As the gender gap threatened to undermine their crusade for a one-term Obama, the GOP turned to Twitter to un-sink the Titanic. Don’t worry your pretty little heads about our party’s mandated transvaginal rapes and birth control bans, a host of Republicans shrieked. It is President Obama who is waging the war against women by sentencing two of them to life…on the Supreme Court.

FullofMitt: There’s no war on women coming from me. I’m so committed to protecting equality that I promise to lock Lilly Ledbetter in an airtight kennel. #TheDogLovedThat

JohnMcMaverick: War, you say? Well, we must bomb Womanistan before they force us to swallow their nuclear pill. #AlsoBombSyria #AndIran #AndCanada

ReinceStag: Who cares what the marketplace pays women? I need my wife to stay home to wage war on all these damn caterpillars clogging up my tax loopholes. #1%TopRateForThe1%

GovNikki: Women don’t care about birth control. They care about the rising cost of a decent mani-pedi & a vacuum that doesn’t lose suction.

Limpbaugh: Quit having so much sex! Or else send me your sex tapes. See, we stand for choice even more than them. #SoMuchViagraSoLittleCatholicBabePorn

GreatStateOfArizany: You can get the pill from your doctor only if you obtain permission from your boss. Also be sure to ask your boss whether your lunchtime BLT offends his faith.

FullofMitt: Contraceptions are people, my friends.

VomiSantorium: We’ll get the sluts next time. #Theocracy2016

MrsMitt: It’s grueling work managing five kids, five houses, a herd of dressage horses…not to mention all those nannies, undocumented gardeners & accounts in the Caymans.

FullofMitt: But Moms without $100 million IRAs must learn the dignity of minimum wage work. Also, let’s get rid of the minimum wage. #AndPlannedParenthood

VirginiaGOP: If a woman is pregnant, she’s ipso facto been penetrated before. So why would she object if the state shoves this transvaginal stick up in there too? #DoesntSheLoveHerHomeState?

GovofPenn: If a woman doesn’t want to look at the ultrasound screen, she can just close her eyes. It’s worked for my wife in our bedroom for nearly 40 years.

Dubya: The people of the United States will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with IUDs. #HeMustHaveHidThemInASecretWomb!

UndisclosedDick: The vaginas will treat us as liberators.

Hedge fund heavyweight Leon Cooperman was all over the business news today with his "scathing" open letter to President Obama. In this ridiculous piece of myopic pedantry, Cooperman eviscerates the president, blaming him and him alone for the divisiveness and incivility that he believes is destroying capitalism and the precious America that enabled his own ascent to billionaire-dom.

Surprisingly, Cooperman makes no mention of the GOP. He makes no mention of his fellow New York "billionaire" Donald Trump essentially calling the president an illegal alien who has orchestrated the greatest con in history. He makes no mention of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's proud declaration that his top priority is to defeat President Obama. He makes no mention of the GOP's unprecedented use of the filibuster to stymie all progress. No mention of House Speaker John Boehner holding the credit rating of the USA hostage and then thumbing his nose at a big fiscal deal during the debt ceiling disaster.

Cooperman instead insists that it is the president and the president's "minions" who are entirely responsible for the rancor and demagoguery plaguing our political system and crippling the magical "wheels of commerce and
progress." Then he regurgitates the GOP's beloved phrase "class warfare." He suggests that it is the wealthy like him who can help the downtrodden and they therefore should not be targeted or nitpicked in any way. He demands that the president become "a transcendent leader" and eschew any sort of "guerrilla campaign" that he learned as a "community organizer in Chicago." (He did not, however, call the president a Mau Mau. It must be the holiday season.)

Interviewed on CNBC as the financial world's sage of the day, Cooperman seemed particularly offended by the president's assault on the aircraft industry--I suppose he means the president's rather amusing disdain for the private jet tax loophole--which, Cooperman speciously argued, is an assault on union workers. He then went on to endorse for president fellow Wall Streeter and legendary best buddy of union workers, Mitt Romney.

Even more hilariously, Cooperman told CNBC that he had joked on a conference call with his investors that perhaps he should run for president himself. He assured the TV anchor that it was just a joke. But he then laid out his 9-point platform for his mythical presidential run. (At least it wasn't a 999-point platform). This economic checklist included--to his credit--an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, free college education for all returning soldiers, a large WPA-styled infrastructure jobs initiative, a 10 percent tax surcharge on all incomes over $500,000 and a 5% VAT tax on everyone. Cooperman also threw in a few squishy-GOP faves like expanded domestic energy production and raising the social security retirement age to 70.

But look at that list: Cooperman is for a new G.I. Bill, hugely higher taxes on the rich and a massive government stimulus infrastructure build. And he is voting GOP. Good luck with that.

Instead of tearing President Obama a new one, it actually sounds like Cooperman should be billionaire muscling the GOP Congress to pass the president's American Jobs Act.

Reading between the lines, it seems mostly that Cooperman's wittle feelings are hurt. How dare anyone--anyone from the Occupy Wall Street protesters to President Obama--ever say a bad thing about billionaires, hardworking billionaires who only want to help the poor by creating jobs for them and "fill[ing] store shelves at Christmas." A private jet tax loophole is a small price to pay for that kind of humanitarian instinct, isn't it?

The good news is that only 9 percent of Americans approve of this current Congress led by Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). In other words, 91 percent of Americans are apparently smarter than benevolent billionaire Leon Cooperman.

If you have a strong stomach, you can read Cooperman's absurd condescending screed for yourself here.

And you really ought to read the open letter rebuttal of Cooperman by Jill Klausen of @jillwklausen twitter fame. She says it all far better than me.

On this 4th of July weekend, I wanted to remind everyone to pause for a moment, put down those Cokes, and join with those other Kochs in reciting our sacred psalm of patriots.

So please rise. Hand over heart. Ready. Begin:

I pledge allegiance
To the Bathtub
Of the United Slates of Norquist.
And to the Republicans,
For which it scams,
One Corporation,
Under Fraud
With Liberty & Tax Cuts for All....
corporate jet-owning billionaires.

Happy Birthday #235, Americorp, Inc.!

So yeah, David Vitter is a scumbag. Not because he slapped on a diaper to play Baby Huey with a bunch of hookers, but because he voted yes on the GOP plan to kill Medicare.

In the wake of the Weiner fiasco, wounded outraged liberals have stormed the Internet to demand their own eight inches of flesh: What about Vitter!? #VitterMustGo!

But there is a reason some wise person named Mahatma once said: An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Blind serves the GOP as they goose step about demolishing Planned Parenthood and unions, plundering jobs and any hopes for the survivability of an American middle class. The more they can saturate the airwaves with noise about penises and diapers, the easier it is for them to murder everything liberals hold dear.

Why do you think Fox News deliberately slings nonsense after nonsense—Ground Zero Mosque, Don’t Touch My Junk, terror babies, socialists, Mau Mau, birth certificates, NPR, some guy named Common, Death Panels, Weiner, Weiner, neener-neener Weiner?

Because every time the media takes a breath to spotlight what the GOP is actually doing—i.e. killing Medicare—the public wises up and smacks them with a huge defeat like last month in NY-26.

Yelling Vitter Vitter Vitter instead of Boehner Where Are The Jobs, instead of End Big Oil Tax Giveaways, instead of Quit Your War On Uteri, instead of The GOP Killed Medicare, actually abets Fox and the corporate Koch machine.

Sure demanding a scalp in return for Weiner's feels good. Maybe it is even just. But so what? Weiner was pushed out by his own reckless lies, an irresponsible tabloid media and the political calculations of his own party. You’re angry about that. Fine. But don’t retaliate by aiding the side Weiner vehemently railed against. Don’t help the GOP generate more obfuscations for their devious schemes. Weiner is gone. And maybe a better response would be for us to take up his work ourselves: the brash and relentless calling out of each and every policy cruelty of Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, John Boehner, Michele Bachmann and the rest of the GOP.

Vitter’s constituents voted him back into office last year. And no matter how much you spit his hypocritical name on Twitter, a jobless America is not going to vote on hookers & diapers in 2012 unless it is their own hookers but more likely diapers that they can no longer afford. They will vote, however, against a party that killed Medicare. IMHO.

The GOP barely bothers to hide its desire to “refudiate” every civilizing advance of the 20th Century—everything from Medicare to Voting Rights to Civil Rights to Labor laws to universal education to clean air, water and food. But the made up “refudiate” itself has yet to be chiseled into Frank Luntz’ tablets of holy doublespeak. Instead, again and again, the GOP reiterates the same magic mangled words and phrases to spit and polish its deconstructive aims:

Job Killing, adj.: Used to modify anything proposed or enacted by the Democrats, it actually speaks the truth about the GOP’s primary goal: Kill as many jobs as possible, thwart the economic recovery from the 2008 Bush collapse in order to mar President Obama’s reelection hopes in 2012. See public sector layoffs in GOP controlled states like Florida, Wisconsin & Ohio as well as cuts in Washington spending on infrastructure, education and disaster relief. Synonyms: economic terrorism, treason.

Free Market, adj., sometimes n.: Two happy, cuddly words that actually translate to “unchecked corporate looting of the taxpayers’ money.” This phrase cheerleads corporations like Halliburton, Blackwater and perhaps Anthem Blue Cross as they feast on huge pots of public money for services the government should probably supply itself. The phrase also awards license to corporations to pollute, exploit, discriminate and serve up defective products without fear of oversight or repercussion.

Privatize, v.: Corporate looting of the public treasury, the political version of Willie Sutton’s, I rob banks because “that’s where the money is.” See Free Market. See also Paul Ryan’s Vouchercare aka Medikill. Synonym: Throw Grandma To the Wolves and then Under the Bus.

Patriot, n.: Almost always a white American who hates all Americans of a different race and probably, when pressed, pretty much every other white American too. Mostly patriots hate the idea of a black president, and they adopt this pose of bravado in an effort to deny that reality. Patriots generally believe foremost in the 2nd Amendment uber alles and/or a Jesus who doesn’t tolerate universal health care, unemployment benefits, the interstate highway system or a black man in the White House. Ironic synonym: Confederate Flag bearer.

The American People, n.: Intoned repeatedly and with reverence to demonstrate that GOP leadership is absolutely committed to exercising the will of the common American billionaire. Synonyms: corporate lobbyists, enormous campaign donors, Koch brothers. Antonym: the actual American People.

Uncertainty, n.: Multipurpose excuse for all things, it implies that no matter what we do, everything will suck as long as there is a Democrat in power anywhere on the planet. Can be used to justify implementation of the Chamber of Commerce’s wettest dream: tax cuts for the wealthy, tax subsidies for the biggest richest oil companies, the repeal of any and all corporate regulations, and even in defense of something called tort reform. Synonym: The rich don’t have every damn red cent quite yet.

Constitution, n.: Some document easily conflated with the Declaration of Independence or Paul Revere’s Bell Ringing that was written by wealthy white men to protect the rights of wealthy white corporations. Some contemporary Constitutionalists, like the Old Testament/New Testament folk before them, believe that the original has been superceded by a superior document published in 1957 by Ayn Rand.

Demagoguery, n.: A big word that resides in few American’s vocabularies but sounds like a really bad thing no matter what it means. Translation: Hey you mean, socialist, Death Panelly, Muslim Democrats, quit telling the truth about how we are trying to destroy the humanizing social fabric of this country. Again see Paul Ryan’s Vochercare aka Medikill.

Doing “The People’s” Business, v.: Abortion bills, more abortion bills, bills decrying the evils of Big Bird and pap smears, more abortion bills and of course killing that Medicare thing that no “real American” likes anyway. See 112th Congress, January 2011 to June 2011.

“I have that fire in my belly,” Sarah Palin told Fox this week. Apparently she is locked and loaded to defeat “Obama” for the presidency. Or maybe not. Who knows? How much money is in it? How much money is in not being in it?

It is easy to conclude that running for president, much less being president, is way too much work for the eternally bellyaching Palin. An 18-month slog on the campaign trail is potentially way too embarrassing (Is Turkey Asian or European or for Thanksgiving only?) and damaging to her brand (see Donald Trump). And it doesn’t pay all that great. Teasing the media while coaxing new donations from her easily duped minions seems a far more believable sled run for a woman who has already quit her actual government job for the riches of a TV somebody or other.

But what if….

The Republican Party has all but conceded the presidency to the Man who got Bin Laden? What if they realize, like Trump, Christie, Barbour, Jeb and Huckabee obviously have, that no matter whether it’s Romney or Daniels or Bachmann or Pawlenty who carries their Medicare-killing flag, a second term for President Obama looms virtually unavoidable?

There yet will remain a slew of down-ballot races: preserving the GOP House majority, taking the Senate, winning or losing state government majorities all over the nation. The GOKochs understand that all of this matters. Enormously.

And a flawed Romney who doesn’t ignite the GOP’s angry evangelical and Tea Party zealots could hand the House back to Democrats, who likely will turn out in desperate droves to stave off hell by reelecting the president. A bureaucratic Bush soldier like Mitch Daniels, who has spurned Grover Norquist’s “no taxes” pledge, would likely embed a similar ennui into the wild purists and could leave Harry Reid in charge of the Senate.

Enter the crazy conspiracy. Enter the Abominable Snow Snooki. She avoids the GOP dog & pony show for months and months, flinging barbs and “refudiations” from her million dollar throne on Fox. And then, when Romney or Daniels or the logo of Exxon or Anthem Blue Cross sews up the nomination, Palin swoops in as the first Tea Party candidate ever to run for president. She’d stride onto the big stage for an easy few months, spewing venom at President Obama and bathing in the adoration of Valentino blazers and her ardent devotees. Yes she’d lose. Yes it would be wildly fun and horrifying and entertaining. And yes she’d return to Fox more feisty and popular than ever.

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It pains me to trot out my disgraced Lakers, blindly beloved since childhood, as the big bad bully who frightfully illustrates what is happening to us all. But it fits: The mega-rich Giant bludgeoning the hapless little guy until he goes splat on the ground.

The Goliath Andrew Bynum, or at least the people who manage his cracked image, knew enough to apologize for his assault on the scrappy Lilliputian named J.J. Barea. And he will cough up $700,000 in fines and lost wages.

The GOP? Not so much.

While crippling the middle class, demonizing and de-funding the poor and the unemployed, while walling off the wombs of women like a condemned lot full of slums, even while killing Medicare, the Republicans and their billionaire puppeteers simply sneer all the more. Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, Rick Scott, Dan Snyder, Boehner, Cantor, Bachmann and the Pauls seem genetically incapable of remorse or fair play.

They will never stop throwing their vicious "Koch-ed" elbows into the neck of nearly every American. They will never apologize. And with their bought-and-corrupted legislatures and Supreme Court, they will never be fined or suspended.

Splat, splat, splat we all go. It stings. It’s demoralizing. And still there is one thing that these bullies remain deathly afraid of: that we all pick our battered bodies off the hard floor again and again and vote them out of the game.

I am a white Jewish American. My family escaped--often in a sprint, sometimes prostrate on the bottom of a rowboat—Cossacks and communists and Nazis so that I might be here today. Many of them didn’t make it.

I live in the middle of Los Angeles. Gay people are everywhere and considered as normal as anyone else. Black people too. Persians, Buddhists, Sikhs, astrologers and witches are ho-hum. My mechanic is Pakistani. I probably run into more Latinos everyday than I do white people. When I grew up, our mayor was black. Today our mayor is Hispanic. No one seems to notice.

It is a privilege to live like this. It is lovely.

And obviously I reside in La La Land because yesterday, Birth Certificate Day, punched me in the mouth. I was stricken, paralyzed with rage.

To see laid bare the brazen racial hatred coursing through the blood of so many millions of people who also call themselves American, well it actually made me cry. I’d thought, in 2011, that we were better than that. We aren’t. We are still desperately sick. And it made me ashamed before all of those that we continue to torment.

I should have known better. About ten years ago, I went to a wedding in Memphis, Tennessee, which included a preliminary lunch at the home of some fantastically polite and generous white people in the suburbs. They fed us lavishly. Laughed at our jokes. Expressed real interest in our pursuits and lives back home. They loaned us their car. They offered us a place to sleep “anytime.” They were basically the nicest people I had ever met in my life.

Then the 40-year-old woman who lived in this beautiful house asked what we had planned that night. “We’re going to check out Beale Street,” I answered like a typical tourist. Her face flinched a fraction in disappointment and concern. “Oh,” she said. “Don’t you think it’s a bit dark down there?” “Dark?” I smirked like an idiot. “The whole place is lit up like high noon in neon lights.”

And then we elected a black president.

I know racism persists. Arizona, “Ground Zero Mosque” and “Mau Mau” are ominous signs of this despicable cancer. But I was not prepared for this buffoon, this nauseating jester of unflagging privilege, to amplify this revolting malice. To feed his ugly sucking egomania, Donald Trump opted to speak for those people in Tennessee and so many others. Black people, he lied again and again, are not good enough to be president. Black people are not good enough for Harvard. Black people are lesser. Illegitimate. Frauds and Conmen. It is high time that these people relearned their place. In short, he raved, “The Blacks” are Not Us.

I have been rejected. I have lost. I have failed. But I cannot imagine what it must feel like to listen to this malignant rebuff, this dehumanizing talk essentially of elimination from the mix of America itself. I realize that at least some of this bile is opportunism. The opposition stokes racial animus not from conviction, but simply to tilt the balance of power. Many don’t mean it. It’s just Nixon and Rove’s amoral and effective tool.

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Who says there are no good jobs anywhere?

I just stumbled upon this help wanted ad for an investigative reporter in Sarasota, Florida. Who wouldn't want to work for this guy? The passion and purpose leaping from this call-to-journalistic-arms is almost enough to persuade anyone to forget the humidity and the snakes in the Governor's mansion and fly into the hurricane. Almost...

We want to add some talent to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune investigative team. Every serious candidate should have a proven track record of conceiving, reporting and writing stellar investigative pieces that provoke change. However, our ideal candidate has also cursed out an editor, had spokespeople hang up on them in anger and threatened to resign at least once because some fool wanted to screw around with their perfect lede.

We do a mix of quick hit investigative work when events call for it and mini-projects that might run for a few days. But every year we like to put together a project way too ambitious for a paper our size because we dream that one day Walt Bogdanich will have to say: “I can’t believe the Sarasota Whatever-Tribune cost me my 20th Pulitzer.” As many of you already know, those kinds of projects can be hellish, soul-sucking, doubt-inducing affairs. But if you’re the type of sicko who likes holing up in a tiny, closed office with reporters of questionable hygiene to build databases from scratch by hand-entering thousands of pages of documents to take on powerful people and institutions that wish you were dead, all for the glorious reward of having readers pick up the paper and glance at your potential prize-winning epic as they flip their way to the Jumble… well, if that sounds like journalism Heaven, then you’re our kind of sicko.

For those unaware of Florida’s reputation, it’s arguably the best news state in the country and not just because of the great public records laws. We have all kinds of corruption, violence and scumbaggery. The 9/11 terrorists trained here. Bush read My Pet Goat here. Our elections are colossal clusterfucks. Our new governor once ran a health care company that got hit with a record fine because of rampant Medicare fraud. We have hurricanes, wildfires, tar balls, bedbugs, diseased citrus trees and an entire town overrun by giant roaches (only one of those things is made up). And we have Disney World and beaches, so bring the whole family.

Send questions, or a resume/cover letter/links to clips to my email address below. If you already have your dream job, please pass this along to someone whose skills you covet. Thanks.

Matthew Doig

Sarasota Herald-Tribune
1741 Main St.
Sarasota FL, 34236
(941) 361-4903
matthew.doig@heraldtribune.com

Good Luck. And if you snag the job, don't let them get their government hands on your Medicare!

The headlines screamed: Barack Obama Discovers Cure for Cancer.

While throngs in capitals across the globe spontaneously massed to cheer the president’s astounding stamp on the history of humankind, the GOP stampeded to Twitter to spit their disgust at ObamaCure:

WTHuckabee: If you examine the anti-colonial views of the Mau Mau shamans in Kenya, you will discover that they too sought out cures for cancer. #witchdoctor

DonaldChump: I know his mother left him with this animus toward cancer, which is admirable and all. But what she didn’t leave him with was an actual birth certificate. #WatchMyShow!

SpeakerOfTheLobbyists: The American people sent us here to repeal this job-killing ObamaCure. Did I mention we’re broke? And the American people want us to cut Planned Parenthood more than cancer. #SoBeIt

Palinoscopy: ObamaCure is an outrageous blood libel, a Death Panel on the inalienable rights of our Real American PharmaCorps. to sell common sense conservative drugs. #MuslimBrotherhoodHatesCancerToo

RandAppall: The Constitution does not permit the president to Declare War on cancer without the debate & consent of Congress. #OrAquaBuddha

TheRyanBludgeonIt: We do not have a cancer problem. We have a spending on cancer problem. Cut taxes on small businesses like Koch & the free market will generate millions of new cancer cures. #AndMillionsOfNewCancerCustomers #FromPollution

aBeckalypseNow: Of course Barack Obama doesn’t want people to die from cancer. That will enable the higher birth rates in the Muslim world to sweep across this Earth like a Sendai tsunami. #BuyGold.

LieOfNewt: I loved my country so much that I had to take a new wife when my other wife got cancer. This ObamaCure is yet another secular socialist assault on my dating life.

TooMuchRush: So the Chosen One fixed cancer. La-di-dah! Well, what about the millions each year who die from heart disease, choking on half-chewed filet mignon or household falls? He’s done nothing but FAIL all of you.

GWB43: Hey! Reagan’s astrologer once told me that I’m a Cancer! That rascal 44 found a cure for me? #BringEmOn