Category: Democrats

Millionaire Transsexual Bankrolls PAC for Son’s Florida Democrat Campaign

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Martine Rothblatt (left); Gabriel Rothblatt (right).

Next time Democrats claim that Republicans are “the party of the rich” or complain about millionaires using PACs to funnel big money into politics, just mention this weird story about the Democrat candidate for Congress in Florida’s 8th District:

A congressional candidate in Florida is getting a boost from a super political action committee with one donor, which happens to be his dad.
But there’s a twist.
Gabriel Rothblatt’s father, Martine, used to be Martin Rothblatt before undergoing gender reassignment surgery. She — Martine — founded Sirius Satellite Radio and a Maryland-based biotech company that paid her $38 million in compensation last year, according to Forbes. . . .
Records show Martine Rothblatt contributed $225,000 to SpacePAC last quarter. Additionally, SpacePAC’s treasurer is a former federal regulatory lawyer and now influential attorney associated with United Therapeutics Corp., Martine Rothblatt’s pharmaceutical company.
Federal election laws prohibit super PACs from coordinating with candidates, but the close familial ties in this case could easily complicate those restrictions — and already may have. . . .
Rothblatt is endorsed by the Teamsters, a powerful labor union, and the National Organization for Women, a feminist group. The district includes Brevard and Indian River counties, and parts of Orange County.

Now, I’m going to get to Martine Rothblatt’s genuinely weird biography in a minute, but first, here’s a report from local newspaper columnist Russ Lemmon about the “infestation” of campaign signs for Gabriel Rothblatt that covered the 8th District:

As I noted last week, Rothblatt sent me an email in May and he said the signs were put out by SpacePAC, a political action committee that is supporting his campaign. He said election laws prohibit him from having contact with SpacePAC.
I said it was a lame excuse, as he surely knows someone who knows someone who could get the word to SpacePAC.
Which inadvertently set the stage for a humorous email from Curtis Carpenter:
“His excuse that it’s a Political Action Committee that is responsible for their placement might almost be believable except for the fact that his parents founded the PAC!”
Yes, it’s true.
SpacePAC was formed by Bina and Martine Rothblatt, according to the website spacepac.us. (Some interesting trivia from the website: “The Rothblatts created Sirius XM satellite radio in 1990.”)
During our initial email exchange, Gabriel Rothblatt didn’t say a word about his parents’ involvement in SpacePAC. I told him that was a pretty big omission on his part.
“The May conversation was brief and any number of topics could either be considered an omission, or just not relevant to a brief directed response and reserved for a still anticipated in-person conversation,” he said Thursday via email.
Seriously? I’m thinking he should have given disclosure of the SpacePAC relationship a much higher priority.

First, does anyone believe that Gabriel Rothblatt is not “coordinating” with a PAC whose sole contributor is his . . . er, ex-father?

It appears the SpacePAC exists solely as a single-donor money-funnel with the goal of electing Martine Rothblatt’s son to Congress. There’s your grassroots party of the working-class “little guy,” eh?

Now, let’s examine the bizarre biography of Martine (neé Martin) Rothblatt: It’s wrong to call him/her Gabriel Rothblatt’s “mother,” because it appears that after undergoing sex-change surgery in 1994 at age 40, Martin/Martine remained married to his/her wife, who is the mother of their four children, Eli, Sunee, Gabriel, and Jenesis. So I guess that means Martin/Martine is a translesbian.

In 1995, Martine Rothblatt published The Apartheid of Sex: Manifesto on the Freedom of Gender, about which we read:

Rothblatt makes a case for the adoption of a new sexual model that accommodates every shade of gender identity. She reveals that traditional male and female roles are dictated neither by genetics, genitals, nor reproductive biology, but rather by social attitudes that originated in early patriarchal cultures and that have been institutionalized in modern law, and she calls a new acceptance of human sexuality in all its prismatic variety. . . .
Arguing that “the legal division of people into males and females is as wrong as the legal division of people into black and white race,” Rothblatt, an attorney and transsexual, is a proponent of “transgenderism,” which she characterizes as a grass-roots movement whose guiding principle is “that people should be free to change, either temporarily or permanently, the sex type to which they were assigned since infancy.” Using a provocative reinterpretation of historical and legal issues, feminist thinking, and scientific research to defend her belief in continua of sex, gender, and sexual identity, Rothblatt sometimes seems unclear of her intended audience.

Yeah, whatever. And if you think that is weird, try this:

In 2004, Rothblatt launched the Terasem Movement, a transhumanist school of thought focused on promoting joy, diversity, and the prospect of technological immortality via mind uploading and geoethical nanotechnology. Through a charitable foundation, leaders of this school convene publicly accessible symposia, publish explanatory analyses, conduct demonstration projects, issue grants, and encourage public awareness and adherence to Terasem values and goals..

So here’s your Gabriel Rothblatt campaign slogan:

VOTE DEMOCRAT
Elect the Millionaire Weirdo’s Son to Congress!

 

“Sorry, Barack: I Can’t Give The Israeli People ‘The Stevens’,” Said Bibi

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by Smitty

You can almost forgive #OccupyResoluteDesk for wanting the Israelis to pull their punches, given Obama’s oblivious non-command of leadership:

President Barack Obama phoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late Sunday, demanding that he agree to an immediate ceasefire “that ends hostilities now and leads to a permanent cessation of hostilities, based on the November 2012 ceasefire agreement.”

I don’t know, the last time Bibi met a U.S. Administration official, it looked like he was about two show ol’ Three Purple Hearts a fourth one, red, still beating, albeit briefly:

If I was Bibi, I’d put up a brief YouTube clip in reply to the rodeo clown, simply saying “AIN’T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!”

Just Relax In Your ‘Fundamentally Transformed’ Country, Americans

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by Smitty

Pres’ent Obama has simply carried through:
In the pre-transformed America, it was understood that the Commies had infiltrated Hollywood and academia. No one really expected subversion of the IRS:

To summarize: The IRS (famed for nitpicking and prosecuting the tax law), chose to authorize hundreds of billions of illegal subsidies without having performed a smidgen of legal due diligence, and did so at the direction of political taskmasters. The agency’s actions provided aid and comfort to elected Democrats, even as it disenfranchised millions of Americans who voted in their states to reject state-run exchanges. And Treasury knows how ugly this looks, which is why it initially stonewalled Congress in its investigation—at first refusing to give documents to investigators, and redacting large portions of the information.

These dots on the financial rigging side connect just as we hear that, on the drafting side, the shenanigans were just as wretched:

The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn reached out to Jonathan Gruber to get his reaction to the emergence of the Nobilis video in which the architect of ObamaCare explains that the restriction of subsidies to states with their own exchanges was a rational attempt to coerce states into creating those exchanges, rather than shifting the burden back to the federal government. Gruber calls that “a speak-o — you know, like a typo”

In defense of the Democrats, we have tolerated and permitted our politics to reach this sordid state. The sovereignty of We the People is being migrated over to the executive branch in two ways:

  • initially burying decision making in a series of multi-ream legislative reamings, of which the Affordable Care Act is merely the most infamous example, and,
  • subsequently rewriting those words as required either through regulation or, in the unusual case of the ACA, at the SCOTUS.

It’s a cliché to say that the impending election is the most important of our lifetimes. It’s no longer about avoiding the disaster; it’s about mitigating the effects and minimizing the recover time.

Democrats: The Party of Theft

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It’s not merely that they steal money from taxpayers. Democrats are just generally dishonest and untrustworthy:

Senator John Walsh of Montana took most of a 2007 final paper required for his master’s degree from the United States Army War College from other sources without proper attribution. Mr. Walsh copies an entire page nearly word-for-word from a Harvard paper, and each of his six conclusions is copied from a document from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace without attribution.

This revelation of Walsh’s defective character is only regarded by Democrats as problem because it might cost them an election:

Walsh was appointed to the Senate five months ago to fill Max Baucus’s vacancy; it’s not impossible to win as a Democrat in Montana, as both Baucus and Jon Tester can tell you, but it’s difficult as a short-term incumbent in a political climate that’s trending GOP. The rosiest polls for Walsh right now have him trailing Republican Steve Daines by around seven points. The bleakest polls have him down 20 or more. (The RCP average has Daines by 12.5 points.)

Somebody ought to write a book about this.

 

Did ObamaCare Just Die?

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This seems to be the consensus interpretation of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision this morning:

Court Rules That Subsidies in Obamacare’s
Federal Exchange are Illegal, Dealing
Huge Legal Blow to Health Law
— Reason

In Blow to Health Law, Appeals Court Limits Subsidies
— New York Times

BREAKING: Two Republican Judges
Order Obamacare Defunded
— Think Progress

Court’s Decision Strikes Huge
Blow to Pro-Abortion Obamacare
— LifeNews

So, whether they are liberals or conservatives, for or against ObamaCare, everybody seems to agree that this decision bodes ill for the program’s continuation. That’s good news for America.

 

Demons of Left-Wing Paranoia

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The top item at Memeorandum this morning was an MSNBC article attempting to inspire fear that last week’s Hobby Lobby court decision could End Democracy As We Know It, or something.

Small children and fools may be frightened by such stuff, but if you’re old enough to have followed politics for two or three decades, you recognize the routine operation of the Fear Machine that Democrats crank up every time they’re worried about losing an election.

The semi-annual Parade of Spooky Right-Wing Phantoms is interesting chiefly for the way the villainous reactionary danger changes from day to day and year to year. During the 1990s, the rotating cast of demonized scapegoats included:

  1. Fundamentalist theocrats whose conspiratorial blueprint could be found in the writings of R.J. Rushdoony;
  2. Militia kooks who listened to short-wave radio broadcasts;
  3. The Reverend Sun Yung Moon;
  4. Right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife;
    and
  5. Newt Gingrich.

Over the years, the cast of characters in this Pageant of Evil has changed several times. Ten years ago, the Left was all about fighting such dreaded demons as Halliburton, Karl Rove, Big Oil and “neocons” (a liberal euphemism for EVIL GREEDY JEWS). Nowadays, the exaggerated object of imaginary fear is usually the Koch Brothers.

After a while, you notice that the list of bogeymen that liberals want you to worry about never includes actual Bad Guys — drug gangs, carjackers, child pornographers, pimps, serial killers, Islamic terrorists or dangerous foreign governments. No, it’s always some far-fetched Republican conspiracy they’re worried about.

The Existential Menace to Democracy As We Know It is necessary to the campaigns of Fear and Hate by which the Party of Evil mobilizes its core constituents: Fools, thieves, radicals and perverts.

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By the way, please excuse the paucity of new blog material Wednesday. Monday’s 3,000-word “Sex Trouble” essay about radical feminism was so popular — a sidebar headline at Ace of Spades HQ and an Instalanche, among other encouragement — that I spent most of yesterday working on a follow-up. Work like that takes time to research and write, and so the long silences are inevitable. Also, yesterday I spent a couple hours babysitting my 8-month-old grandson while my wife, daughter and daughter-in-law were out doing various errands.

Keeping the heteronormative patriarchy going is a full-time job, and I appreciate the discussion in the comments, as well as the readers who hit the tip jar. Expect a few more hours of silence today while I finish up the next installment in the series.





 

They Found Peggy Joseph!

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Everybody remembers the Florida woman who, during the 2008 campaign, gleefully declared in a TV news interview after an Obama campaign rally that if Obama was elected, she wouldn’t have to worry about putting gas in her car or paying her mortgage.

Over the years, whenever the headlines told of bad economic news I’d wonder aloud, “Whatever happened to Peggy Joseph?”

Thanks to documentary film director Joel Gilbert, now we know:

Ms. Joseph told Gilbert, after viewing the 2008 segment together that gave her notoriety, that not only has Obama not been paying her gas or mortgage, but both have gotten progressively harder to pay.
“During that time, we needed a change, but change for the better, not for the worse,” an awakened Peggy Joseph told Gilbert.
“He had a very big voice, just like the Wizard of Oz,” Joseph said, comparing Obama to the famous phony wizard. “The wizard was this little teeny-teeny tiny man, and I think it’s the same thing with Obama, the man behind the curtain,” Ms. Joseph said in a reflective, disappointing tone.
Ms. Joseph looks back at the time of her 2008 interview, saying, “I was Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. That’s how I feel.”
“What I learned is never trust the Wizard,” Joseph now says. “It’s within ourselves to have the determination, the courage, and the brains, to bring us to our destiny.”

What many people will find most surprising is that, contrary to widespread belief, Peggy Joseph wasn’t looking for a handout. She is not a welfare mooch. In fact, she is a suburban soccer mom, a Haitian immigrant who works hard as a nurse to support her four children. The question that remains now: Why can’t Republicans reach people like Peggy Joseph with a message of hope, growth and opportunity?

Maybe the Black Conservatives Fund can find an answer.

 

Democrats Dump Obama

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Hope and Change have become a campaign liability:

Obama’s approval ratings are in the basement and show no signs of improving, so Democrats are keeping their distance. On the stump, in campaign ads and at fundraisers, Obama’s absence is increasingly conspicuous.
Democrats are voicing their displeasure with his policies and campaign advisers are telling candidates to avoid being photographed with him, so as to deny Republicans effective visuals for campaign ads.
“It’s a no-brainer,” said one operative who works for a senator up for reelection in 2014. “The second term has been a bit of a disaster, his approval ratings are the lowest of his presidency and Washington is in disarray.”
Many of the Democratic senators elected in 2008 rode to office on Obama’s coattails. Six years later, they’re asking, “Barack who?”
Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) last week avoided being at his own fundraiser while Obama was there, excusing himself on the grounds that he had to attend votes at the Capitol. . . .

Read the whole thing.