Mario Piperni on Gay Repugs

More Gay Republican BS

May 24, 2012 By mario piperni

Richard Grenell is the openly gay conservative hack political consultant Mitt Romney hired to be his national security spokesman. After one week on the job, Grenell resigned over pressure exerted by homophobes within the Republican party. Here’s what he had to say in a piece he wrote in the Wall Street Journal titled Marriage, Gay Republicans and the Elections.

The claim that gays should be barred from conservative activism is not only bigoted but is a bipartisan view. The intolerant assault comes from the far right, who object to Republicans who are gay, and the far left, who object to gays being Republicans. When the extremists on both sides are the only ones speaking up, the majority suffers.

What a load of crap. This ‘both sides do it’ bullshit is getting tiresome.

First of all, the intolerance is not coming from the “far right.” It’s coming from the mainstream part of the  Republican party. Intolerance, bigotry and homophobia are required staples for anyone hoping to attain office as a Republican. Grenell’s own choice for the White House is a guy named Mitt Romney who has pledged to support a constitutional amendment making same-sex marriage illegal.

I believe we should have a federal amendment in the Constitution that defines marriage as a relationship between a man and woman, because I believe the ideal place to raise a child is in a home with a mom and a dad.

Polls also indicate that Democrats and liberals favor same-sex marriage by a huge percentage over Republicans and conservatives.

You got that, Grenell? Seven out of ten Republicans hope you are never able to marry your partner.

And lastly, liberals have no objection to gays being Republicans. The LGBT community can support any party they wish. Liberals are simply asking why the hell would any sane gay person vote for a party that hates their very existence and views them as sexual perverts? A political party that strives to deny them the same civil rights afforded heterosexuals? Why would anyone want to do that to themselves?

Bottom line is that Richard Grenell is simply another conservative who needs to justify his party’s indefensible policies by spreading the blame over to liberals and Democrats.

Not this time buddy. On this issue, as on most issues, the assholes are all on your side.

Mario Piperni on Mitt’s Climate Science

Mitt Romney’s Climate Skeptics

May 24, 2012 By mario piperni

Will Mitt Romney’s running mate be a climate skeptic? You can count on it.

…we can already say with near-100 percent certainly that it’ll be someone who’s skeptical about the climate crisis and doubts that it’s significantly driven by human activity.

This is because virtually all high-level Republicans are skeptical about the climate crisis, at least judging by their public statements and actions. To find a Republican who believes that we ought to do even a little something about global warming, Romney would have to wade into the garbage bin of GOP politics and consort with losers and has-beens like Charlie Crist and Jon Huntsman. Fat chance.

In their own words.

The [climate] debate, so far, has been dominated by ‘experts’ from the University of Hollywood and the P.C. Institute of Technology. … Any dissident voice is likely to be the target of a fatwa issued by one Alatollah [sic] or another of the climate change theocracy, branding the dissenter as a ‘denier’ for refusing to bow down to the ‘scientific consensus.’ -Mitch Daniels – Indiana Gov.

Actually, no…the non-debate has been dominated by the American National Academy of Sciences and every other major scientific body of every industrialized nation in the world. And no one is asking anyone to “bow down” to scientific consensus. All they’re asking is that they accept the science because…well, because the people studying the scientific data are the world’s leading climatologists while people like Daniels are idiot politicians bowing down to an idiot base who have been sold a false and contrived narrative by self-serving corporate entities who have a single goal – making money no matter what the costs to the planet and future generations.

I’m a skeptic. I’m not a scientist. I think the science has been politicized. I would be very wary of hollowing out our industrial base even further … It may be only partially man-made. It may not be warming by the way. The last six years we’ve actually had mean temperatures that are cooler. -Jeb Bush

Jeb is right on two counts: a) he’s not a scientist and b) the science has been politicized. What he’s not admitting is that the politicization is the work of people like himself and the Republican party serving the greedy needs of the fossil fuel industries.

So there is climate change, but the reality is the science of it indicates that most of it, if not all of it, is caused by natural causes. And as to the potential human contribution to that, there’s a great scientific dispute about that very issue. -Tim Pawlenty

No, there is no “great scientific disupute” over “that very issue.” The reality is that 97% of published climate scientists believe global warming to be caused by human activity.

The climate is always changing. The climate is never static. The question is whether it’s caused by man-made activity and whether it justifies economically destructive government regulation. -Marco Rubio

How many times do we need to say it? The reality is that 97% of climate scientists believe global warming to be caused by human activity! Unless Rubio and others are climatologist with data that proves otherwise, they’re talking nonsense.

Unfortunately, the reality is also that politicians like Romney and Pawlenty were accepting of man-made global warming until they realized that they didn’t have a future in a political party that is too often willing to trash science in favor of serving the needs of the corporations that feed the party’s coffers. The day that Jon Huntsman spoke the following words was the day he forsake any chance of becoming the Republican presidential nominee.

The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party – the anti-science party, we have a huge problem.  We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012.  When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Science – Sciences has said about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position.

The wrong side of science.

The wrong side of social issues.

The wrong side of economic issues.

The wrong side of decency, honesty and intelligence.

The wrong side of humanity.

Humor: The Borowitz Report

U.S. Sends Emergency Shipment of Negative Ads to Egypt

Aid to Fledgling Democracy

CAIRO (The Borowitz Report) – In what it is calling a mission to support a fledgling democracy in the Middle East, the United States this week sent an emergency shipment of negative ads to Cairo.

Explaining the secret mission, a State Department official said that with its first democratic elections getting underway, “Egypt had no access to the mother’s milk of any working democracy: vicious campaign ads full of lies and distortions.”

Starting at dawn on Sunday, U.S. Army paratroopers descended on the Middle Eastern nation armed with pamphlets, flyers, and DVDs of TV ads full of libelous falsehoods about Egypt’s presidential candidates.

Harland Dorrinson, the U.S. Undersecretary of State for the Middle East, said teaching Egyptian politicians the basics of character assassination was “an important first step” in supporting democracy in Egypt, but stressed that “much work still needs to be done.”

“Right now, there’s no apparatus for major companies to funnel billions of dollars directly to political campaigns,” he said.  “Until corporations have total control over the outcome of elections, we won’t be able to say that Egypt has a functioning democracy like ours.”

But Mr. Dorrinson remained upbeat, saying he has seen early signs that democracy may be taking hold in Egypt: “Already, they’re calling one of the presidential candidates a Muslim.”

Elsewhere, a new study shows that congressmen speak English at a 10th grade level, which means that the U.S. is being governed by children who were left behind.

Ezra Klein on the Euro Factor

Ah, here’s the number I’ve been searching for: “For every one-percentage-point decline in euro-area growth, history suggests growth in the rest of the world will take a 0.7% hit, ‘with the U.S. seeing a somewhat smaller decline than other parts of the world.’ “

That’s David Wessel summarizing some research from JPMorgan. The main channel of contagion is financial. Exports to Europe are 1.2 percent of GDP. That’s not nothing, but it’s not that much. The bigger problem is that “European banks have lent more than $6 trillion to the rest of the world, twice as much as U.S. banks.” Indeed, “European loans to the U.S. amount to about 10% of U.S. GDP.”

I used to say that Germany’s Angela Merkel and the European Central Bank’s Mario Draghi were going to decide who America’s next president was. If they saved the euro zone, it would be Barack Obama. If they let it fail, it would be Mitt Romney. Then Europe stabilized and I stopped saying it.

Looks like it’s time to start again. Though I would amend the remark to say that Merkel and Draghi aren’t on their own. John Boehner will have a role, too, as, come the end of the year, markets will be reacting to what they think will happen when we reach the fiscal cliff and and the debt ceiling. Most forecasters agree that a few wrong moves could put us back into recession, and if businesses and investors think that’s the likeliest outcome — or even a likely outcome — they’re going to cut their spending and their hiring in the last quarter of 2012. Boehner is in an excellent position to persuade markets that we’re likely to make the wrong moves — or that we’re not.

As for Obama and Romney, well, there’s little either of them can do at this point to dramatically change the trajectory of the economy. Romney has no power and Obama can’t pass the American Jobs Act — or anything else — without cooperation from House Republicans. The only empowered actor who is not named here, and who could have a real effect on economic expectations, is Ben Bernanke. The Obama campaign had better hope he’s up for a challenge.

So perhaps my old like was a bit too simplistic. What I should be saying is that Angela Merkel, Mario Draghi, John Boehner, and Ben Bernanke are likely to decide our next president.