This All Has A Familiar Stink To It

Remember last month's massive Abu Ghraib prison break in Iraq that sprung dozens of major Al Qaeda figures?

Hundreds of convicts, including senior members of al Qaeda, broke out of Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail as comrades launched a military-style assault to free them, authorities said on Monday.

The deadly raid on the high-security jail happened as Sunni Muslim militants are re-gaining momentum in their insurgency against the Shiite-led government that came to power after the U.S. invasion to oust Saddam Hussein.

Suicide bombers drove cars packed with explosives to the gates of the prison on the outskirts of Baghdad on Sunday night and blasted their way into the compound, while gunmen attacked guards with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

Other militants took up positions near the main road, fighting off security reinforcements sent from Baghdad as several militants wearing suicide vests entered the prison on foot to help free the inmates.

Ten policemen and four militants were killed in the ensuing clashes, which continued until Monday morning, when military helicopters arrived, helping to regain control.

By that time, hundreds of inmates had succeeded in fleeing Abu Ghraib, the prison made notorious a decade ago by photographs showing abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers.

Payback has apparently been organized rather quickly.

The al Qaeda threat that closed U.S. embassies in the Middle East on Sunday is the most serious in years and the "chatter" among suspected terrorists is reminiscent of what preceded the September 11 attacks, a U.S. lawmaker who is briefed on intelligence said.

The State Department closed 21 embassies and consulates and issued a worldwide travel alert warning Americans that al Qaeda may be planning attacks in August, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.

"There is an awful lot of chatter out there," Senator Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

He said the "chatter" - communications among terrorism suspects about the planning of a possible attack - was "very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11."

Pretty obvious the two are related.  The timing however is rotten.  Not even Bush went this far.  If after 12 years of fighting these guys there's a prison break and we're closing embassies, we were never winning in the first place, were we?

This all has a familiar stink to it, and I don't like it one bit.

Bastions Of Free Speech In NC

So while Republicans want you to fear President Obama and the Democrats, and scream about how liberals are un-American and stifle free speech, please remember it's the Republicans who are trying to fire a North Carolina public TV host for daring to criticize them.

The North Carolina Republican Party is calling on UNC-TV to break its ties with host and columnist D.G. Martin.

Martin is the longtime host of the popular "NC Bookwatch" program on the statewide public television station. He's also a longtime political columnist whose left-leaning columns appear weekly in publications around the state. The two are separate ventures.

In his most recent column, Martin seems to compare supporters of Republican legislative leaders to apologists for the recently ousted Egyptian government and for the Nazi regime in Germany.

The column in question is titled "Egypt, Nazi Germany, and North Carolina," datelined July 29. 

Needless to say, the NC GOP has gone completely insane as a result.  Party chairman Claude Pope wants Martin's head, now.

"We call on UNC-TV to suspend this program while they evaluate their relationship with their host who made such an outrageous and damaging comparison. Such divisive hyperbole only serves to confuse and trivialize issues that are important to North Carolinians, who all deserve a formal apology,” Pope said. 

Martin, for his part, has apologized.

Reached by phone, Martin said he understands the GOP's point.

"I'm very sorry that I offended some people, and I apologize. Period," Martin said.

UNC-TV Communications Director Steve Volstad released a statement late Friday, noting that Martin "has volunteered his time to host Bookwatch for more than 10 years."

But I bet it won't matter:  Martin has awakened the raging, fascist Tea Party beast, and they'll be out to end not only Martin and his book review program, but I would suspect the entire UNC-TV system will have to be obliterated as well.

It's what Goebbels would do.

Hoosier School Grades Again

Looks like Tony Bennett, the one-time Indiana school head embroiled in a controversial school evaluation scandal where a fat cat GOP donor's charter school got a top grade despite not meeting Indiana's criteria, and now current Florida schools chief, may lose the "current" part of his job title for the terms "disgraced and fired".

A Florida education official says the state’s education commissioner will resign because of allegations he changed a charter school’s grade during his previous job as Indiana’s school chief.

The official told The Associated Press of Tony Bennett’s resignation on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to disclose the information before a formal announcement. The official says Bennett will resign because of the scandal surrounding Christel House Academy, an Indiana charter school run by a major Republican donor.

Emails published by the AP this week show Bennett and his Indiana staff scrambled last fall to ensure Christel DeHaan’s school received an “A,” despite poor 10th grade algebra scores that initially earned it a “C.”

I don't see how Bennett can survive given the completely toxic stupidity of literally changing the entire grading scale for the state of Indiana just to accommodate a big GOP donor's charter school.  Certainly Gov. Skeletor's office isn't going to want Bennett's idiocy around their necks.

The danger is of course that Bennett risks letting millions of Florida voters know the state GOP plan to privatize, loot, and destroy public schools in the state, changing public education to for-profit nonsense that will leave millions stuck in pay-for-play schools designed to produce unskilled losers.  Can't have the plan out in the headlines like that, so away goes Bennett, and of course a new round of "education reforms" will be put in his place.

But at least people know what the game looks like now.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Time Warner Cable has blacked out CBS in 8 major cities and pay channel Showtime nationwide over a ferocious licensing fight with the network.
• Here in Kentucky a Catholic order of monks and a sister order of nuns are refusing to give up land to make way for a natural gas pipeline from Pennsylvania to the Gulf Coast.
• With their 40th vote to repeal Obamacare, House Republicans voted 232-185 to bar the IRS from implementing any part of the health care law.
• Some 15 months after its disastrous IPO and a stock price drop to less than half its value, Facebook stock is back above the $38 mark.
• Legendary game designer and space mogul John Carmack's rocket company, Armadillo Aerospace, has run out of fuel and is crashing back to Earth.

Last Call For Canceling The Apocalypse

Meanwhile, just another gentle reminder that the eliminationist/militia movement/sovereign citizen/end of the world types are now mainstream, acceptable members of the Republican Party, at least in states like Washington.

An Eastern Washington legislator, speaking at a “Self-Reliance Rally” of Tea Party activists and survivalists, predicted last weekend that the United States economy is going to collapse and told activists to stock up on ammunition and stay in top physical condition for when that happens.

“We need to prepare for the inevitable collapse that is going to happen: You know it’s going to happen. That’s right, I am a politician and I am standing up here and saying that,” said state Rep. Matt Shea, a Republican from Spokane Valley. The lawmaker’s remarks were reported in the Coeur D’Alene Press.

“When it happens, we need to look at this as an opportunity, not a crisis,” Shea added. “Whose job is liberty? That’s our job.”

Lovely sentiment from an elected lawmaker:  the country will collapse, and I'm with the anarchists.  And this Shea joker is a real piece of work, too.

Shea is no stranger to controversy. The Spokane Spokesman Review reported an incident, about two years ago, in which he pulled a loaded gun on another motorist in what was described as a road rage incident. He was cited for having a loaded handgun in his pickup truck without a concealed weapons permit.

While a defender of traditional marriage, Shea was also in the news for his recent divorce. The lawmaker’s wife sought two temporary restraining orders and a protection order, and claimed to have been treated like a “possession.” She claimed that Shea insisted that she walk on his left side “because his sword, if he had one, would be on his right side.”

Washington State, out near the Idaho border, is kind of a scary place.  These are the people they elect to send to represent them in the state.  To represent them in DC?  Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House Republican Conference and author of a lovely guide for House Republicans to use during the five-week August recess to bash the hell out of the federal government they work for.

This doesn't surprise me in the least.  More than a few people out there east of Spokane who are hardcore survivalists and would happily see the government burn.

And remember, McMorris Rodgers is the number 4 Republican in the House, behind Orange Julius, Eric Cantor, and Majority Whip Kevin "Aptly Named" McCarthy.  She's not fringe, she's leadership.

Food for thought.

Mitch Turtles Up

How terrified is Mitch McConnell right now?  Looks like the one-two assault from both the left in Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes and the right in GOP primary challenger Matt Bevin has got the Turtle holed up in his shell and calling for reinforcements.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s chief of staff is stepping down from his position to focus exclusively on the GOP leader’s reelection campaign and the national Republican effort to take back the majority next year.

The move, Republicans say, is a reflection of the growing belief — and concern — that 2014 could be the last opportunity in years for the GOP to recapture the Senate after blowing their chance at the majority in the past two election cycles. So McConnell is moving a key aide out of his official Washington office to work entirely on campaign politics.

Josh Holmes, who has run McConnell’s personal office handling Kentucky-centric issues since December 2010, will now work in a dual role as a senior political hand to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and to help advise the GOP leader’s difficult reelection bid in Kentucky. In his new NRSC role, Holmes will work as a conduit to the downtown fundraising community as the GOP seeks to keep pace with Democratic fundraising.

Holmes’s departure comes as two other senior leadership aides have announced they are leaving the Senate, albeit for different reasons. Dave Schiappa, who serves as McConnell’s floor general and is perhaps the most important Senate Republican staffer, is leaving the chamber after nearly three decades of work to take a job as vice president at the Duberstein Group, a downtown lobbying firm. And Rohit Kumar, a top policy aide to the leader who helped negotiate key deals including the fiscal cliff accord, is also stepping down for personal reasons.

When your senior staff is running for the hills and scrambling for lobbyist jobs this early in the cycle, something is badly, badly wrong.  It's even worse when your senior staff is heading over to run the party Senate campaign machine so they can funnel as much cash and other resources as possible to stave off the very real possibility of defeat of the party's Senate leader.

The fact that all of this is happening with nine months and change before the May primary is a really, really big hint that priority one is saving Mitch's turtle ass in 2014.  Yes, Republicans are very, very worried.

They should be.

Crashing To The Ground With A THUD

Brian Beutler details the rapidly disintegrating "House GOP budget plan" to force Senate Democrats and President Obama to the table to talk about just how much austerity Americans will be facing.  There's only one problem with the plan, and that's the fact that Republicans are stuck in an increasingly uncivil war among themselves and can't pass anything in the House when it comes to Paul Ryan's budget.

Indeed, Paul Ryan’s entire reputation rests upon these kinds of abstractions. His budgets imagine huge cuts to Medicaid and food stamps and Medicare and so on, but they have no binding force. His allure to the conservative movement as a vice presidential nominee was that he’d be uniquely suited to turn these abstractions into reality.

But many close Congress watchers — and indeed many Congressional Democrats — have long suspected that their votes for Ryan’s budgets were a form of cheap talk. That Republicans would chicken out if it ever came time to fill in the blanks. Particularly the calls for deep but unspecified domestic discretionary spending cuts.

Today’s Transportation/HUD failure confirms that suspicion. Republicans don’t control government. But ahead of the deadline for funding it, their plan was to proceed as if the Ryan budget was binding, and pass spending bills to actualize it — to stake out a bargaining position with the Senate at the right-most end of the possible.

But they can’t do it. It turns out that when you draft bills enumerating all the specific cuts required to comply with the budget’s parameters, they don’t come anywhere close to having enough political support to pass. Even in the GOP House. Slash community development block grants by 50 percent, and you don’t just lose the Democrats, you lose a lot of Republicans who care about their districts. Combine that with nihilist defectors who won’t vote for any appropriations unless they force the President to sign an Obamacare repeal bill at a bonfire ceremony on the House floor, and suddenly you’re nowhere near 218. 

And the fact of the matter is when it comes to taking full responsibility for cutting trillions of dollars from already crumbling bridges and roads, already strained schools, already overloaded SNAP food benefits, and of course Medicare and Medicaid, House Republicans don't want anything to do with the plan.

So pull up a chair, kids.  The House GOP is about to come crawling to Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in order to get yet another spending extension passed, and it will be on the Democrats' terms.  The Republicans have nothing, and they now know it.  And now, so does everyone else.

StupidiNews!

• Secretary of State John Kerry says that negotiations with Pakistan are ongoing and that the United States hopes to end all drone strikes in the area "very soon".
• A French court has overturned the country's ban on Monsanto's genetically modified corn, ruling that under EU law France has failed to show the crops are harmful.
• Senate Democrats want additional oversight on secret FISA surveillance court rulings in the form of legislation reforming the court's process.
• Keystone XL pipeline company TransCanada is considering a new pipeline across 2,000 miles of Canadian wilderness from Alberta to Saint John, New Brunswick.
• Microsoft reports the number of Windows 8 machines has finally surpassed Windows Vista PCs, but has a long way to go to beat Win XP.

Last Call For Tinfoil Louie

As pathetically funny as Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert is, we are reminded from time to time that people of TX-1 (East Texas, specifically Lufkin and points north along the border with northwestern Louisiana) have elected this clown show five times now, and he's never gotten less than 61% of the vote.  He will continue to be elected, he will continue to be a national embarrassment, and the people of TX-1 will continue not to give a damn and do it anyway.

And he will continue to spout idiocy like this as he compares the battle to civil rights for minorities to the rights for endangered species.  Because apparently, both annoy him.  Referring to Democrats Steve Cohen and John Conyers:

GOHMERT: There is nobody in this chamber who is more appreciative than I am for the gentleman from Tennessee and my friend from Michigan standing up for the rights of race, religion, national religion of the Delta Smelt, the snail darter, various lizards, the lesser prairie chicken, the greater sage grouts and so many other insects who would want someone standing for their religion, their race, their national origin and I think that’s wonderful.

And yes, thanks to the magic of gerrymandering, he'll be able to say stuff like this for at least the rest of this decade and most likely the next.  Awesome prospect, right?

Because Of His Sagging Pants, Right?

Hey folks, can we finally admit that NYPD’s ridiculously awful and patently unconstitutional “Stop & Frisk” program is not just racial profiling, but racist profiling when an off-duty black police chief gets harassed by a couple of white cops?

Chief Douglas Zeigler, 60, head of the Community Affairs Bureau, was in his NYPD-issued vehicle near a fire hydrant when two plainclothes cops approached on May 2, sources said.

One officer walked up on each side of the SUV at 57th Ave. and Xenia St. in Corona about 7 p.m. and told the driver to roll down the heavily tinted windows, sources said.
What happened next is in dispute.

In his briefing to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Zeigler said the two cops, who are white, had no legitimate reason to approach his SUV, ranking sources said.

After they ordered him to get out, one officer did not believe the NYPD identification Zeigler gave him.

To recap, Zeigler is a three-star police chief, one of the highest ranking officers in the NYPD. His mistake was that he was off-duty and black. When he showed his identification badge, the cops who ordered him out of his SUV didn’t believe who he was. The defense of the two white plainclothes officers who approached Zeigler was that they saw a gun in the SUV and only then ordered Zeigler out of his vehicle at gunpoint.  Apparently one of the cops then got into an argument over Zeigler’s ID badge.

The cop in question has currently been suspended, but the larger issue of course is “If a three-star NYPD chief is subject to stop and frisk, any person of color is pretty much screwed.” If the two plainclothes cops really did draw on Zeigler, he’s lucky he’s not dead, extremely lucky. What about Zeigler’s demeanor made him a suspect? The two plainclothes cops swear it was a gun in the SUV, ostensibly Zeigler’s sidearm, but nothing in my experience as a black male makes me think that’s the truth.

Because to me, this looks like two white cops harassing a black man in an SUV. Was it his sagging pants? Was he wearing a hoodie? Maybe it was his assumed lack of parentage. Surely a black man in an SUV has to be suspicious of some illegal activity, it’s not like we end up three-star police chiefs in the NYPD or anything completely bonkers like that. And of course when he produced the ID, the cop didn’t believe him. This guy’s an off-duty three-star chief? But he’s black.

Now maybe I’m just being totally optimistic here, but maybe this incident will be the final catalyst necessary to get Bloomberg and his clown show of a police department to drop this nonsense before somebody gets the idea that Chief Zeigler might have a federal civil rights complaint on his hands. Maybe the ridiculousness of having one of their own bagged by the program (and this happened in early May 2008, we’re just now hearing about it some five years later) will embarrass the NYPD enough that they start to reconsider this odious practice.

Or maybe I’m just an optimist. I sure as hell don’t feel like visiting the Big Apple anytime soon, even though my parents grew up there and I’ve been there several times. It just isn’t worth the risk. If anyone short of President Obama is going to find a pair of NYPD’s Finest all up in their faces in 2013 NYC, fahgeddaboutit.

President Obama Has Finally Had Enough

It appears this time (unlike the other 14,817 times he's mentioned doing this) that President Obama will finally take bold executive action to go around Republicans in Congress, and apparently this time the difference is that Democrats on Capitol Hill are scared enough about midterm elections to actually back the President instead of running away.  WIN THE MORNING:

“I have to figure out what I can do outside of Congress through executive actions,” Obama told the Congressional Black Caucus earlier this month, according to Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.).

“He’s very ready to use his executive powers whenever possible,” said Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) who heard Obama discuss the new approach at a meeting of the Congressional Asian Pacific Caucus to the White House last week.

With the clock running on Obama’s time in office — he’s even started marking the number of days left in public speeches — the president is done caring about congressional Republicans calling him a dictator. Or calling him at all.

Obama can’t ignore Republicans forever. There’s no way for the president to avoid negotiations to get continuing resolutions to avoid a government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling — and depending how things go, rebuff GOP efforts to defund Obamacare and possibly a compromise on immigration reform. Chief of staff Denis McDonough’s functioning as an almost one-man legislative affairs office can’t do it all.

And he’s used the executive authority tactic before, including last summer’s controversial move to cut deportations for younger illegal immigrants and the mental health focus he announced as part of his gun control agenda after the Newtown massacre.

But administration officials and advisers say what’s ahead will be more extensive and frequent than previous efforts, and the White House is on the hunt for anything that can move without congressional approval, including encouraging efforts like Attorney General Eric Holder’s lawsuits to find new avenues of enforcement in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision on the Voting Rights Act last month.

So yes, screaming, spittle-flecked invective on watering the Tree of Liberty with the blood of tyrants for the next forever, which differs from the last five years, well, not at all.  But hey, at least Democrats have finally figured out Republicans are going to say this crap anyway, so press on.

More of this, please.  The difference too is that the Village is figuring this out as well, and maybe they don't like what they're seeing, either.  Kinda hard to blame Democrats for immigration reform with 68 Senate votes, including 100% of Democrats in the Senate, ya know?

Things should get interesting.

StupidiNews!

• A last-second deal with Senate Republican Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins paved the way for the confirmation of ATF Director B. Todd Jones, the first confirmed director since 2006.
• Britain's Department of Transport plans to ban drivers from using Google Glass even before the product gets an official release sometime next year.
• A deal pegging student loan rates to the ten-year treasury bond rate has passed the Senate and is heading for President Obama's signature.
• Parents say they plan to spend nearly 8% less this year on back-to-school shopping than last year as Americans tighten their belts across the board.
• Google and Motorola's long-awaited Moto X phone gets the spotlight today as the tech giant pushes forward, but stiff competition among Android phones could be problematic.

Last Call For Republicans Terrified Of Obamacare

How scared are Republicans of Obamacare working?  Here in Ohio, SuperPACs are taking out ads in order to convince people to not sign up for Obamacare at all.  Steve Benen catches this story from the Dayton Daily News:

With time running out, opponents of the Affordable Care Act have taken to the airwaves in Ohio and elsewhere with ad campaigns not only attacking the bill's merits but also actively encouraging uninsured Americans not to sign up for coverage under the health care law.

The Obama administration has acknowledged the success of the law, commonly referred to as Obamacare, depends in large part on broad-based participation in federal and state-run health exchanges that will begin selling government-subsidized health plans to the uninsured on Oct. 1.

The anti-enrollment campaigns reflect the resignation and desperation of many Obamacare opponents who have given up hope of a government repeal or court-ordered injunction to stop full implementation of the law beginning next year.

Nice of them.

To recap, Republicans hate President Obama getting credit for Obamacare so much that they're spending SuperPAC money in order to con people into staying without health care in Ohio's exchange, in order to try to make Ohio's exchange not work.

This is the Republican solution to affordable health care, spending money on telling people to not get health care.  That's how much they fear Obamacare.  Benen summarizes:

To reiterate what we discussed last week, I hope folks will pause to let this sink in for a moment. Unlike every other industrialized democracy on the planet, the United States -- easily the wealthiest nation on earth -- has tolerated a significant chunk of its population going without basic health care coverage. These Americans and their families can't afford to see a doctor and are one serious illness from financial ruin. Many have died because they live in a country that allows people to go without access to basic care.

After nearly a century of politicians talking about the problem, President Obama actually signed the Affordable Care Act into law three years ago, giving working families a level of health-care security they've never had before, and throwing a life preserver to the uninsured. Now, Republicans aren't just actively trying to sabotage the law, they're telling struggling Americans it's better to drown than accept the life preserver.

Republicans want you to suffer, to risk your family's health and access to affordable care and hey, maybe even their lives, for the political gain of getting to "prove" that government can't be the solution.

That is your Republican party, folks.  At this point, they are actively trying to kill people to win.

If You Wonder Why People Hate Congress

Let's start with House Republicans spending the final week or so before their next five week vacation approving bills that have zero chance of passing, rather than doing anything about jobs, the economy, or any other actual problems we have.

Among 10 bills headed for a floor vote this week are measures that would add new restrictions on federal agencies charged with crafting rules. Another bill would give Congress more power to block the costliest regulations.

The votes are part of the GOP’s “Stop Government Abuse Week,” a moniker that is drawing fire from public interest groups that argue the government has a responsibility to protect public health and safety.

“Apparently, they’re trying to equate the functions of various federal agencies with abuse, and I don’t think that resonates well,” said Rachel Weintraub, legislative director for the Consumer Federation of America.

The centerpiece of the GOP push is the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, which would require Congress to approve any federal rule that carries an annual price tag of $100 million or more.

The legislation would create a new hurdle that regulations would have to clear before taking effect. It has been introduced in the last three Congresses, and the latest incarnation, offered by Rep. Todd Young (R-Ind.), has attracted 164 co-sponsors.

But with companion legislation in the Democratic-controlled Senate likely going nowhere, Weintraub dismissed the vote as political theater.

“I think it’s a show. They want to do something they can point to, going into the recess,” she said. “This fits into their anti-regulatory narrative.” 

To recap, the guys in government that say the federal government has too much power, want more power over the federal government.  To a Republican, the fact that Democrats exist is "government abuse". And yet after these clowns pass this legislation, they're on vacation all summer until after Labor Day.  Nice work if you can get it.

Or in this case, no work.  By the way,under the REINS Act, the House GOP could then veto basically every executive branch rule on the books by saying its impact on the economy was more than $100 million.  Republicans could then shut down every executive branch agency and cabinet department at will.  They know it won't pass, and they'd never hand that kind of power to Democrats with a GOP president.  But they'll waste time passing it anyway, because that's what they do.

Like I said, clowns.

We Don't Want To Be The Party Of Bigots, But...

Apparently the Young Republican National Federation is kind of bummed that the party is being run by racist, misogynist, bigoted homophobes and such, and they really wish party leaders and Republicans in Congress would be, you know, less embarrassing, according to newly elected federation chairman, Jason Weingartner.

Weingartner said House Republicans, who won’t pass the Democratic-led Senate’s version of an immigration overhaul, should pass their own version that at least “streamlines and expands” legal slots for foreign students and workers.

For now, he said, that would sidestep Republicans who demand border security and Democrats who demand a citizenship path for immigrants already in the country illegally.

On health care, Weingartner said that besides regularly voting to repeal Obama’s law, the GOP should emphasize its own ideas such as buying insurance across state lines, while better explaining the Affordable Care Act’s cost shift onto younger, healthy individuals.

On same-sex marriage and abortion, young GOP leaders say Republicans should tolerate a range of views, even while maintaining a socially conservative identity. Some of these activists say their party must tread lightly after the Supreme Court recently threw out the most powerful part of the Voting Rights Act, the law that became a major turning point in black Americans’ struggle for equal rights and political power.

“We don’t have to lose our principles,” said Angel Garcia, who leads the Young Republicans in Chicago, Obama’s hometown. “But we have to have a conversation on all these issues so we don’t leave Democrats to say we’re just old white men and racist, bigoted homophobes.”

I got news for you, YRNF.  Your party already abandoned its principles, and only cares now about causing as much damage to the American people as possible in order to convince them it's Obama's fault.  They don't have new ideas or any alternatives to fix the problems we face because they don't want those problems fixed.  They don't have any intention of tolerating anyone they don't agree with.  I'm glad you recognize the fact, but the grim reality is there's no "saving" this Republican party, because they oppose government itself.

That conversation you long for has already happened in the minds of tens of millions of Americans, and you guys lost.  And you're going to have to do a hell of a lot more than just mope about a conference to get anyone to listen to what you have to say, Democrat or Republican.