GOP still has glaring historical error on website

Okay, maybe I'm too pedantic for my own good. But if I were running a website for a major political party, especially a site for which the party paid $1.4 million, I'd want to make damn well sure everything on the site was correct and accurate, wouldn't you?

Apparently the Republican National Committee, which produced a brand-new GOP.com absolutely riddled with errors, doesn't agree. Remember the historical mistake I told you about a couple of weeks ago, where they mistakenly identified Republican U.S. Sen. Hiram Revels of Mississippi, the first African-American member of that august body, by his middle name: "Hiram Rhodes?"

Well, guess what? It's still wrong.

click on image for larger version

I included the oh-so-cute bit about the president's visit to Florida today just to show you that I got the screen capture today; it's not manipulated in any way. Go see for yourself (you may have to hit F5 until you see "Rhodes").

Are you kidding me? They've had two weeks to fix it. After all the grief they took for putting up a piss-poor website, and after all the time someone must have expended trying to get everything right, they still haven't fixed an image that will show up on every page as a header at one time or another?! Not to mention ... I publicized this two weeks ago. It's not like it would be a surprise if they were, you know, paying attention.

Man, the RNC is dumber than I thought.

Republicans get an "F" in history

So this morning, while on Twitter making fun of Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele and his almost-too-laughably-stereotypical-to-be-true decision to call his new blog "What Up?," I noticed that the RNC's website had taken the clever step of superimposing people's faces over the "O" in "GOP." Gives it that "real person" vibe and all that, see?

Sometimes it's regular folks, which they call "Faces," like the ones shown in this little collage I put together:


And sometimes it's one of the "Republican Heroes," historical figures who were Republicans, like former U.S. Sen. Edward Brooke (R-Mass.), American Red Cross founder Clara Barton, and famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass (top to bottom):


But the very first person I saw when I clicked onto the RNC site was this man:


Now it just so happens that I'm a bit of an American history buff. And I thought this "Hiram Rhodes," pictured above, looked familiar. Well, it also just so happens that I'm presently reading a book by Philip Dray called Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen (New York, Houghton Mifflin Co., 2008). And Chapter 4 of that book, called "The Whirligig of Time," deals almost entirely with the great historical feat in 1870 of a black man, a Republican, claiming the U.S. Senate seat from Mississippi that previously had been held by none other than Jefferson Davis.

That man was Hiram Revels. Hiram Rhodes Revels.

The modern-day Republican Party -- the lineal (but hardly ideological) successors to Hiram Revels' party -- forgot to include his last name. I didn't change it or doctor it in any way. If you're quick, you can go see for yourself (although you might have to F5 it a few times* to get Revels' picture) before someone with the GOP figures this out (if they ever do).

What an embarrassment. Even when the GOP tries to do something relatively docile, they can't help but screw it up. They're not just the "Party of No," they're the Party of No Competence.

UPDATE (5:15 pm 10/13/09): Nope, still says "Hiram Rhodes." Epic fail.

(cross-posted in substantial part at Daily Kos)

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* Be careful, though: when I went over to the site just now to confirm something, I was blocked from it!

I got this message: "Database Error: Unable to connect to your database. Your database appears to be turned off or the database connection settings in your config file are not correct. Please contact your hosting provider if the problem persists." Either their site is down, or they affirmatively blocked me because I refreshed their site too many times. Frightened much, GOP?

UPDATE (12:59 pm 10/13/09): Never mind. Apparently it's not just me ... and there are a lot of problems with their new website. Still, being the history buff I am, I like this one the best. ;)

I'm getting a raise!

(Get your minds out of the gutter ...)

Proof positive why Republicans so vehemently oppose the Obama stimulus: because it helps little people like me rather than their über-wealthy corporate CEO donors.

The AP reported that benefits in the state are based on a worker’s prior earnings. In 2008, the Florida unemployment benefits ranged from $32 to $275 per week. Under the new agreement, Florida’s weekly unemployment benefits will increase by $25.

According to the Tampa Bay Business Journal, approximately $12.2 billion of the $787 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is set to be delivered to Florida over the next three years. Additionally, some of the funding in the stimulus is already included in Governor Crist’s proposed $66.5-billion state budget for the next fiscal year. The budget is expected to either create or retain 314,590 jobs in the state, the Tampa Bay Business Journal reported.

OK, so it’s only $25 a week individually. Still, $345 million put back into Florida’s crippled economy is a good thing.

Indeed it is. For me it means that I can afford an extra pizza every month. Whoopie!

Seriously, though, it gives some hope for us jobseekers that more jobs will be available soon. And while that's anathema to Republicans, it's good news for Florida.

I have to give credit to Gov. Charlie Crist (painful though that is) for supporting the stimulus and not following the lead of fellow GOP governors Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, who want to reject the stimulus money. Here's hoping their constituents recognize how they're being sold down the (Mississippi) river. Even though their respective state legislatures can accept the money over the governors' objections (making said objections little more than crass political posturing), perhaps Barbour and Jindal are writing their own political epitaphs ... which can only be good news for their states.

Heckuva job, Haley and Bobby.

Today's Daily Schadenfreude: the Republican Party

Oh, I know, I shouldn't pile on the GOP when it's down. I mean, I already cackled my ass off over their misfortune once this week, when it was reported that Ron Paul supporters plan to try a hostile takeover of the Republican National Convention. Besides, there's some especially rich schadenfreude available right now over the epic smackdown of conservative radio gasbag Kevin James (no, not the guy from that shitty Adam Sandler movie) by -- of all people -- Tweety on today's Hardball. (Seriously, if you haven't seen that video, you owe it to yourself to watch it. Scroll forward to the 4:00 mark if you want to skip all of James' initial blather.) But choosing James wouldn't just be redundant ... it would be too easy.

No, instead I'll go back to an old standby and point and laugh at the Republican Party, which is almost literally disintegrating right before our very eyes. The results of the recent special election in a Mississippi district just outside of Memphis, Tenn., where a Democrat took a GOP-held congressional seat, seems to have spurred House Republicans into the sickening realization that they're facing a serious ass-whuppin' in November.

In huddles, closed-door meetings and hastily arranged conference calls, some Republicans demanded the head of their political chief, while others decried their leadership as out of touch with the political catastrophe they face.

GOP leaders sought yesterday to "re-brand" the party with a new slogan and renewed pledges of fiscal rectitude and limited government. But the slogan -- "The Change You Deserve" -- came under mocking fire, because it parallels Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama's "Change We Can Believe In" motto and it mirrors the advertising slogan for the antidepressant Effexor.

"What we've got is a deficiency in our message and a loss of confidence in the American people that we will do what we say we're going to do," conceded Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

[...]

Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator in history, has been badly damaged by scandals besetting his family and his party in Alaska, creating an unexpected opportunity for Democrats. Sen. John E. Sununu (N.H.) is defending a seat in a state where Democratic fortunes are on the rise, and other Republican senators -- including Susan Collins (Maine), Norm Coleman (Minn.) and Gordon Smith (Ore.) -- are seeking reelection in states leaning Democratic in a presidential election year. In total, 23 Republican-held Senate seats will be on the ballot this fall compared with 12 for Democrats.

Even Republican strategists were downcast about their prospects for the fall.

"These races were not in New Jersey or New England, where Republican erosion has taken place over the last decade. They were in the heart of the Bible Belt, the social conservative core of our coalition," Rep. Tom Davis (Va.) fretted in a 20-page memorandum given to House Republican leaders yesterday and provided to The Washington Post.

"Members and pundits, waiting for Democrats to fumble the ball so that soft Republicans and Independents will snap back to the GOP, fail to understand the deep seeded antipathy toward the President, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures and, in some areas, the underlying cultural differences that continue to brand our party."

No, Republicans. You cannot run as the party of "change." You own Drunky McStagger. You own Iraq. You own the shitty economy. All of this is in your lap, and nothing you can do or say or spin can change that. And naturally you would choose a slogan that mimics that of an antidepressant. The irony is stunning.

Some of the pundits and GOP apologists/sycophants/fluffers are trying to prop up Huggy Bear, the dessicated, goiter-ridden near-corpse, as their savior and their hope for the future. Funny how they choose a 71-year-old guy as hope for the future, but that's par for the course for a party that is coming apart at the seams. Plus the House Republicans are trying to pass off responsibility for the war on the Democrats. It's not gonna work. I really think that, finally, people are catching on that the Emperor is butt-nekkid and that with the GOP, there's no there there.

It's about fucking time.

So, Republicans, I hope you enjoy stewing in your own juices ... but in the meantime, you once again can enjoy the spoils of victory, DFH-style, as today's Blast Off! Daily Schadenfreude is for you!

Chimpy needs to work on his timing

You ever have those days when you see something Drunky McStagger does and you just say, "What the fuck?"

This would be one of those days.

Bush works to assure Katrina victims they aren't forgotten

"Part of the reason I've come down is to tell the people here in the Gulf coast that we still think about them in Washington and that we listen to the governor when he speaks," said Bush, whose first stop was the Mississippi coast city of Long Beach.

"The other reason I've come down is, I want the taxpayers of the United States to see first hand what their money has done to help revitalize a series of communities that were literally wiped out because of a major storm," he said in his first visit to the region in six months.

"This is a hopeful day," he said, adding "there's obviously a lot more work to be done."

"But times are changing for the better, and peoples' lives are improving and there is hope," he said in a region of stark contrast between renewed communities and those still struggling to recover.

According to the article, it was his 14th visit to the area since Katrina. But note ... it was his first in six months. Oh, and Mississippi's governor? You have to listen to him, Drunky. After all, he managed your 2000 presidential campaign, thereby making it possible for you to destroy America.

We don't need photo ops 18 months after the fact, Drunky. We needed action. Unfortunately, you sat in Washington with your head up your ass most of the time, and the vast destruction you just toured is directly attributable to the malfeasance of your administration.

Thanks for nothing. I'll see firsthand how much the victims of Katrina appreciate you when I go to NOLA at the end of this month. Something tells me they won't be speaking glowingly of you, pal.