Wednesday Open Thead

Filed in National by on December 1, 2010

Welcome to your Wednesday open thread. What’s on your mind today?

Joe Scarborough caused quite a stir yesterday with a Politico column advising Republicans to dump Sarah Palin.

Enough. It’s time for the GOP to man up.

Everybody knows that Palin is a busy woman. The former half-term governor of Alaska stays so busy these days that one wonders how this mother of five manages to juggle her new reality show, follow her eldest daughter’s dancing career and launch her latest frenetic book tour while still finding the time to insult a slew of revered presidents and first ladies.

First thought – can we retire the phrase “man up” yesterday? It’s especially grating when a man is asking the party’s most visible female politician to go away. So, what’s Palin’s crimes according to Scarborough? She criticized St. Reagan:

I suppose Palin’s harsh dismissal of this great man is more understandable after one reads her biography and realizes that, like Bush, she accomplished a great deal in her early 20s. Who wouldn’t agree that finishing third in the Miss Alaska beauty contest is every bit as treacherous as risking your life in military combat? Maybe the beauty contestant who would one day be a reality star and former governor didn’t win the Distinguished Flying Cross, but the half-termer was selected as Miss Congeniality by her fellow contestants.

And now a point of personal privilege. I work hard every day to assume the best of Americans who engage in public service. But I am offended by Palin’s attempt to build herself up by tearing down great men like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

It’s too little, too late as far as I’m concerned. Where was Joe Scarborough when Palin was pushing the death panels lie? Or accusing Obama of being anti-American?

This is another one of those holy crap he really said that type of stories. The leader of a Tea Party group suggests that only property owners should be able to vote. Buy bye urban vote?

Sen.-elect Rand Paul (R-Ky.), for example, has raised objections to the Voting Rights Act. Colorado’s Tom Tancredo has suggested literacy tests for voters have merit. And this month, Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips went back even further when talking about Americans’ voting rights.

He explained that the founders of the country originally put “certain restrictions on who gets the right to vote.” He continued, “One of those was you had to be a property owner. And that makes a lot of sense, because if you’re a property owner you actually have a vested stake in the community. If you’re not a property owner, you know, I’m sorry but property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners.”

There was no evidence to suggest he was kidding.

In the 18th century, American law limited voting rights to white men who owned property, perhaps assuming that attitudes like those of Judson Phillips were appropriate. But to hear someone in the 21st century suggesting disenfranchisement for people who rent their homes is more than a little jarring.

What I don’t understand – where the hell is this crazy stuff coming from? Has there been an underground movement to repeal voting rights for renters that’s finally breaking into semi-mainstream or is this a new type of crazy? I can’t believe this is something we are talking about in 2010.

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Comments (12)

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  1. anon says:

    31 days until the Bush tax cuts expire

    … unless somebody screws it up

  2. Dana says:

    It should be as the Framers intended: white male property owners!

  3. a. price says:

    I cant believe these apes are only being talked about on left wing blogs. If America cant bring itself to be outraged about the Baggers, we deserve President Palin.

  4. delacrat says:

    The next time you decide to fly …… remember

    when “Asked last week whether she would submit to a
    TSA pat-down, Sec. of State snorts
    “Not if I could avoid it, ha, ha, ha! … Who would?”

    “At Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport last week, the speaker-to-be[John Boehner] “smiled pleasantly at the passengers” as he bypassed the nude machine and the freedom fondle.”

  5. socialistic Ben says:

    pretty sure TSA checks humans only. Boehner is made entirely of pure Iguana Shit.

  6. anonone says:

    WikiLeaks-released cable shows “Obama and GOPers Worked Together to Kill Bush Torture Probe”

    “…the Obama administration, working with Republicans, was actively pressuring the Spaniards to drop the investigation. Those efforts apparently paid off, and, as this WikiLeaks-released cable shows, Gonzales, Haynes, Feith, Bybee, Addington, and Yoo owed Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton thank-you notes.”

    I guess this is why the Cambodians were probably all cracking up a few weeks ago when Hillary urged them to prosecute their torturers. She and Obama should both resign.

    http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/12/wikileaks-cable-obama-quashed-torture-investigation

  7. anon says:

    Anonone! Right again. Both Rice and Clinton used the State Dept to step up spying on UN and other diplomats. Yeah, they all do it, but this time Hilary has so overstepped herself, she should resign. I never supported Hilary for dogcatcher and always wondered why Obama made her Sec. of State. As Noam Chomsky reported, a poll was done all over the middle east of their citzens. Asked who were they most terrifed of…80% said, the US and Israel. NOT Iran! Hilary supports the worst dictatorships in the world. Its a joke on democracy to repeat what dictators around the world “think”, while the US delivers billions to keep them in line. Why didnt Obama, Biden and Clinton push for trials against Bush/Cheney et al! Obama must have known that if he went after torturers he would be presenting a method for his own terrorism and torture trials. Anyone who believes the black sites are closed down are naive and ignorant. Obama has no spine or else he is terrified of the “shadow government” telling him what he will or will not do.

  8. anonone says:

    Picking Hillary for Secretary of State was also a shrewd way to eliminate her as a possible challenger in 2012.

  9. pandora says:

    Didn’t you just call for her resignation?

  10. anonone says:

    Yes. I was just pointing out that Obama probably had some ulterior motives besides Hillary Clinton’s vast and deep foreign policy experience (dripping sarcasm here) to appoint her as Secretary of State.

  11. a. price says:

    he knew she would spy and thus taint her chances of running in 2012?

  12. anonone says:

    No, my hypothesis is that he knew he would be better off politically if he prevented her from using her Senate seat as a platform to second guess him and then ultimately running against him again in 2012.