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Rise of the conservative revolutionaries. Almost half of Republicans think an armed revolution may be needed soon.

(Salon) - There’s plenty of proof of an authoritarian streak and animus toward democratic ideals in today’s conservative movement. There was the movement’s use of its judicial power to halt a vote recount and instead install a president who had lost the popular vote. There is the ongoing GOP effort to make it more difficult for people to cast a vote in an election. There is the GOP’s record use of the Senate filibuster to kill legislation that the vast majority of the country supports. There is a GOP leader’s declaration that what the American people want from their government simply “doesn’t matter.”

Up until today, you might have been able to write all that anti-democratic pathology off as a pathology infecting only the Republican Party’s politicians and institutional leadership, but not its rank-and-file voters. But then this poll from Fairleigh-Dickinson University was released showing that authoritarianism runs throughout the the entire party.

Take a look at the cross-tabs on page 3 of the national survey – that’s right, you are reading it correctly: almost half (44 percent) of all self-described Republican voters say they believe “an armed revolution might be necessary to protect our liberties.” Just as bad, more Republicans believe an armed revolution might be necessary than believe one isn’t necessary.

This poll raises two obvious questions, each of them more disturbing than the next.

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According to the Farleigh Dickinson poll, 44 percent of rank-and-file Republicans seem to believe that because they aren’t getting their way through the ballot box, bloodshed may be justified to impose their will on everyone else. Think of it as sore loser-ism juiced by violence.

Kansas GOP to legalize quarantine of HIV patients

(America blog) - The Kansas legislature is about to empower the state to quarantine people with HIV and AIDS. The local Fox affiliate says the legislation is expected to become law in the next few weeks.

Republicans in the Kansas state legislature promise that the quarantine power will never be exercised against people with AIDS, but they then shot down a Democratic-led effort, by Senator Marci Francisco, to exempt people with HIV and AIDS from the quarantine provision.

Funny how they don’t ever plan on using it against people with AIDS, but then refuse to exempt people with AIDS from the quarantine they promise they’ll never use.

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Tea Partiers Are Boycotting Fox News: Activists have a list of demands for the conservative network they believe is “turning left”

(The Daily Beast) - Is Fox News going soft?

Michele Bachmann: It’s my Christian ‘duty’ to repeal Obamacare before it ‘literally kills’ kids

(The Raw Story) - Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) on Thursday insisted that it was her “duty as a believer in Christ” repeal President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform law before “it literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens.”

In a speech on the House floor, the Minnesota Republican thanked Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) for continuing the fight to undo Obamacare.

“The American people, especially vulnerable women, vulnerable children, vulnerable senior citizens, now get to pay more and get less,” Bachmann opined. “That’s why we’re here because we’re saying let’s repeal this failure before it literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens!”

“Let’s not do that!” she exclaimed. “Let’s love people, let’s care about people. Let’s repeal it now while we can.”

Bachmann explained that she was fighting Obamacare because she was a “born again believer in Jesus Christ.”

“And I believe, as part of my duty as a believer in Christ and what he has done for me, that we should do for the least of those who are in our midst,” she said. “That’s my personal belief and my personal conviction. And that’s why I want our government to create the space so that we can help people, because I’ll guarantee you one thing, Mr. Speaker, this doesn’t help people.”

read more and watch the video

So, basically, she believes it is her duty as a Christian to repeal something that would actually expand access to healthcare for millions of the poor, working poor, children and the elderly.

This is religious  grandstanding and it’s disgusting. She should have been laughed off of the floor, but instead her cohorts congratulate her ‘saying things in a way that none of the rest of us are capable of’.

I my honest opinion, this is sick.

The former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida is headed to trial on fraud, theft and money laundering charges in a case fraught with embarrassment for the GOP

ORLANDO, Fla.(The Washington Post) — The former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida is headed to trial on fraud, theft and money laundering charges in a case fraught with embarrassment for the party over allegations of lavish spending and questionable behavior.

Jury selection was set to start Monday in the two-week trial. Testimony could cover allegations of prostitutes at a party fundraiser in the Bahamas, spending on fancy restaurants and luxury hotels by state GOP leaders, criminal charges of party money funneled to a private company controlled by Greer and party leaders stabbing each other in the back.

Jurors will have to decide if Greer committed a crime when he channeled more than $200,000 of party money to his company, or whether the charges are revenge for the waning popularity of his political patron, former Gov. Charlie Crist. Crist defected from the Republican Party to run as an independent for the U.S. Senate and is now a Democrat.

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The party that is always touting moral bullshit and personal responsibility, folks.

Christian radio hosts: Feminists are ‘selfish, narcissistic, family-destroying whores’

(The Raw Story) - Conservative Christian radio hosts Kevin Swanson and Dave Buehner explained on a Tuesday segment of their “Generations with a Vision” show that there are “two kinds of feminism,” the “Sarah Palin kind of feminism that wants to have a husband” kind and the “selfish, narcissistic, family-destroying whores” kind.

“Now remember, the goal is that these women have to be independent,” Swanson said on a show devoted to the idea that rising college costs were contributing to an alleged spike in prostitution. “The goal is lots and lots of birth control. The goal is lots and lots and lots of fornication. The goal is abortion. The day-after pill will help. And it will help a lot. Remember, the goal is to get that girl a job because she needs no stinkin’ husband, she’s got the fascist corporation and government-mandated insurance programs and socialist welfare that will take care of her womb to tomb. Who needs a cotton-pickin’ husband? Who needs a family? That’s pretty much the worldview that’s dominating, my friends. That’s what the college is all about.”

read more (if you can stomach it)

Of course they say this. It’s in the church’s interests to say it. It sounds like these guys are scared fucking shitless of the idea of a woman not needing a husband.

Disgusting. 

Backlash to a new West Point study on domestic extremism exposes the depths of conservatives’ denial

(Salon) - There are four revealing stories to be gleaned from the Aggrieved Conservative Backlash™ to an exhaustive and sober new West Point Combatting Terrorism Center report on “Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right.” (For a more grassroots-y look at how hysterical and viral that backlash is, see some choice tweets here).

First, there is the obvious lesson about double standards. When the government accuses a Muslim group of being a national security threat, conservatives are quick to applaud and demand immediate (often violent) action, without regard for the whole “innocent until proven guilty” stuff. By contrast, when the government accuses an ideologically right-wing group of being a similarly dangerous threat, many of the same conservatives suddenly play the victim card, insisting that the Big Bad Government is wrongly demonizing them.

Second, the backlash tells the story of how priorities abruptly change when the context shifts. Again, when the government accuses a Muslim group of posing a threat, the substance of the accusations (how much of a threat? what is the operational capacity of the threat? etc.) are typically received by conservatives as serious national security issues. But when far right groups are labeled a threat, many conservatives’ first reflex is to defend the accused and wholly ignore the substance of the accusations no matter how well documented those accusations are (and say what you will about the West Point report’s conclusions, it’s supporting evidence is most certainly well-documented).

Republicans brag about losing the House popular vote by 1.1 Million votes, but retaining control.

The following link will take you to the Republican State Leadership Committee’s website, where the article describes how Democratic candidates for the U.S. House won 1.1 million more votes than Republican candidates, yet republicans still control the house.

Basically, this entire article is a boast about how gerrymandering has paid off for the GOP.

Yet, I’m willing to bet something important to me - like my first cup of coffee tomorrow morning, that republican voters will simply dismiss this by saying that “the other side does it too.”

No matter the fact that here we have the Republican State Leadership Committee gleefully boasting that they are subverting the will of the people.

Here’s the article. 

Fox News’s Eric Bolling: Schools ‘pushing the liberal agenda’ by teaching algebra

(The Raw Story) - Fox News host Eric Bolling on Wednesday accused some schools of “pushing the liberal agenda” for teaching an algebra lesson about the distributive property.

During a segment about “indoctrination in schools,” Bolling reminded viewers of a 2009 video of children chanting, “Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Barack Hussein Obama,” which outraged conservatives at the time.

“But even worse is the way some textbooks are pushing the liberal agenda,” the Fox News host explained, pointing to an algebra worksheet that Scholastic says gives students “[i]nsight into the distributive property as it applies to multiplication.”

“Distribute the wealth!” Bolling exclaimed, reading the worksheet. “Distribute the wealth with the lovely rich girl with a big ole bag of money, handing some money out.”

Co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle explained that the algebra worksheet had put her on “high alert” for the liberal agenda in her 6-year-old son’s curriculum.

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I would say the ignorance on display here here is astounding, but in all honesty, I’m not astounded. This seems pretty par for the course when it comes to Fox.

This is a blatant example of exploiting the ignorance of viewers by taking a concept with a name that is similar to a concept that conservatives fear (wealth redistribution) and associating it even though they have absolutely NOTHING to do with each other and vilifying education in the process.

The Distributive Property is an elementary concept in algebra that refers to rules of placement and has no relation what so ever to wealth redistribution.