I am your newest fan...great job! I will read this wonderful rant when I am losing faith...

You don't have to justify your worth to a panel.

You can get insurance even if you're already sick.

Women should be paid at the same rate as men

And Rape is Rape is Rape

That was one of your best shows yet! The 'Evolution is a Thing' will go down as one of my favorites responses, to all the madness & conspiracies, that ever exsisted for The Republican party of the past. You answered every single one of them. Just brilliant!

Fabulous segment -- worth watching again. Slightly marred by the Exxon-Mobil ad under Rachel's window. This corporation is responsible for much of the resistance to action on climate change; it's the tobacco companies all over again with well-funded pseudo-scientists casting doubt. Must you accept advertising $$ from the dark side?

this absolutely rocks

Can we get a transcript? Maybe crowd-sourced since it's already started. Thanks!

My husband and I cheered. It was pure awesomeness. THANK YOU!

(And a shout out to my peeps here in Texas where the UN has been observing for over ten years....)

It was painful watching Rachel Maddow support Tulsi Gabbard who won Hawaii's 2nd District seat as a Democrat. Do some research. Her father is Mike Gabbard who led the charge against homosexuals in Hawaii for several decades. The Gabbards are part of a cult led by Chris Butler. Her father jumped from R to D and it appears as if Tulsi's politics are exactly the same as her fathers. Shame on you Rachel for not doing your home work and for support this dangerous woman.

http://my.firedoglake.com/heathen07/tag/tulsi-gabbard-gabbard-family-science-of-identity-jagad-guru-chris-butler-cult-siddhaswarupananda-paramahamsa/

Thank you Rachel! You had us cheering Super Bowl style at the TV! Your words are going to be my most useful tool in "conversing" with my conservative neighbors! Gonna keep them on index cards in my purse!

:-)

I LOVED this segment, I will attempt to memorize it to repeat to the fanatic anti-Obama circle of people I unfortunately know and have to deal with. I used to hate politics but after watching YOUR show ONCE I somehow got into it. I love your show and tune in every night. Keep on being real and saying it like it is.

Rachael:

I don't watch at night... but I do download the podcast and listen to it on the drive in to work in the morning.

Just wanted you to know that last night's show had to be one of the most uplifting shows I've heard in a long time. I was tired driving in this morning, but by the time I arrived I was full of energy. I intend to listen to it again on the drive home tonight.

We have so far to go - but your opening was important for liberals like myself to understand. SO much was accomplished on Tuesday. While we fight the good fight, it's good to hear about it.

Thanks

a Liberal in rural South Carolina

I am amazed at how you Dems/Libs don't get it. I'll try to be simple and limit my comments:

No new taxes: Yes, let's start with the alternative minimum tax going into effect in 2012. Add the expiration of Bush tax cuts - which affects middle class (i.e. ME!) - in 2013. Taxes in Obamacare which affect corporations are passed on to the consumer (uh - that's you and me). There is so much more.

Benghazi: Yes, it was an attack on US. It is also a cover-up. The firefight went on for 7 hours when drone help was one hour away. Our administration watched this in real time, folks. As in, from the start, and knew it was a terrorist attack NOT perpetrated by a video that 212 people had viewed prior to 9/11/12...and now an innocent man is in jail due to a *patrol* violation. They have flip-flopped so many times that it is taking a Congressional hearing to find out what happened.

Last months unemployment rate: issued without CA numbers. Yes, they made a big difference when added.

Rape results in pregnancy: Yes, it does. The point was about the life created. Ask those adults who were born out of rape if they wish they hadn't born.

Taking away guns: Fast and Furious. Oh wait. You don't know what that is? That's right. MSM hasn't reported on it. It was created under Obama to promote anti-gun sentiment in our country. Univision did a good job on this one (but not good enough.)

Deficit is dropping: I have no words for ignorance. O has added more to the deficit than all previous administrations combined.

FEMA: HUGE failure on Sandy. But you all wouldn't know about that either b/c once again, our esteemed media isn't reporting on it.

Regulations: Government regulations on what financial/insurance industries MUST do put us in the place we are now.

Get the facts, folks.

Ch

And those "sluts" who want birth control are your daughters

and granddaughters.

And it isn't free. They paid for it as part of their insurance.

And your pastor doesn't have to marry a same-sex couple

in states where their marriage is legal.

And you don't have to go to their wedding.

And nobody wants to destroy your religious freedom,

they simply want to follow their own beliefs, not yours.

And being intelligent is a good thing.

And striving for a separation between the church and the state is a noble pursuit.

And we can disagree about how our government should behave without either one of us being a fascist or a communist.

And allowing Bush-era tax cuts to expire is not the same thing as declaring class warfare.

And you don't get to decide what "real" America looks like.

Dear Ms. Maddow, I watched your show last night and was just amazed at how perfectly this segment summed up the Right's utter disregard of facts and inability to accept reality. In my opinion, the re-election of Barack Obama as a whole, was the triumph of logic over blinding ideology, numbers and data with Nate Silver over "gut feeling" with Dick Morris, 10 dollar donors over 10 million dollar donors, and most importantly compassion and love over animosity and hatred. Thank you for the way you've covered this election cycle; you deserve every bit of your success.

now that Nate Silver and the accuracy of polls have been vindicated - what does this mean for 2016? Is the right's questioning the polls off the table, and will the polls become even more of a determinate factor in deciding elections now that their veracity has been established?

As much as I loved this monologue, an apparently moderate friend of a friend pointed out on Facebook that a couple of these items may in fact be somewhat debatable. He was unable to convince me about one of them, but there's one where I think he has a point.

Have taxes gone up or not? I think it's arguable that this is a matter of how you define "taxes going up." As a whole, I think effective tax rates have gone down, but some specific taxes have technically gone up. What do you all think?

I think you could also make a case that yes, the deficit has gone up, but the rate of the deficit has not gone up and has in fact gone down. But I think it's pretty clear we're doing better with the deficit than we were under Bush and that it should get better as we draw down our military, which seems extremely likely under Obama and with the looming fiscal cliff.

I did take my friend's friend's point, though. Perhaps these items can be perceived differently by moderate, intelligent minds. That makes them different from the rest of the items in the monologue, and thus they theoretically undermine the argument.

Yes, he's being picky. And so am I, because Rachel can take it. :-D

I absolutely love this blog entry! This sums up the entire election for me personally. Thank you.

One more thing to add to her list: And suggesting that the marginal rate on annual income over a quarter of a million dollars should be 35.1% or above, like it was throughout the 20th century in America, is not class warfare.

Fantastic Rachel! Well done! This says it all in a nutshell. To bad the nuts that should be reading this will not. They are to busy sitting the the bubble of idiocy and disbelief. Is it to early rename Karl Rove Jim Jones? The Fox News cult followers are definitely drinking the Kool-Aid.

FEMA isn't building concentration camps.

No one has ever heard of Rex-84 or Garden Plot? Or Army Regulation 210-35?
http://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/pdf/r210_35.pdf
http://www.infowars.com/media/USArmyCivilDisturbPlanGardenPlot_1991.pdf
http://www.infowars.com/media/ArmyCivilDisturbPlanGardenPlot_1978.pdf
http://www.infowars.com/media/USAF-ROP355-10_GardenPlot_1968.pdf
http://www.infowars.com/media/DA-CivilDisturbPlanGardenPlot_1968.pdf

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!!!

I am going to reblog this on tumblr,, if Chris Hayes hasn't already,,, :>)

I have listened to this now three times and watched it twice. I still cannot believe it! So many lives. So much work. So many years. So many marches, and marches, and marches, and marches, and parades, and parades, and parades, and marches, and marches, and marches. Most of my friends who started this march with me - for example, Tucker Ashoworth who served as Cultural Commissioner for the City of New York and co-directed the film Attica with Cynde Firestone (yes, the Firestones), did not live to see this day. This would have meant so much to him and to his life partner, Herbert. My dear friend, Mark Flacker, whom I fell head over heels in love with during my freshmen year at Columbia, who subsequently moved to San Francisco and his partner did not make it. My "adopted" Purto Rican "son", Genaro Luxavier Bonet, who was the best young man any gay male could have ever hoped to be "adoped" by - because that is quite literally what happened - did not make it. Genaro's mother was to put it politely a bit tetched in the head, When he was seven, she said he was a thief and put him out on the streets of New York to fend for himself. He became a ward of the state. He was in altogeher I believe 9 foster homes and he was sexually abused by the very people who were supposed to take care of him in 8 of them. When he found me, he was coming from "God's Love We Deliver" - Dr. Bruce Ritter (if you don't know the story, please Google it; he used to send out an annual card with photos of young very poor Puerto Rican and Domincan males on the cover that read "the face of God"). Genaro as it turned out was actually lucky because he had a job and had some money in the bank (not much just a few thousand dollars). He made the "mistake of telling he people at God's Love We Deliver he had some money and they told him he was not eligible to stay here and he would have to find himself a room. I had a very small room to rent. But when I answered the door and took one look at Genaro - who was barely seventeen and didn't present the picture of financial stability (to me) that i was looking for with the room, I immediately made up my mind that I wasn't going to rent the room to him. i had a form - 3 pages - I gave potential applicants to fill out. Genaro took a pencil instead of a pen and began filling it out. It very quickly became apparent to me that he was taking a very long time. He kept erasing. Since several other people were lined up to also come look at the room, I wanted to rush him along. He wouldn't go. He refused to give me the form. He kept erasing. Finally I insisted and said the form wasn't really that important. I studied what he had been doing. And then I saw. The reason he kept erasing was that he was trying very, very hard to answer every question perfectly. To print every letter exactly. To spell every word right. And all while he was doing this he was becoming increasingly frustrated and angry with me because he knew I was not going to give him the room. And he was mad. And the madder he got, the harder he tried. It was right there on the erased rewritten erased rewritten form. Someone else came to look at the room. I told him to say but I still was not going to let him have the room. He showed the room to the other person and had the other person fill out the form. We did this with a few people. Finally I got back to Genaro. I asked him point blank why if he knew I wasn't going to give him the room it mattered so much to him. Then he explained to me that his "lover" had thrown him out a few nights before, he had gone to Covenant House and they would not let him stay there, that he had money and a job (he worked for Bungee Corporation at the time in the mail room and went to school), but that nobody would trust him and take a chance. I said "look, you are not exactly what I had in mind for a roommate. But you have persuaded me that you are telling me the truth and for tonight -- for a few nights -- I will let you sleep on the couch in the living room since you have no place to go.' That seemed like a reasonable solution and he accepted it since he really had no choice. He went to Penn Station to retrieve his property which he had locked in a locker there. it turned out though that when he came back late that night I had fallen asleep and the Russian musician who lived on the floor below me thought he was a nuisance and chased him away. The next morning, I awoke and asked everyone "what ever happened to that young man?" Nobody else remembered who I was talking about. About 10 minutes later he called me on the phone and was extremely angry with me. He explained he had traveled all the way back into Manhatttan,turned around and come all the way back out to Midwood, only to be chased away by the crazed Russian musician, and he had to go back into Manhattan, put his stuff back into a locker, and had wound up spending the night in Central Park. I was now in deep. I told him to turn around and come back and he could stay on the couch until he found a place. He came back. He began to help me do everything. Then he began to wear my ties. And he wanted to know how to open a checking account and write a check. It very quickly dawned on me that I was the first male he had ever encountered who hadn't abused him, who was as smart as he was, and with whom he could identify. I was breaking up with someone after a 10 year relationship and was pretty sad a lot of the time; all of the sudden, I had a "kid". And he changed my life. He worked hard. He copied everything I did. He tried very hard to do well. He had problems with intimacy because of all the sexual abuse and so his boyfriends were not around long. He recognized this was his problem and he did not know how to fix it. The pain there was unimaginable. I just respected him and was his friend. After about five years, he decided he had outgrown the small room. He volunteered to join the U.S. Navy. The Navy put him on a submarine. (He was very intelligent.) Just as quickly, one week day in 1985 or 1986, I got an emergency note from him. The navy had removed him from the submarine by helicopter. It seems without his knowledge the Navy had tested everyone for HIV (and this was before anyone really had a clue what HIV was) -- and he had tested positive. The Navy brought him back to Ft Meyer in Arlington (where it seems they brought many people in the same shape and put him in a special AA program; he didn't really drink). They gave him a desk job for the duration of his military career and took care of him until he died to the best of my knowledge. (The last couple of years I was not there so I cannot say for sure.) They removed him very quickly from the sub, flew him to Arlington, and told him to "go home" and "tell his family". He came to me. There was nobody else for him to go to -- we spent the weeekend mostly at Coney Island, riding the Cyclcone and the thing that twirls around up and down simulating weightlessness. I do not know how I got through it but somehow we did. YOU NEVER HEARD SUCH SCREAMS AND SO MUCH ANGER IN YOUR LIFE. He was convinced he was going to die right then and there. He did not pass until around 2006 although after 1998 the disease had begun to seriously impair his brain and he wasn't himself. The last time I spoke to him I was very angry with him because he screwed something up big time and that is something I will always regret. I didn't realize I would not see him or speak to him again - and i don't think he realized what was about to happen with me. (How could ether of us have known?) So i always have to live with that. I behaved very badly and I didn't mean it; I did on a very superficial level, but not he way it hurt him. I had never hurt him before. Somehow I feel he forgives me. But he did no make it either. And he really needed a family - a real family, the kind of family that only a stable gay couple could really provide because no one else would ever really be able to understand what he went through. A lot of other friends who began this "march" towards equality - including marriage equality which kind of definitively represents all aspects of equality - did not make it. If I think too long or too hard about it, it will cause me too much pain. This is time to celebrate. I am celebrating for each of them too -- in fact, in a way, I feel that they are all here with me now -- and certainly to the extent that my personality is an amalgam of what I learned and integrated from each and every one of them and each and every one of them does live on at least in my memory and in who I am, I am indeed celebrating for each of them. Thank you so much everyone who voted in favor of marriage equality. You cannot imagine what that vote means to so very many people - or how not having that very basic equality has detrimentally hurt those people in ways that most average straight folks never even think of -- let alone empathize with.

It really is time. Way overdue, in fact. We have just changed the entire world and it will never ever be the same -- to quote Emily, "hope is the thing with feathers ..."

Rachel - I agree 100% with all the praise. You were awesome. I said so as we were watching you that night. Wow. I am also recommending your clip to one and all. Very well played!

I am including a response by a family friend to an email I sent regarding the very apt quote by Mr. Dowd....Re: Today's GOP - "A 'Mad Men' Party in a 'Modern Family' America" and my response to his. It illustrates how the dwindling conservative party does not get it. They are still clinging....to something...and it isn't reality:

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MA, I don't agree with the definition of conservative americans as mad men. However, what defines the left leaning voting population to a great extent is the tendency to look to government to provides a solution to all of their difficulties. Government does little very well and many things terribly...

Mr. O

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Mr. O,

The mad men reference is really about the TV show “Mad Men” (the characters work in advertising on Madison Avenue, I think.) – set in the late 50’s/early 60’s when the U.S. was pretty much run by affluent white men. (Those days are gone and the outcome of the elections indicate that a whole lot of Americans think the GOP needs to reassess its exclusive ways.) “Modern Family”, on the other hand, depicts the utter normalcy of what, not too long ago, might have seemed almost criminal: a gay couple raising an adopted minority child and also a mixed racial and generational marriage….. and, most importantly, how that’s just everyday life in America today. All of ours. Quite a contrast.

The article speaks to a general (not total) lack of inclusion of women, minorities, gays, non-Christians, etc. and their important issues in the GOP’s platform and policies. If you get a chance, watch the short clip of Romney’s concession speech. I challenge you to find a minority member in the shots of the audience. It will be like playing Where’s Waldo. That’s just not an accurate reflection of America.

I think another large problem with the GOP’s constituents is the notion that so much of only the Democratic party is made up of people who look to the government for help. “Welfare” comes in many forms and corporate welfare is no different – government provided tax credits and loopholes, etc. that benefit businesses provide solutions to corporate difficulties too and I’d say the right leaning voting population to a great extent has a tendency to look for, and receive that, from our government.

And so many corporations, more and more, do little very well and many things terribly too… Who doesn’t complain about every type of insurance company, credit card companies, banks, telephone companies, cable companies, hospitals, gas companies, electric companies, airlines, cell phone providers, universities, oil companies, etc, etc, etc, and how they charge increasingly SO, SO much for ever-decreasing services and inferior product?? No one. No one.

And most of them are regulated by the government to a certain extent but the ones that aren't are the ones people complain the most about these days. Imagine. Then there are the lobbyists…. You know, the ones whose previous job was to make the laws that regulate the companies they now work for?? Talk about criminal….

It really seems to me that by saying that the Democratic party is made up of takers, the GOP might be looking for membership in their party by the people who don’t want to associate with with or seen as a freeloader if they vote for a Dem president – even if the policies of the GOP don’t reflect that person’s best interests…like everyone who doesn’t make over, say, $300,00.00/year. When working class America thinks, “If the Dems are freeloaders, I must be a Republican!” – are they remembering that the corporations the GOP’s membership owns sent so many working class jobs overseas…? I wonder sometimes.

But I also think that perhaps a lot of hard working middle class and working class people are taking a hard look at who really represents their own best interests and who represents the very wealthy’s best interests. There are a whole lot more 99 percenters than there are 1 percenters (or even the ones who aspire to that) and they all just reelected President Obama.

I voted Democratic and I don’t expect the government to provide a solution to my difficulties but I do think government does have a responsibility to look out for everyone’s best interest. That isn't something to be ashamed of.

MA