SoonerBlue

You might remember seeing Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) grinning for the cameras as she stood behind Rep. Michele Bachmann during that anti-healthcare reform "press conference" on the Capitol steps the other day.

Well, yesterday, Rep. Foxx stood up on the House floor and tried to revise history by attacking what she calls "revisionist history" about which political party should get the credit for passing historic civil rights legislation in the 1960's. She wants people to believe it was Republicans who were the civil rights champions.

She said: "Just as we were the people who passed the civil rights bills back in the '60s without very much help from our colleagues across the aisle," said Fox. "They love to engage in revisionist history."

Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA) immediately challenged Foxx, strongly denying that the GOP passed the Civil Rights Act with almost no help from the Democrats...saying that it was passed by the Johnson administration over the objections of people like Jesse Helms from her own state. And that Rep. John Lewis, "a member of this House, was beaten on the Edmund Pettus bridge to get that civil rights legislation passed. Tell John Lewis that he wasn't part of getting that legislation passed."

Maybe Foxx was talking about the 1860's, when Republicans passed Reconstruction and then Southern Democrats passed Jim Crow laws. Back then it wasn't a party thing...it was a conservative vs liberal thing. The conservatives in both parties opposed civil rights of any kind, and those leaning liberal in both parties had to fight tooth and nail to get these things passed.

Can you imagine liberals in the Republican party? It's much different today, our two parties have an ever widening difference between them...even though the Democrats still have their Blue Dog conservatives.

If we're talking about 1960's, overall, Senate Republicans voted 27-6 for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The voting record shows a distinct split between Northern and Southern politicians. When you take this into account, the facts show that "in both the North and the South, Democrats supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act at a higher rate than the Republicans."

Virginia Foxx is wrong. Yes, 1960's civil rights legislation was passed with strong bipartisan support...but, the credit for the civil rights victory has to go almost entirely to liberals and Democrats.

Don't forget that Richard Nixon began, and Ronald Reagan continued, the now-famous "Southern Strategy"...which led to an exodus of Southern Democrats to the Republican Party. THOSE were the kind of Democrats who voted against civil rights -- the racist, white-supremacist Dixiecrat Democrats -- NOT the ones who form the Democratic Party today.

The South has never forgiven Democrats for supporting the Civil Rights Movement and that's the dirty history of Republicans and racism.

Today's Democratic Party owes its soul far more to Northern liberals than to Southern Democrat Dixiecrats.

BTW - if Rep. Foxx really believes what she said, I'd like her to tell me what has the GOP done for civil rights lately? How's that minority vote working out for you? Also...would you vote for the Civil Rights Act today, Virginia?

Newt Gingrich thinks the teabaggers are ruining the chances of a GOP comeback.

Naw...what was his first clue?

That three-ring circus full of clowns with teabags hanging from their hats and stapled all over their clothes? Running around carrying signs showing everything from Holocaust death camp corpses, to President Obama as Hitler...signs that said, "Next time we'll come armed."?

Just when moderate GOP voters were looking for a serious thinker to run the country, they didn't know whether to cringe, laugh, or go jump into the Boston Harbor.

Hey Newt, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann ain't listening...and just when you finally started making sense too...

From politico.com: "Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich predicted disaster for his party if the conservative wing of the GOP continues to field independent candidates to the right of the party’s nominee.

"If we get into a cycle where there are tea parties and there are conservative third-party candidates, we will make [Nancy] Pelosi speaker for life," Gingrich told POLITICO in an interview Thursday, calling the practice "totally destructive." [..]"

I keep trying to tell everyone that this teabagger movement is just a fringe element...it will never be taken seriously.

If they claim they are not associated with any political party, they will fizzle and die in no time flat.

IF they declare as a national political party (they registered as a state party other day in Florida), they will be dismissed as a third party that will never accomplish much. That's always been the fate of third parties...look at Perot, look at Nader.

If they keep crowing that they'll soon take back the GOP...well, that's not going to fly with moderate conservative voters. That's the GOP's biggest problem right now -- they're seen as extremists who will not allow moderate voices to speak to the mainstream of citizens and voters.

Democrats, don't be tardy to the Tea Party party...cheer them on, they will surely siphon off votes from Republican candidates. Remember...that's how Ralph Nader helped elect GWBush president.

Right now, a majority of the voting public has little faith in the Republican party or its future. Its mostly seen as the party of NO, the party of Neander-cons...and that's not gaining them much traction.

Maybe the tipping point began in 2005, when GWBush decided to hitch up his "political capital" to destroying Social Security. Yeah, he wanted to ditch Social Security and replace it with plans that would put worker's savings in the stock market.

Now just imagine the pickle this country would be in if the GOP had won that fight. Worried voters squirmed, contacted their political reps and hooted it down.

It's been downhill for the GOP ever since.

The Washington Times, a conservative propaganda outlet, has announced the resignation of Executive Editor John Solomon a year before his contract was up.

Maybe because Solomon had said that he wanted to bring balance to the rightie newspaper...and try to keep opinion and commentary from bleeding over into hard news?

Mr. Solomon, please, please, please write an insider expose. I'd love to learn more about this crazed cult leader Moon and his money-laundering empire...which funds the hard-right media, and key Republicans.

WT also fired Tom McDevitt, the publisher and president, and several other executives.

Then security was beefed up on the top floor.

The paper is owned by Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, and apparently a feud between Moon's sons has caused all the turmoil.

Which Moonie will end up in charge? Rumors have the sons wanting to shut down the print edition. Rumors also have the Rev. Moon wanting to shut down the whole thing, and start it up again in China or Russia.

Aside: Hmm...what would happen if a leading liberal newspaper was owned by a foreign mind-control cult? Just think what Glen Beck could do with that...or just wingnuts in general.

Anyway, with all print media suffering,..and only 20 percent of Americans admitting that they're Republicans, maybe it's natural that more rightie outlets are failing...

I read that Moon has pumped almost two billion dollars into the WT to keep it afloat since he bought it, and other rightie rags like Weekly Standard lose over a million a year. Maybe the market has already given a big thumbs down to this kind of "journalism."

Here's more: ~Mystery deepens at Washington Times~
"The situation at the Washington Times is getting even more bizarre. Days after the mysterious firing of three top executives at the city's No. 2 paper, and with no word on whether suddenly absent executive editor John Solomon will continue to lead the paper, armed guards have been posted on the third floor at the Times' headquarters, where management's offices are housed.

That's led many to wonder what in the heck is going on at the Times, which has long been shrouded in secrecy. The paper is owned by the Unification Church led by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a shadowy figure whose church was often accused of brainwashing its followers, known as Moonies. [...]guards were posted so that the new chief financial officer can secure the paper's financial records, but armed guards seem a bit unnecessary for bookkeeping. There have been rumors that the paper is doing anything from folding to going online only, but thus far its owners have stayed mum. The shakeup ...was blamed on the economy."

It such a dang shame that so many of our kids are being maimed and killed in that crap-hole Afghanistan, just to keep that crooked Karzai in office...so that he and his drug-cartel brother can continue stuffing their pockets and off-shore banks with stolen US taxpayer dollars and drug profits.

President Obama is really between a rock and a hard place. If he pulls back in Afghanistan, Republicans will savage him...they'll holler about "cut and runners" all the way through the upcoming elections. They'll whine that we handed al Qaeda a victory against the world's greatest superpower...and that we'll be more vulnerable to another 9/11 attack.

So, a decision to pull back in Afghanistan may very well set the GOP up to gain seats in both houses of Congress in 2010...maybe even the White House itself in 2012.

If they win in 2010 it will be more difficult for Obama to get much done during the last two years of his term...which would certainly almost guarantee a defeat in 2012.

So, if Democrats jump off the Afghan tiger's back, it will probably turn and devour all their political advantages. But, if they continue to hang on, it will certainly cause more of our kids to die and shed blood in Afghan sand.

From what I've read, if our goal is to defeat al Qaeda, then Pakistan is where we should focus, not Afghanistan. Our generals say there's only about 100 al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan....while the tribal regions of Pakistan probably have as many as 10,000.

Here's something to consider -- if Afghanistan falls under the control of the terrorists, they sure haven't won any prize. They get a large barren and rocky wasteland the size of Texas, filled with primitive, uneducated peasants...who think they're doing good if they have indoor plumbing.

But, if al Qaeda and friends could destabilize Pakistan, they could win control of a big prize -- nuclear weapons...lots of missiles to reach any enemy they want.

So, maybe we should just start paying more attention to drone bombing the al Qaeda in Pakistan, and less on whatever the hell we're fighting against in Afghanistan.

And instead of sending more US troops to Afghanistan, just tell Karzai and his drug kingpin brother that the US is no longer going to protect them...then just see how fast they hightail it out of Dodge.