As my friend David put it, “Republican Hispanic outreach is working in Florida!”

Pablo Pantoja, who was until recently the State Director of Florida Hispanic Outreach for the Republican National Committee, has an announcement.

Yes, I have changed my political affiliation to the Democratic Party.

It doesn’t take much to see the culture of intolerance surrounding the Republican Party today. I have wondered before about the seemingly harsh undertones about immigrants and others… The complete disregard of those who are in disadvantage is also palpable.

Read on.

Rush Limbaugh said that if the ACA gets implemented, he’ll be leaving the country!

So now we have that to look forward to! I’m sure Rush wouldn’t, you know, lie for hyperbolic effect; he’s a trustworthy man. Of course, Costa Rica, his intended destination, also has national health care, so I wish him good luck with that.

Speaking of trustworthy men, I also look forward to Bill O’Reilly apologizing for being an idiot, which he said he’d do if ACA was upheld. I’ll be tuning in, Bill!

…so here are 2000 words.

A Farleigh Dickinson poll finds

that Sunday morning news shows are the most informative, while Fox News actually leads people to be less informed than those who consume no news at all…

“The (poll’s) results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all,” said Dan Cassino, a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson and an analyst for the poll.

Also no surprise:

Those who watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart performed well on the questions. Sixty percent of Daily Show viewers correctly answered that opposition forces in Syria have not yet toppled the government, second only to NPR. Forty-five percent of Fox News viewers answered “no.”

That notorious left-wing site Forbes.com posts this piece on how the “Job-Killing Health Care Law” is, well:

…Obamacare might just be working to bring health care to working Americans precisely as promised.

The major health insurance companies around the country are reporting a significant increase in small businesses offering health care benefits to their employees.

Why?

Because the tax cut created in the new health care reform law providing small businesses with an incentive to give health benefits to employees is working.

Rachel Maddow explains just how bad the pro-Prop 8 lawyers did in presenting their case:

Rush Limbaugh said that if health care reform passed, he’d move to Costa Rica. Well, help the guy out by chipping in for his ticket! And hey, if he gets cold feet, the money all goes to Planned Parenthood.

Conservative columnist David Frum has nothing but harsh words for his own party right now:

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.

News flash: the GOP launches its own URL-shortening site for links of conservative interest.

News flash: they take it down right away after it’s overwhelmed with pranksters making links to the Communist Party and porn.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

December 5, 1933:

After a campaigning for President on a promise to repeal the 18th Amendment (against a Republican who pledged to support it), a Democrat drives the new amendment that re-introduces the production and sale of alcoholic beverages.

So if you’re a Democrat, have a drink and toast FDR! If you’re a Republican, go sip some tap water and stew in the fact that your party has not gotten any more fun in the intervening 76 years.

First Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs explains why he parted ways with the Right:

The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff.

I won’t be going over the cliff with them.

And now Andrew Sullivan follows suit:

I cannot support a movement that claims to believe in limited government but backed an unlimited domestic and foreign policy presidency that assumed illegal, extra-constitutional dictatorial powers until forced by the system to return to the rule of law.

I cannot support a movement that exploded spending and borrowing and blames its successor for the debt…

I cannot support a movement that holds torture as a core value…

I cannot support a movement that is deeply homophobic, cynically deploys fear of homosexuals to win votes, and gives off such a racist vibe that its share of the minority vote remains pitiful.

There’s a metaphor lurking in here somewhere. The same day GOP Chairman Michael Steele unveiled a new online home for the Republican Party, the website apparently crashed, leaving users unable to log on to GOP.com.

The site was meant to rival the digital operation run by the Democrats and President Barack Obama, who used social networking to great effect in the 2008 elections. GOP.com has a YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr presence, and an array of blogs, including the “What Up” blog, which will be penned by Steele himself…

But early this afternoon, bloggers had found a mass of bugs and glitches, including repeated php problems. By 3:30 p.m. EDT, GOP.com slowed to a crawl, eventually shutting out users.

Read on at the CS Monitor.

Update: going to the page for “Future Republican Leaders” led to a blank page, later to a page reading “404 – Page Cannot Be Found”. You cannot make this stuff up.

When a lawyer files complaints and motions without a reasonable basis for believing that they are supported by existing law or a modification or extension of existing law, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer uses the courts as a platform for a political agenda disconnected from any legitimate legal cause of action, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer personally attacks opposing parties and disrespects the integrity of the judiciary, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer recklessly accuses a judge of violating the Judicial Code of Conduct with no supporting evidence beyond her dissatisfaction with the judge’s rulings, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law, that lawyer ceases to advance her cause or the ends of justice.

…Her response to the Court’s show cause order is breathtaking in its arrogance and borders on delusional. She expresses no contrition or regret regarding her misconduct …. Counsel’s bad faith warrants a substantial sanction.

In a harsh and yet at the same time hilarious 43-page smackdown, U.S. District Judge Clay D. Land (a Bush appointee, I note) fined Orly Taitz $20,000 for her repeated frivolous actions and motions.

Like what? Well, if you didn’t know, Taitz is the leader of the “Birther” movement. The ones demanding that Obama provide evidence he wasn’t born in Kenya. She’s also a dentist and a real estate agent, which really says a lot about the woman’s level of focus.

Read on at the War Room, which has a link to a PDF of the order.

Need some irony? Thanks, Fox “News”!

Having trouble keeping track of all the GOP sex scandals? So are we! Luckily, Talking Points Memo has made up this handy flowchart.

The GOP’s drift to the far right reaps what it sows:

Veteran Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party on Tuesday, Sen. Harry Reid said.

The Specter party switch would give Democrats a filibuster-proof Senate majority of 60 seats if Al Franken holds his current lead in the disputed Minnesota Senate race…

Specter… has been part of a dwindling group of GOP moderates from the northeastern part of the country.

One wonders what will remain of the two remaining GOP moderates up in Maine; will they continue to tilt at windmills within the GOP’s shrinking tent, or will they follow Specter and further the blueness of Blue England?

On the same day that President Barack Obama announced a new logo to highlight the impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, our most internet-savvy president also announced the launch of a website dedicated to “those who have yet to realize that the tide has changed.” The website, known as IWonBitches.gov, is intended, according to Mr. Obama, “to reach out to those lost souls who are like that last Japanese soldier hiding in the Philippine jungle until the 1970s because he didn’t believe the war was over.”

In a speech today at the US Department of Transportation, Obama implored those opposed to his economic stimulus package, his foreign policy and other aspects of the platform he ran and was elected on to peruse the new website.

“Before you write your congressperson – or if you are a congressperson,” said the president before an enthusiastic crowd, “before you let some AM radio loudmouth whip you into a frenzy about us talking to the Iranians, check out IWonBitches.gov. It has a helpful page called There’s Nothing Stupider than Threatening to Beat Everybody into Submission Unless They Do What You Say. It explains, in terms even Ann Coulter can understand, that if you thought Iraq was easy – well, the rest of the world is a lot bigger, and so we’d better find a less expensive way of getting other countries to cooperate.”

Read on at Lost in Tarnation.

(thanks to Cricket for the link)

Via the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire:

The top congressional leaders from both parties gathered at the White House for a working discussion over the shape and size of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan. The meeting was designed to promote bipartisanship.

But Obama showed that in an ideological debate, he’s not averse to using a jab.

Challenged by one Republican senator over the contents of the package, the new president, according to participants, replied: “I won.”

The statement was prompted by Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona , who challenged the president and the Democratic leaders over the balance between the package’s spending and tax cuts, bringing up the traditional Republican notion that a tax credit for people who do not earn enough to pay income taxes is not a tax cut but a government check.

Obama noted that such workers pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, property taxes and sales taxes. The issue was widely debated during the presidential campaign, when Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, challenged Obama’s tax plan as “welfare.”

With those two words — “I won” — the Democratic president let the Republicans know that debate has been put to rest Nov. 4.

The last remaining Republican Congressman, Chris Shays, has just conceded.

Take that, “Solid South”.