Clinton becomes the Democratic standard-bearer. 

“If she’s the nominee, I would say that this is a ‘lean Republican’ state but not a ‘solid Republican’ state,” he said. “I don’t know anyone nationally who’s scoffing at this. The national party leadership is aware and tells me they’re taking it seriously.”

Okay not that I need any more reason to support Hillary in 2016, but if I did this alone would probably be more than enough reason to throw my support behind her candidacy.

Could you imagine if the Democrats won George Bush's home state?

It would be epic!

Mother of Aurora shooting victim upset with John McCain's reaction at town hall. Husband would like a few minutes alone with the Senator.

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As reported yesterday, John McCain made some rather insensitive remarks to a woman who attended one of his town halls, essentially telling her that she needed some "straight talk" and that she would NOT get the assault ban she was hoping for.

The video of the exchange made McCain look like an insensitive douchebag, and his office is claiming that it was edited to make him look bad: 

"This is an obvious case of selective editing to distort what Senator McCain actually said at Wednesday's town hall meeting," Rogers said. "As Senator McCain clearly said, his heart goes out to Mrs. Teves and her family and he is committed to working with members of both parties to try and prevent another senseless tragedy. And as he also said, Arizonans who come to his town hall meetings deserve to hear Senator McCain's honest opinion about this or any other issue, and the truth is that an assault weapons ban won't pass this Congress because of opposition from both political parties."

However the woman in question is not ready to let McCain off the hook quite so easily: 

“I was very surprised that a senator, who has been in office for over 30 years, would address a grieving mother, who just lost her son exactly seven months prior — yesterday was the 20th, I lost my son on 7-20-2012 — to tell me that I needed ‘some straight talk,’” Caren Teves said by phone.

Clearly this woman does not feel that the Senator understood her pain nor  offered her any hope of getting something serious done about the gun violence that ended her son's life.

But while SHE was simply disappointed her husband was simply livid:“The Senator owes my wife an apology - he is lucky I wasn’t there,” Tom Teves wrote in an email to TPM late Thursday. “He was a ‘tough guy’ with a grieving Mom - that is not who I want leading my country! The sad fact is I used to have a great deal of respect for the Senator McCain, not anymore.”

Father of shooting victim not pleased with Senator McCain's response to his wife.

 You know Mr. Teves looks like a pretty healthy specimen, I am guessing that old man McCain might want to take pans NOT to piss him off.

Part of Mr. Teves anger at the Arizona Senator stems from a response he received from McCain's office to an earlier letter: 

Teves said her husband recently wrote McCain a letter addressing the Aurora shooting, which took the lives of their son and 11 other people. But she said McCain’s office responded with a impersonal form letter that focused on an an entirely different massacre: the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn. Neither McCain nor his staff approached her after the town hall event, she added. 

“I was surprised at that,” Teves said. “It takes a lot for me to just get out of bed every morning. I mean, this is still so new and so fresh, that my son was murdered. And I just expected a little more respect from someone who’s been in office over 30 years, and his staff. Between that and the form letter that we received, it’s just, it’s appalling.”

I guess the McCain camp might as well just go ahead and blame the response to their letter on "bad editing as well, right?

You know I have probably said this before, but it certainly bears repeating, "Fuck John McCain!"

Gun nut posts "hit list" on Facebook of all the liberal politicians he wants to kill. You're not helping.

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Courtesy of Raw Story: 

Police in Clarkstown, New York have confiscated a cache of high-powered weapons and body armor from a man who was arrested for posting death threats against against many Democratic politicians and every liberal supporter of President Barack Obama. 

According to WCBS, 49-year-old Larry Mulqueen was arraigned on Thursday on charges of “making terroristic threats, illegally possessing weapons and harassment.” 

Mulqueen’s landlady had tipped off police after she found a “hit list” posted on Facebook that threatened Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) and all members of the Congressional Black Caucus. 

The Facebook posting said that all of the president’s follower were “traitor scum” and promised “death to them all.” 

Nyack-Piermont Patch reported that police searched Mulqueen’s home and found two high-powered rifles, two bayonets, a sword, a knuckle knife, body armor and ammunition. Included in the 100 rounds of ammunition were 27 so-called “tank buster” .50 caliber armor-piercing shells. 

Previous criminal convictions meant that it was illegal for Mulqueen to possess the weapons. 

Yeah gee I simply CANNOT imagine why we need stricter gun laws in this country. How in the hell did a guy like this get his hands on "tank buster" shells?

So go ahead, you 2nd Amendment fetishists, and tell me, is THIS the kind of "government invading our homes to take our guns" fear that you were imagining? Or is this 2nd Amendment lunatic different than your usual 2nd Amendment lunatic?

Republican reformation is a fantasy.

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Courtesy of the Daily Beast:

As I’ve written many times, the conventional view of what’s wrong with the GOP gets at only a portion of the truth. When The New York Times or Politico does such a story, the story inevitably focuses on policy positions. Immigration. Same-sex marriage. Climate change. Tinker with these positions, several sages are quoted as saying, and the GOP will be back in the game. 

God knows, policy positions are a problem. But they are not the problem. The problem is that the party is fanatical—a machine of rage, hate, and resentment. People are free to scoff and pretend it isn’t so, but I don’t think honest people can deny that we’ve never seen anything like this in the modern history of our country. There’s a symbiosis of malevolence between the extreme parts of the GOP base and Washington lawmakers, and it is destroying the Republican Party. That’s fine with me, although I am constantly mystified as to why it’s all right with the people I’m talking about. But it’s also destroying the country and our democratic institutions and processes, which is not fine with me. 

The party can change all the positions it wants, but until people stand up and yell “Stop!” to this fanaticism, it won’t mean anything. In fact, the problems feed into each other, because the idea that today’s Republican Party can change its stripes on same-sex marriage or immigration is absurd, and it is absurd precisely because of the rage and fanaticism I’m talking about, much of which is directed at brown people and gay people. Such a party cannot change its stripes on these issues until the mindset and world view are changed. 

What Tomasky is saying should be obvious to just about anyone.

The Republicans are not about to REALLY change, because they don't see that anything is broken.

All they want to change is the PERCEPTION of who they are in order to attract more voters, but not the FACT of who they are, which has increasingly become a party of racists, misogynists, homophobes, and supporters of big business.

And the introduction of the Tea Party wing has certainly not helped them, in that now the inmates are actually attempting to take control of the asylum.

The Right Wing fringe was great when they could simply be agitated about gay rights, gun control laws, or Roe vs Wade and then flock to the polls, but now that they want to try their hand at steering the ship the establishment GOP is looking for a way to keelhaul them before the Republican party runs aground permanently.

I would offer some advice to help but I am too busy unpacking my new popcorn popper.

Alaska Senator wants to have the state pay $100 for each sea otter murdered for being a nuisance. I guess there were no kittens around for him to stomp on.

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"Wait, there's a bounty on who's head?"

Courtesy of ADN:

An Alaska state senator is proposing a bounty on sea otters, the cute little marine mammals often seen by tourists swimming on their backs between cruise ships, sometimes munching on a fresh crab or clams. 

Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, sees the furry-faced critters as a growing threat to shellfish beds, particularly in southeast Alaska, where he is from. 

On Wednesday, he introduced legislation that would have the state pay $100 for each sea otter lawfully killed under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. 

"We're not talking eradication. We're talking slowing the population growth," he said. "In my opinion, we're not going to get any help from the federal government." 

Look I don't care if these little guys are walking up to this idiot and mugging him while holding a pistol to his head, you simply do NOT encourage people to massacre an animal as adorable as a sea otter.

What's next? Will he encourage people to punch pandas?

Or kick Koalas?

Or bitch slap baby bunnies?

But have no fear you sea otter fans you, as it turns out this is all an exercise in futility for Senator "I hate cute animals."

Even if the bill were to pass, it would be unenforceable under the federal law, said Bruce Woods, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. States cannot enforce laws or regulations related to the taking of any marine mammal under the law unless the Interior secretary transfers conservation and management authority to that state.

Well there you go again. Here come the Feds keeping Alaskans from exercising their rights to slaughter every creature that they find even slightly irritating.

Who could possibly support this kind of federal overreach?


Well yeah, I mean besides you guys?

Sadly this idea that we can simply slaughter any animal that becomes bothersome is built into Alaska's DNA. What was it that idiot said about Alaska's animals again?

Oh yeah:

"I always remind people from outside our state that there's plenty of room for all Alaska's animals -- right next to the mashed potatoes."

Investigating "The Good News Club." A fundamentalist Christian club that inserts itself into public schools to proselytize to young children.

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Here is a portion of the post I wrote about the book which inspired this investigation: 

In 2009, the Good News Club came to the public elementary school where journalist Katherine Stewart sent her children. The Club, which is sponsored by the Child Evangelism Fellowship, bills itself as an after-school program of “Bible study.” But Stewart soon discovered that the Club’s real mission is to convert children to fundamentalist Christianity and encourage them to proselytize to their “unchurched” peers, all the while promoting the natural but false impression among the children that its activities are endorsed by the school. 

Astonished to discover that the U.S. Supreme Court has deemed this—and other forms of religious activity in public schools—legal, Stewart set off on an investigative journey to dozens of cities and towns across the nation to document the impact. In this book she demonstrates that there is more religion in America’s public schools today than there has been for the past 100 years. The movement driving this agenda is stealthy. It is aggressive. It has our children in its sights. And its ultimate aim is to destroy the system of public education as we know it.

Our public education system is constantly under attack by  conservative and religious forces, and this is just one method at their disposal to be used to usher in the end of public education.

P.S. I know the video is a little longish, but I urge you to take the time to watch it as the information is quite astonishing and should be seen by as many people as possible.

Entering into sequester negotiations, new Bloomberg poll shows President Obama with highest job approval rating in three years, and the popularity of Republicans at record lows.

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Courtesy of Bloomberg:

President Barack Obama enters the latest budget showdown with Congress with his highest job- approval rating in three years and public support for his economic message, while his Republican opponents’ popularity stands at a record low. 

Fifty-five percent of Americans approve of Obama’s performance in office, his strongest level of support since September 2009, according to a Bloomberg National poll conducted Feb. 15-18. Only 35 percent of the country has a favorable view of the Republican Party, the lowest rating in a survey that began in September 2009. The party’s brand slipped six percentage points in the last six months, the poll shows. 

Americans by 49 percent to 44 percent believe Obama’s proposals for government spending on infrastructure, education and alternative energy are more likely to create jobs than Republican calls to cut spending and taxes to build business confidence and spur employment. 

“The Republicans are not offering any new solutions,” said poll respondent Cynthia Synos, 62, a political independent who lives in the St. Louis suburb of Greendale, Missouri. “Their answer is always tax cuts and incentives for business. I’ve never heard them say anything innovative to spark the economy that would help the other 85, 90 percent of people that have to deal with the economy as it is.” 

Obama’s positive standing with the public provides him with political leverage as Americans assess blame for any furloughs, disruption of government services or damage to the economy if the spending cuts aren’t averted. The repercussions also could help shape the battleground for the 2014 midterm congressional elections. 

Public views of congressional Republicans’ record places an added burden on them in the standoff over automatic spending cuts. Americans by 43 percent to 34 percent say they are more to blame than Obama and Democrats for “what’s gone wrong” in Washington. Still, another 23 percent aren’t sure which side bears more responsibility. 

Republicans “are not willing to work at all with the president,” said poll respondent Horace Lee Boyd, 64, a political independent and retired wholesale merchandiser who lives in Cullman, Alabama. “When you cease to compromise, you cease to accomplish anything. We’re at a stalemate. He’s willing to compromise and they aren’t.” 

From most perspectives it does not appear that the Republicans have much to work with, especially since the public cannot help but notice that most of the fighting is actually going on within the party itself, between the establishment GOP and the upstart Teabaggers, instead of with the Democrats.

While it is clear that the President wants to do everything he can to avoid the sequester it is clear that he stands to benefit from it politically once it happens and that the Republicans will suffer an even larger slip in the polls as a result.

In other words it appears that the Republicans are still trying to play chess while Obama is beating the pants off of them in a game of three dimensional chess.

P.S. By the way for those still a little confused about what the sequester does, here is a great article which lays the whole thing out in easy to understand language and graphics.