Redneck Liberal

Family Research Monkey Council, Values Voter Monkey Summit, Monkey Expert Roy Blunt (R-MO), Bill O'Reilly Gets Monkey Courage Award & Prejean Primate.

2009-10-09T20:50:00.000-05:00

And now for something completely different.

I'm going to take a not very well thought out, possibly racist statement by Congressman Roy Blunt (R-MO) and prove the truth of it.

At the Family Research Council Action's 2009 Values Voter Summit Roy Blunt speaking to a like minded audience of the self-righteous decided to tell an amusing anecdote.

Trying to be humorous is always a dangerous thing for a right winger to attempt. I mean, humor is not one of their strong suits.

A lot of folks on the left took Blunt's little story and figured that it must have racist overtones. Possible, but I doubt it. Like humor, nuance is something not really grasped by the Right.

Here's the story of Blunt's story. Thanks, Talk to Action.

Congressman Blunt then went on to tell an anecdote which suggested that life in Washington, for GOP members today, is comparable to the lot of imperial British agents in India who had to contend with monkeys running amok on a golf course that the colonial occupiers had carved out of the verdant Indian jungle. There was a problem, the Missouri Representative explained; monkeys would come out of the jungle, grab golf balls, and throw them about. Amidst swelling laughter from his audience Roy Blunt narrated,

"I could go into great and long detail about how many things they did to try and eliminate the 'monkey problem.' But they never got it done, so finally this golf course and this golf course only, they passed a rule and the rule was - you have to play the ball where the monkey throws it. [audience laughter swells] And that is the rule in Washington all the time."

It seemed like a direct window into the psyche of the revanchist wing of the GOP; politics is a golf game and unruly Democrat "monkeys" have swarmed out of the jungle to disrupt the play. Since it is impractical to "eliminate" the monkeys, accommodations will have to be made. Republicans will now "play the ball where the monkey throws it."

If Congressman Blunt would have expanded on the story he could have made it something rare for a Republican or for the Family Research Council, a factual point. So I'll make ol' Roy's point for him.

Indeed, the monkeys do get in the way of efficient government. Take health care, we want it and the Brits have had it since 1948. You'd think that after all this time with universal health care Great Britain would have it's monkey problem handled.

They don't and look who the monkeys actually are.

The system suffered greatly under the "conservative" governments, to the point that is almost collapsed under its own weight back in the 1970s and 1980s, as these "conservatives" withheld funding, and ordered unrealistic changes in the system under the guise of "efficiency." During the Thatcher years, only about 6% of GDP was expended on health care, and resulted in an extremely high level of dissatisfaction with the system. Since then, subsequent governments have increased funding greatly, bringing spending levels up to 8.4% of GDP, which is just slightly below the 8.9% average of OECDs, and about 1% below the EU average, and you'd be hard pressed to find a poll in which the British express overwhelming dissatisfaction with NHS.

Yes, the monkeys on the golf course are little right wing, conservative monkeys. And they are more than just a nuisance, they are deadly. At least, for the 45,000 Americans who will die this year because they have no health care.

Also at the "Holier Than Thou Summit" Bill O'Reilly was awarded the “Media Courage Award.” It seems that to receive this award requires so much courage that none of the other media were even able to watch the acceptance speech.

It's hard to imagine the amount of courage that it must take to stand up and fight liberalism, night after night on Fox News where the audience is so well informed that it riots at even the hint of anything that's not "Fair and Balanced".

Bill has been courageous ever since he got out of high school when he showed it by courageously avoiding military service.

Way to go Bill. You deserve this award. You and the Family Research Council are made for each other.

Kinda like another one of their guests, Carrie Prejean, the former Miss California who believes that homosexuality is not natural, yet man-made hooters are.

So I'll leave you with this little slice of Americana. The folks who believe that they are mainstream America. The folks who believe that they are doing God's will by trying to tell the rest of us how to live. The folks who would be more than happy to put you down if you don't listen. The other end of the political spectrum.

Later,

9/12 Teabagging Protesters Motivations and Explanations, Rep. Joe Wilson (Goober-SC), Extreme GOP, Religious Right & Charles Darwin.

2009-09-15T06:22:00.004-05:00

Wow! Look at all those people.

This is supposed to be a shot of the 9/12 protesters last Saturday.

Since turning 60-70,000 people into a million would be a miracle of Biblical proportions a lot of folks on the Right will instinctively believe it.

And like a lot of things that they instinctively believe, it would be wrong.

There's another big problem with the photograph: it doesn't include the National Museum of the American Indian, a building located at the corner of Fourth St. and Independence Ave. that opened on Sept. 14, 2004. (Looking at the photograph, the building should be in the upper right hand corner of the National Mall, next to the Air and Space Museum.) That means the picture was taken before the museum opened exactly five years ago. So clearly the photo doesn't show the "tea party" crowd from the Sept. 12 protest.

Now that America's Ignorancefest 2009 is over, what conclusions can we draw from this spontaneous, grassroots, Fox News/Freedom Works/Health Insurance Industry sponsored and coordinated outpouring of white people's inability to grasp reality?

Well, the most obvious thing that they are wrong about is who they are. They believe that they are independent thinking defenders of the Constitution and the "American Way of Life". You gotta admit that sounds a lot better than corporate lackeys.

What's really happening with these protests is that the genuine rage and not unreasonable economic insecurity of these citizens is being stoked, exploited, distorted and manipulated by movement leaders for entirely different ends. The people who are leading them -- Rush Limbaugh, the Murdoch-owned Fox News, Glenn Beck, business-dominated organizations of the type led by Dick Armey -- are cultural warriors above everything else. They're all in a far different socioeconomic position than the "middle-income Americans" whose anger they're ostensibly representing. Their principal preoccupation is their cultural contempt for various groups (illegal immigrants, the "undeserving" poor, liberals) and their desire to preserve the status quo whereby the prime beneficiaries of government policies remain themselves: the super rich and the interests that control Washington. It's certainly true that many of these protesters are driven by the standard right-wing cultural issues which have long shaped that movement -- social issues, religious fears, cultural and racial divisions, and hatred for "liberals" as Communist-Muslim-Terrorist-lovers. For many, all of that is intensified by the humiliation of being completely thrown out of power, at the hands of the first black President. But much of it is fueled by the pillaging of the corporations and Wall St. interests which own their government.

Ouch!

70,000 dupes getting together to show the world just how little they know about the things that they are protesting against.

Congressman Joe Wilson, (Idiot-SC) is a microcosm of the 70,000 and the Right's approach to the health care debate. I could care less that Wilson shouted, "You lie!" to the President on the floor of Congress. That's just free speech. However, if you are going to do a major breach of decorum then you should at least be correct in your accusations. It's not a hard thing to do, ten seconds on Google would have saved Joe from showing the world just how big of a moron he really is. Now we all know.

The 70,000 Fox News induced protesters are just Joe Wilson gone Viral.

Neal Gabler, Boston Globe covers this phenomenon nicely in his article, The extreme Republican Party.

Let’s not mince words here: We now have an entire political party that is not only dedicated to the mediocre. It is dedicated to the nearly deranged.

Nearly?

Anyway, we kinda know what they are protesting against, which is more than they seem to do. So what are they for?

That's easy, just type into Google, Health Insurance Horror Stories.

"When Steve and Leslie Shaeffer's daughter, Selah, was diagnosed at age 4 with a potentially fatal tumor in her jaw, they figured their health insurance would cover the bulk of her treatment costs." But "shortly after Selah's medical bills hit $20,000, Blue Cross stopped covering them and eventually canceled her coverage retroactively."
So begins a recent report in The Los Angeles Times titled "Sick but Insured? Think Again," which offers a series of similar horror stories, and suggests that these stories represent a growing trend: more and more health insurers are finding ways to yank your insurance when you get sick.

Beats the hell out of me why they would want more of that. But there it is and that's what we'll be getting without the public option in the Health Care Reform Bill.

70,000 people getting together to show their support for health insurance company profits and taking a dump on their fellow citizens. I'll bet Glenn Beck is proud.

To be honest, some of the protesters could care less about the insurance companies, Fox News, you, me or anything else. They are on a mission, they believe that they are doing the Lord's work. Like He would need any help from these cretins, right?

If you're not fortunate enough to live in the Bible Belt and can't really experience this first hand, then I would highly recommend reading the full article, Glenn Beck and The 9/12 Marchers: Subversives From Within. It's about a growing group of people who want to do away with the America that we know and replace it with a country based on some lame preacher's interpretation of the Bible.

Sounds far-fetched? Well, both of my U.S. Senators from Oklahoma belong to that C. Street cult known as "The Family".

The tactics that progressives develop for actually winning against the right have to involve far more than politics. They have to also involve ceaseless vigilance against an enemy that has now -- literally -- raised up an armed, paranoid and deluded alternative nation within our borders and created a fifth column to undermine the United States and our democracy. They need to be called out by the rest of us in no uncertain terms.
Long term the Religious Right subculture has to be understood, then exposed for what it is: an anti-democracy movement built on willful lies with potentially violent underpinnings in the thrall of an apocalyptic cult of revenge on everyone not like "us." It is also the useful tool of corporate lobbyists. Who use these shock troops of the proudly ignorant for non-ideological reasons.

This article was written by Frank Schaeffer, he knows because he was once a big dog in the Religious Right.

The BBC has just made a movie about the life of Charles Darwin. But it looks like it won't be shown here. Any guesses as to why?

"The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it's because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they've seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up.
"It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There's still a great belief that He made the world in six days. It's quite difficult for we in the UK to imagine religion in America. We live in a country which is no longer so religious. But in the US, outside of New York and LA, religion rules.

In light of a recent survey, it looks like the health care reform protesters will have to stop seeing their doctors. Because they are communists! At least by their own reasoning.

A RWJF survey summarized in the September 14, 2009 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine shows that 62.9 percent of physicians nationwide support proposals to expand health care coverage that include both public and private insurance options—where people under the age of 65 would have the choice of enrolling in a new public health insurance plan (like Medicare) or in private plans.

If you think that things are crazy now, just wait until we tackle the most important issue: Climate Change.

Later

Stand Up for Single Payer/Public Option. Stand With Doctor Howard Dean.

2009-08-18T10:37:00.003-05:00

Click on it and sign the petition.

If you care more for the American people than you do for the health insurance industry's profits, it's the right thing to do.

Thanks.

Right Wing E-Mail, Confusion, Evil Democrat Social Security, Obama's Ten Commandments & Right Wing Humor?.

2009-08-03T12:32:00.000-05:00

I got this in my e-mail, it was titled, "Obama's Health Care Letter".

To the average right winger who is intended to be the recipient it's obvious that Obama wants to kill off all the elderly in this country.

Well, all the elderly white folks.

But if you actually go to the trouble of reading the cartoon, the letter is from the health care industry.

Which would make this cartoon a fairly accurate representation of what is really going on.

But for right wingers, accuracy doesn't enter into the equation. They tend to be more instinctive, rather than rational beings and their instincts are predicated on misperceptions and out and out lies put out by the Right Wing Propaganda Machine. "Gullibility r' Us". Not to mention their racial, sexual and religious hangups.

So once again we'll delve into Right Wing Fantasy Land by checking out the Right Wing Propaganda Machine's lowest tech, but nonetheless effective, method of spreading their version of the gospel.

Hopefully, this will be done over several posts because they pack a lot of crap into a single e-mail.

The first is about Social Security, it fits into their current campaign of Obama and the Democrats are turning this country into a socialist/communist/fascist nation. They use all three terms because most of them don't really know what they mean.

Just in case some of you young whippersnappers (& some older ones too)

Weren't taught or just didn't know this. Be sure and show it to your kids. They need a little history lesson on what's what.

And it doesn't matter whether you are Democrat of Republican.

Facts are facts!!!

Our Social Security

Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program.

He promised:

1.) That participation in the program would be completely voluntary.

2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual incomes into the program,

3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year,

4.) That the money the participants put into the independent 'Trust Fund' rather than into the General Operating Fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no otherGovernment program, and,

5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income.

Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month -- and then finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the federal government to 'putaway, you may be interested in the following:

-------------------------------------------------- -----------

Q: Which political party took Social Security from the Independent 'Trust Fund' and put it in to the General Fund so that Congress could spend it? A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the Democratically-controlled House and Senate.

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Q: Which political party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding? A: The Democratic Party.

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Q: Which political party started taxing Social Security annuities? A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the 'tie-breaking' deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the U.S.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: Which political party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants?AND MY FAVORITE: A: That's right! Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party. Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, they began to receive Social Security payments! The Democratic Party gave these payments to them even though they never paid a dime into it!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Then, after violating the original contract (FICA), the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want to take your Social Security away! And the worst part about it is, uninformed citizens believe it!

If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and maybe changes will evolve. Maybe not, some Democrats are awfullysure of what isn't so. But it's worth a try.

How many people canYOU send this to?Actions speak louder than bumper stickers.

AND CONGRESS GIVES THEMSELVES 100% RETIREMENTFOR ONLY SERVING ONE TERM!!!'

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.'-Thomas Jefferson

Yes, "Facts are facts!!!" and that's about the only fact in this. Fortunately, there are folks who save me a lot of trouble by checking into these facts.

So here's the first paragraph of FactCheck.org's debunking of these "facts".

This elaborate collection of falsehoods is so detailed that we believe it must be an intentional and malicious effort at disinformation. It grafts some new whoppers on top of a list that we debunked in April 2004, in a special report we called "Lies in the E-mail, Part 2." The earlier version, we said, was "full of laughably inaccurate claims," and this one is worse.

Yet there are plenty of folks out there who believe this laughably inaccurate stuff and they vote and they are armed. Plus they see the rest of us as the enemy.

Here's an example.

I certainly want to give credit where it's due.

After observing Obama on the campaign trail and during his first six months in office, we have concluded that our President lives and governs according to his own set of "Ten Commandments." They're certainly NOT the Ten Commandments you learned in Sunday School. In fact, many are the direct opposite! To prove that our conclusions are correct, you will find a link to source documentation for each commandment on the Patriot Update web site.

Source documentation, that's a damned funny way to describe NewsMax.

I. Thou shalt have no God in America , except for me. For we are no longer a Christian nation and, after all, I am the chosen One. (And like God, I do not have a birth certificate.) SOURCE

II. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, unless it is my face carved on Mt. Rushmore . SOURCE

III. Thou shalt not utter my middle name in vain (or in public). Only I can say Barack Hussein Obama. SOURCE

IV. Remember tax day, April 15th, to keep it holy. SOURCE

V. Honour thy father and thy mother until they are too old and sick to care for. They will cost our public-funded health-care system too much money. SOURCE

VI. Thou shalt not kill, unless you have an unwanted, unborn baby. For it would be an abomination to punish your daughter with a baby. SOURCE

VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery if you are conservative or a Republican. Liberals and Democrats are hereby forgiven for all of their infidelity and immorality, but the careers of conservatives will be forever destroyed. SOURCE

VIII. Thou shalt not steal, until you've been elected to public office. Only then is it acceptable to take money from hard-working, successful citizens and give it to those who do not work, illegal immigrants, or those who do not have the motivation to better their own lives. SOURCE

IX. Thou shalt not discriminate against thy neighbor unless they are conservative, Caucasian, or Christian. SOURCE

X. Thou shalt not covet because it is simply unnecessary. I will place such a heavy tax burden on those that have achieved the American Dream that, by the end of my term as President, nobody will have any wealth or material goods left for you to covet. SOURCE

Don't you just pity the white, conservative Christians. They're just so persecuted. Well, they think they are! And they'll look you right in the eye and tell you it's not paranoia if it's really happening to you. If you happen to mention it during a conversation. Which I do. Well hell, I live right here in the big middle of them and I like to have a little fun. And it's a lot of fun to mess with people who actually think that Fox News is "Fair and Balanced". It's my hobby.

I'll leave you with a little of what passes for humor on the right.

Drinking with a Redneck Girl

A Mexican, an Arab, and a redneck girl are in the same bar. When the Mexican finishes his beer, he throws his glass in the air, pulls out his pistol, and shoots the glass to pieces. He says, 'In Mexico , our glasses are so cheap we don't need to drink with the same one twice.'

The Arab, obviously impressed by this, drinks his beer, throws it into the air, pulls out his AK-47, and shoots the glass to pieces... He says, 'In the Arab World, we have so much sand to make glasses that we don't need to drink with the same one twice either...'

The redneck girl, cool as a cucumber, picks up her beer, downs it in one gulp, throws the glass into the air, whips out her 45, and shoots the Mexican and the Arab. Catching her glass, setting it on the bar, and calling for a refill, she says, 'In America we have so many illegal aliens that we don't have to drink with the same ones twice.'

' God Bless America

Naw, they're not racist, xenophobic, homophobic, neurotic or paranoid, right wingers are what made this country great. Don't believe me, just ask one.

Acually I have done quite a bit of drinking with redneck girls in the past. And those stories are no doubt more interesting than the ones I post now.

And since today's my 26th wedding anniversary I'll say no more about it.

Thanks for putting up with me all these years, Boo-Boo.

Later.

Blue Dog Democrat: A Right Wing Nut by Any Other Name is Still..., Health Care Reform, Dan Boren and Maxine Waters.

2009-07-30T06:25:00.000-05:00

OK, just who are the Blue Dog "Democrats"?

Well that's easy, considering that these people are actually proud of their efforts to destroy the Democratic Party and what it stands for.

From their own website,

Blue Dog Leadership Team

Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD), Blue Dog Co-Chair for AdministrationRep. Baron Hill (IN-09), Blue Dog Co-Chair for PolicyRep. Charlie Melancon (LA-03), Blue Dog Co-Chair for CommunicationsRep. Heath Shuler (NC-11), Blue Dog Whip

Blue Dog Members

Altmire, Jason (PA-04) Arcuri, Mike (NY-24)Baca, Joe (CA-43)Barrow, John (GA-12)Berry, Marion (AR-01)Bishop, Sanford (GA-02)Boren, Dan (OK-02)Boswell, Leonard (IA-03) Boyd, Allen (FL-02)Bright, Bobby (AL-02)Cardoza, Dennis (CA-18)Carney, Christopher (PA-10)Chandler, Ben (KY-06)Childers, Travis (MS-01)Cooper, Jim (TN-05)Costa, Jim (CA-20)Cuellar, Henry (TX-28)Dahlkemper, Kathy (PA-03)Davis, Lincoln (TN-04)Donnelly, Joe (IN-02)Ellsworth, Brad (IN-08)Giffords, Gabrielle (AZ-08)Gordon, Bart (TN-06)Griffith, Parker (AL-05) Harman, Jane (CA-36)Herseth Sandlin, Stephanie (SD)Hill, Baron (IN-09)Holden, Tim (PA-17)Kratovil, Jr., Frank (MD-01)McIntyre, Mike (NC-07)Marshall, Jim (GA-03)Matheson, Jim (UT-02)Melancon, Charlie (LA-03)Michaud, Mike (ME-02)Minnick, Walt (ID-01)Mitchell, Harry (AZ-05)Moore, Dennis (KS-03)Murphy, Patrick (PA-08)Nye, Glenn (VA-02) Peterson, Collin (MN-07)Pomeroy, Earl (ND)Ross, Mike (AR-04)Salazar, John (CO-03)Sanchez, Loretta (CA-47)Schiff, Adam (CA-29)Scott, David (GA-13)Shuler, Heath (NC-11)Space, Zack (OH-18)Tanner, John (TN-08)Taylor, Gene (MS-04)Thompson, Mike (CA-01)Wilson, Charles (OH-06)

What purpose do these Blue Dog "Democrats" serve?

According to their website,

The fiscally conservative Democratic Blue Dog Coalition was formed in 1995 with the goal of representing the center of the House of Representatives and appealing to the mainstream values of the American public. The Blue Dogs are dedicated to a core set of beliefs that transcend partisan politics, including a deep commitment to the financial stability and national security of the United States. Currently there are 51 members of the Blue Dog Coalition.

"Center"? Better make that "Way Right". "Mainstream values of the American public", how about "Twisted values of the American Right". "A core set of beliefs that transend partisan politics", apparently their "core set of beliefs" is that the Republicans are right and "transend partisan politics" is just obvious BS. Maybe they can fool the blissfully ignorant with that transending partisan politics line. They should really hire someone who knows something about fantasy writing to do this stuff. And they do have a commitment to the financial stability and national security of this country. That is, if you remove the code words and replace them with what they actually mean. "Financial stability", that means "Status Quo", in other words, keep things like they are now, the rich getting richer and the rest of us getting crapped on. No tax hikes for the wealthy or Big Business, we can cut services instead. "National Security" is code for throwing taxpayer dollars at military contractors while doing virtually nothing for the troops.

There probably are 51 members, but since this is from their website, who can be sure?

The Blue Dogs were called the Bush Dogs by discerning observers. Wonder why?

A tightly-knit group of self-styled moderate and conservative Democrats in the House of Representatives known as the Blue Dog Coalition supported controversial legislation granting the Bush administration expanded powers to spy on Americans.

The Blue Dogs have apparently informed the Democratic leadership in the House that they support the ongoing occupation of Iraq.

The Blue Dogs have provided key votes on controversial bills backed by the Bush administration. In September of 2006, 31 Democratic representatives voted with the Republican majority in the House to pass The Military Commissions Act. The controversial act empowered Bush to designate individuals as "enemy combatants," and deny them certain legal rights.

"The FISA bill is an absolute embarrassment. The idea that Congress would pass legislation, in this day and age, that would allow the government to spy on Americans with out any independent review from the courts or Congress is unbelievable."

You even have to pass an ideological purity test to Join the Blue Dogs.

According to Mahoney, he faced a thorough vetting process before being accepted into the group. "You have to be interviewed and accepted by the group. You have to be able to demonstrate that you're ideologically supportive of being fiscally conservative. You show them speeches and statements you've made in the past," Mahoney told the Charlotte Sun, a local paper from his district.

Wow. I'd be happy to show them some of my statements.

Let's recap, the Blue Dogs claim to be fiscally responsible, yet they backed Bush's trillion dollar war for no reason.

So, what are the Blue Dogs doing for us now? Quite a bit actually, if you're an insurance company. Squat, if your uninsured or underinsured.

The support for Blue Dogs from health care professionals is even more evident. Health pros are among the top 20 industry donors to 38 Blue Dogs since 1989 and are the No. 1 donor for five of them. Health pros have also given the typical Blue Dog $47,550 more than the typical non-Blue Dog Democrat in the House. This month the American Medical Association, which lobbies on behalf of doctors, also came out against a public health insurance plan. The AMA is among the top 20 contributors to 10 Blue Dogs since 1989.

Insurance and pharmaceutical companies fear that a public health option would allow the government to control costs and steal business. And with the Blue Dogs leading the charge against the government-funded plan, the industries might just get their way. Without any support from the GOP, two-thirds of the coalition's members, who mostly represent Southern and Midwestern states, would have to get behind the House legislation, according to Kaiser Health News.

The Blue Dogs by working hand in hand with their ideological soulmates, the GOP and the Mainstream Media, are going to blow the smartest thing that this country has been trying to do in a long time.

But be forewarned, the rot from within the Republican Party doesn’t mean Republicans can’t still win elections. They know how to drive up the “negatives” of their opponents. In a rare display of candor, North Carolina Representative Patrick McHenry said: “Our goal is to bring down the approval numbers for [Speaker] Pelosi and for House Democrats. That will take repetition. This is a marathon, not a sprint.” He boasted about the GOP’s “strategy” going forward: “We will lose on legislation. But we will win the message war every day, and every week, until November 2010.” This Republican “communications” operation is already in full swing with the corporate media playing the usual enabler role.

The Blue Dogs provide an opening for the Republicans to “triangulate” against the progressives inside the Democratic Party. They’re calling for “belt tightening” at a time of severe under-consumption and high employment. Republican leaders in the Senate will try to use the Evan Bayhs and Blanche Lincolns of the Blue Dog faction as a wedge to defeat vital parts of President Barack Obama’s legislative agenda.

Blue Dogs, willing dupes of the Right.

But there are still some real Democrats who have the cojones to stand up and say what needs to be said.

WATERS: Well that may be difficult for Rahm Emanuel, because don't forget -- he recruited most of them. As when he was over in the Congress, in the leadership, Rahm Emanuel recruited more conservative members and based on some of the information I'm getting, they told them that they could vote the way they wanted to vote, that they would not interfere with what was considered their philosophy about some of these things. So, now the chickens have come home to roost.

But many of these Blue Dogs represent districts that have strong pockets of poverty and minorities and they're not representing them with this approach that they're taking. And so I don't know whether or not there will be people running against them. Certainly we're not organized to run anybody against anybody, that's not normally what's done. But there may be people out there listening and observing all of this who may get motivated based on what they're seeing, and throw their hat into the ring.

The folks over a Open Left have been on top of this for a while. You should really check them out, excellent stuff.

Without challenging these members, we will never be able to get progressive legislation through Congress. Or, to put it another way, we think expanded warrantless wiretapping authority is awful for any President to have because we don't want to be spied on. We think the Iraq war is really bad and that troops should be withdrawn. We don't agree with Bush Dog Democrats on the substance of their policy ideas, nor do we think it's a good thing that they are helping George W. Bush govern in an effective working conservative majority.

That was from 2007, they're now fighting the Bush Dogs on health care. The principle's the same.

My personal "Dog" went on MSNBC to lie about health care.

One of the most recalcitrant Democrats in the health care debate said on Wednesday that his skepticism about a public health insurance option was driven by concern for the health of private insurers.

Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Meeting," Blue Dog Democrat Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma said that he generally agreed that a government-run insurance program could effectively lower costs for consumers.

"The problem," he argued, "is in a state like Oklahoma, where we have a lot of private insurers, you have a public option come in and it drives everything else out and the only thing left is the public option and then you have rationed care."

This is what Boren and the Blue Dogs and the Republicans are backing.

Rescission (also known as "post-claims underwriting") is the process whereby health insurers avoid paying out benefits to treat cancer and other serious illnesses by seeking and often finding chickenshit errors in the policyholder's paperwork that can justify canceling the policy. In one job evaluation, the health insurer WellPoint actually scored a director of group underwriting on a scale of 1 to 5 based on the dollar amount she had managed to deny through rescission. (The director had saved the company nearly $10 million, earning a score of 3. WellPoint's president, Brian A. Sassi, insists this is not routine company practice.) Rescission's victims tend typically to be less-educated people who are more likely to make an error in filling out their insurance forms and lack the means to challenge a rescission in court—a path in which success is, at any rate, not guaranteed, because under state law the practice is perfectly legal if done within the allowable time frame (typically up to two years after a policy is issued).

The health crisis doesn't get more gothic than this. Robin Beaton, a retired nurse in Texas, was rescinded last year by Blue Cross and Blue Shield after she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. Blue Cross said this was because she had neglected to state on her forms that she had been treated previously … for acne. Beaton eventually persuaded her congressman, Rep. Joe Barton, to twist Blue Cross' arm, but the delay meant it was five months before she could receive her operation. Otto Raddatz, a restaurant owner in Illinois, was rescinded in 2004 by Fortis Insurance Co. after he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Fortis said this was because Raddatz had failed to disclose that a CT scan four years earlier had revealed that he had an aneurism and gall stones. Raddatz replied—and his doctor confirmed—that he had never been told about these conditions (the doctor said they were "very minor" and didn't require treatment), but Fortis nonetheless refused a payout until the state attorney general intervened. The delay in treatment eliminated Raddatz's chances of recovery, and he died.

The bottom line is this, we have to have a single payer (government) option. This is the one thing that Big Biz and their minions are fighting the most. Without it we would have the same thing that we have now. What we have now is paying the highest price in the world for the 37th ranked health care.

What single payer means is the country would expand Medicare i.e. to cover all its citizens. If they wanted it. And who wouldn't.

Or you could look at it as everyone receiving Veterans Administration health care. That's what I have and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

So don't believe the scare tactics and lies that the Right is putting out. It's just a part of their evil plan to regain power and it's not in your own best self interest.

Even the nutcases on the Religious Right are getting into the act.

Perkins explains: "In a world of health care rationing, the elderly, the handicapped and the frail are the most likely to lose their lives because care was delayed or denied. Under the government-run plans in England and Canada, the countries' sick and elderly aren't getting the care they need. As a result, their system isn't improving lives but prematurely taking them. Here in the United States, President Obama's rationing would mean that you and I could be denied basic care while our tax dollars are used to underwrite a mother choosing to end the life of her unborn child."

Scare tactics and lies. I guess some of us are just as stupid as the politicians think we are.

Later.

National Council for a New America Wants You, Roy Blunt, Louis Gomert, American Energy Alliance, Robert J. Samuelson and the Texas State Board of Ed.

2009-05-04T04:37:00.008-05:00

Meet the new Republican party, the new Republican party that now empathizes with those it used to scorn.

The new Republican party is looking forward to taking on new tough challanges. They want to be loved by the GLBT community, they want to be loved by the working class, they want to be loved by someone other than the angry, closed-minded, white folks that have filled their dance cards for the last 100 years.

They are rebranding their image. No longer wanting to be known as the "Party of No", they are now officially the "National Council for a New America" or unofficially "We'll change, we'll do anything if you'll just take us back, just give us one more chance. Please!" council.

Yeah, the GOP knows that it's about as popular as dog vomit right now and they are desperately wanting to convince the American people that their policies really wasn't the reasons that led this nation to near ruin over the 30 years. They want to do this and keep their extreme base happy at the same time. The same extreme base that actually liked those policies and want more of the same.

Prepare to be bamboozled.

Some Republican leaders today launched what they are calling a "conversation with America."

It was the first of several events planned as part of a new movement they're calling The National Council for a New America. The event drew some of the biggest names in the GOP, including former presidential candidate Mitt Romney and former Florida governor Jeb Bush.

Their effort is drawing a lot of attention, the venue was packed.

Audience members packed into a small pizza joint in Arlington to listen and to be heard.

Even with the success of drawing enough semi-openminded supporters and sycophants

...which included reporters, Republican aides and their friends,...

to fill a small pizza place they still have a tiny problem.

But it's a complex task -- going back to roots of fiscal conservatism, without marginalzing a social conservative base -- all the while reaching out to moderates and independents who have left the party in droves.

And just how is all this love working out with that base?

...a group of conservative activists who were protesting in the parking lot complained that they were not allowed through the doors.

“We’re demonstrating against the fact that this organization set up by RINOs [Republicans in Name Only] have taken immigration off the agenda,” said Michael McLaughlin, a member of the American Council for Immigration Reform, a group seeking to stem the flow of immigrants into the country.

The activists grumbled that Republican organizers did not widely advertise the event. Several wearing shirts declaring themselves “Republicans Against Maverick McCain” craned their necks for a glimpse of the senior lawmaker, who did not show up.

Hey, the GOP crawled through the crap on their bellies to court the extremists, they got 'em and now they can't function without them. Cosmic justice? Yeah, if cosmic justice has a sense of humor. I know I'm getting one hell of a kick out of this.

Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) has kind of an unique take on the situation. It sort of defies logic, but then logic is not really necessary when you have faith in the infallibility of your party's ideology.

“Just because we’re in a situation now where we vote no doesn’t mean we are the ‘party of no’ or have no ideas,” said former House Republican Whip Roy Blunt , who is running for Senate in Missouri and signed the letter. “This adds another way of getting those ideas out there.”

That's right folks, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it ain't no duck. It's actually a clever plan to make sure that the Republican's fresh new ideas, which they're not talking about because they're the same ideas that got us into this mess in the first place, get out to the American people.

They make this so easy.

Outside of the National Council for a New America, it looks pretty much like the SOS.

MIT economist John Reilly has come out and criticized Republicans for distorting his research on clean energy policy. GOP officials have been repeatedly misusing his work to claim that a cap-and-trade system would cost American families $3,100 in extra energy taxes each year. (In fact, the study actually says that any tax burden would be about one-fortieth of what Republicans claim.) Instead of responding to Reilly with facts, Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX) is now bashing the economist with ad hominem attacks in CNS News:

You're gonna love this.

Anyone who thinks you can pay $3,100 to the federal government and thinks you can get that money back completely in services — like I said — he may go to M-I-T but he is an N-U-T.

This has been the Right's strategy for the last 30 years. If you repeat something enough it becomes common knowledge thereby the truth. And it has worked great. It doesn't say much for the intellect of the American people though.

In the American people's defense, the Right has some pretty sophisticated help in perpetuating these myths. Take for instance,

The largest U.S. energy companies increased lobbyist spending by 30% in 2008 to influence energy and climate change legislation. Some of those funds are now going towards the creation of the American Energy Alliance, a new off-shoot of Institute for Energy Research.

The American Energy Alliance is headed by an oil industry lobbyist named Thomas J. Pyle. Before joining AEA, Pyle was a policy adviser to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX). Pyle’s former employer was among the top recipients of oil industry campaign contributions from 1998 to 2004, raking in $498,375 according to the Center for Public Integrity. Pyle then went to work for the oil-giant, Koch Industries.

The American Energy Alliance is airing radio ads in the home districts of moderate Democrats in order to press legislators to vote against the Waxman-Markey clean energy bill.

The ad repeats the debunked $3,100 lie that energy companies and their conservative allies have been pushing for weeks.

And Robert J. Samuelson of The Washington Post is doing his part to help the cause too. According to him, Obama hates the Oil companies to the detriment of all Americans.

Considering the brutal recession, you'd expect the Obama administration to be obsessed with creating jobs. And so it is, say the president and his supporters. The trouble is that there's one glaring exception to their claims: the oil and natural gas industries. The administration is biased against them -- a bias that makes no sense on either economic or energy grounds. Almost everyone loves to hate the world's Exxons, but promoting domestic drilling is simply common sense.

Improved production techniques (example: drilling in deeper waters) have increased America's recoverable oil and natural gas. The resistance to tapping these resources is mostly political. To many environmentalists, expanding fossil fuel production is a cardinal sin. The Obama administration often echoes this reflexive hostility. The resulting policies aim more to satisfy popular prejudice -- through photo ops and sound bites -- than national needs.

I think Samuelson is just a shill for Big Oil.

Here's what other folks had to say about him.

Before we get all warm and fuzzy about real journalists at The Washington Post like Dana Milbank�or whores like Jonathan Weisman who sometimes act like real journalists�it�s important to remember that paper is still firmly captured, ensnared by corporate greed and a nauseating self-righteousness.

Robert J. Samuelson fits that profile perfectly today in his incredibly dishonest and condescending piece The Phony Job Debate. �Electing a president based on job creation makes as much sense as selecting a doctor based on palm reading.�

And from The New Mexico Independent,

His Establishment bias goes way beyond health. No agonizing for Samuelson on the growing income gap between the very rich and everybody else – shades of the 1920s! Nor on the export of American jobs or low investment in public goods (like crumbling bridges). He has inveighed against swollen Wall Street salaries, but on the deregulation now jeopardizing us, he’s been confused, as if the problem was bad people on Wall Street rather than the system. Thus, in April, as the subprime scandal unfolded, Samuelson wrote that greed, shortsightedness and herd behavior compromise modern finance. “But regulation cannot cure this dilemma, because regulators can’t anticipate all the problems and hazards, either.”

That’s wrong, mostly. Regulation did deter but corporate America had it removed.

If you have two functioning brain cells to rub together, you know that regulation worked. We can thank Bill Clinton and some of the other Democrats for caving on that one.

But the more the Right feigns change, the more things stay the same.

"In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards."

Mark Twain wrote that in 1897, and Americans still quote it, with feeling. It comes to mind for many observers of a current battle over science education in Texas.

Texas's school board, the State Board of Education (BOE), has been fighting about standards for science textbooks the state buys. Since March, clamorous attention has focused on a proposal to require that texts discuss the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolutionary theory. Everyone knew this was a ploy to get creationist ideas into the classroom. The scientific community was relieved when the BOE finally voted not to include that language – and dismayed when it then voted for amendments that mandate the same thing. The BOE's exuberant chair says he's not afraid to "stand up to the experts."

What's expert opinion worth when compared to a right winger's intuition?

I'll leave you with what passes for humor in Right Wing Fantasy Land. Yeah, another e-mail.

OBAMA TO TAX ASPIRIN.....

I JUST HEARD THAT YOUR PRESIDENT OBAMA IS GOING TO IMPOSE A 40% TAX ON ASPIRIN BECAUSE IT'S WHITE AND IT WORKS.

Sick puppies.

Later.

Congressional Democrats Taking Bids on Their Votes, Estate Tax, Farm Subsidies, Health Care, Bankruptcy Law, Ben Nelson and Richard Lugar.

2009-05-02T12:41:00.007-05:00

This post would have been out a lot earlier, at least 24 hours, if it weren't for my electric going out, the cloud cover zapped my internet connection and my poor old kerosine powered computer wanting to take a break.

In the 2008 elections it was pretty obvious that the country wanted change. We knew that we could expect plenty of opposition from the Republicans. We're getting plenty of that.

What's surprising is the amount of opposition that we are getting from those who are supposedly on our side.

This is from 2006:

With the 2006 midterm elections nearing and the Republicans receiving record-low approval ratings from the American public, companies and business groups are reaching out to opposition leaders in anticipation of a possible Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives, or even a Democratic sweep of Congress for the first time in 14 years.

The good news for the business as usual folks is that it's working. It looks like a lot of Democrats have no problem whoring for the lobbyists.

The House and Senate approved a $3.5-trillion federal budget outline Wednesday that embraces, in general terms, Obama's top priorities in healthcare, energy and education. But lawmakers have turned a cold shoulder to many of the president's proposals to shift wealth and federal subsidies from the rich to the less affluent.

That's right, too many congressional Democrats are spreading their legs for Big Business and the rich while giving the finger to the working class.

What I find as the most egregious breach of trust by some Democrats is:

Some Democrats even defected from Obama when it came to taxing the wealthiest Americans through the estate tax.

You've heard of the estate tax, the Right calls it the "Death Tax" and says it's the evil government's attempt to tax a person for dying. Like most things the Right claims, this is just pure BS.

The estate tax actually only applies to .025% of us, I guess "of them" would be more accurate. That's .025% of the wealthiest in this country. In fact, 18 of the richest families in the country have been financing the lobbying to do away with the estate tax.

Eighteen families, including the owners of Nordstrom Inc., The Seattle Times Co., Mars Inc., Koch Industries Inc. and Wal-Mart Inc., that stand to save $71.6 billion in taxes are financing lobbying efforts to repeal the estate tax, according to a study by two groups.

Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy, which want to see estate tax rates increased to as high as 60 percent, said the families perpetrated a fraud on ordinary Americans by saying the levy constitutes an unfair "death tax." Only about 0.25 percent of Americans who die this year will leave an estate large enough to be taxed, the groups said.

That's quite a cause that these Democrats are rallying to.

Some Dems tucked their tails between their shaky legs on farm subsidies too.

The congressional budget did not incorporate Obama's proposal to cut off subsidies to farms with sales exceeding $500,000 a year, a move that bowed to the agriculture lobby and influential rural lawmakers, including the Senate Budget Committee's Conrad.

A lot of my relatives around here were farmers and trust me, the money does not go to family farms. It's not often that I agree with the Heritage Foundation. I guess it's true that if you dig through enough crap you might finally find that pony. It's from 2002, but things haven't changed.

These subsidy programs tax working Americans to award millions to millionaires and provide profitable corporate farms with money that has been used to buy out family farms. The current farm bills1 would provide even greater subsidies for large farmers, costing the average household $4,400 over the next 10 years, while facilitating increased consolidation and buyouts in the agricultural industry.2

It's kinda funny that using taxpayer money to do anything to help the working class is such a bad thing while giving this same money to Big Business and the Rich is a noble cause. But then, they can afford to give some of it back to the same politicians who voted to give it to them.

Here's another example of just how dumb some Democrats are:

Meanwhile, middle-class voters face the prospect of losing Obama's "Making Work Pay" tax credit -- of as much as $400 for individuals and $800 for couples -- after 2010.The budget resolution did not make room for a longer extension of the tax break.

Democrats said they had to impose that limit, at least for now, in deference to the worsening budget outlook.

Who do they think is electing them?

Most of us understand that all civilized countries have universal health care, that it works and it's less expensive than the mess that we call health care in this country. The president wants to partly fund it in this country by lowering the deduction for charitable donations to 28% from 33%. Only the rich get the 33% deduction, the rest of us just get the 28% anyway.

Needless to say, the lobbyists are having a fit over this.

Obama has defended the proposal as a matter of equity: Under current law, tax deductions are worth less to middle-class taxpayers than they are to wealthier people. For example, a middle-class bus driver gets only a 28% write-off for a $100 donation; someone in the upper income brackets gets 33% or more for the same donation.

Nonetheless, Obama's proposal is destined to fail, said Roberton Williams, a fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. "It sets up two groups to be the fall guys, and that mobilizes two fairly strong lobbies," he said.

Even the good guys in Congress can't compete with the Lobby Whores.

Today, a proposal to change bankruptcy law and allow bankruptcy judges to cram-down mortgage payments for troubled homeowners failed in the Senate by a vote of 45-51. The provision, which was introduced as an amendment by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), required 60 votes to pass. In recent weeks, support for the measure evaporated in the face of furious lobbying by the banking and mortgage industries. Prior to the vote, Durbin — who this week said that bankers “are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill” — took to the floor to decry the banking industry’s influence in the cram-down debate:

On the same subject:

The U.S. Senate could have stepped up to the plate yesterday and passed an amendment to help bankruptcy judges help homeowners. Instead, twelve Democrats joined all the Republicans in the Senate--including those two supposed 'moderates' from Maine that we hear so much about--to defeat the amendment.

Just so you know that Democrat Lobby Whores are not just a figment of my overactive imagination:

Sen. Ben Nelson said Thursday that he will oppose the creation of a government-run health insurance plan as part of a health care overhaul, contrary to the position held by many of his fellow Democrats.

The company Nelson finds himself in is laid out clearly: business, the insurance industry, and Republicans. Of course, this isn’t surprising, considering his campaign donation history. Open Secrets says Nelson received $608,709 from the insurance industry in 2007-2008, making the insurance industry his biggest donor group, more than lawyers and even lobbyists.

And our newest Democrat doesn't seem to understand what the hell is going on. If you want to call yourself a Democrat then you ought to at least try to act like one.

Specter (Pa.) on Thursday voted against a controversial bill that would have rewritten bankruptcy laws — a bill cherished by Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) — just a day after voting against the Democratic-written budget.

It's funny how anything designed to help the working class is termed controversial. Anyway, Democratic leaders are somewhat less than livid. "Aw shucks, he's just being independent".

Democratic leaders said Specter's "no" votes simply confirm his independence.

I think we need new leaders.

To quote a great American, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum 1971

Later

Senator John A. Boehner and Congresswoman Virginia Foxx Fleecing the Rubes.

2009-04-30T10:34:00.000-05:00

This is not what I planned on doing today, but when I read it I thought I might be able to have a little fun with it. The first is an interview with Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio by the Washington Times.

The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper was founded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed second coming of Christ and a bigtime GOP backer.

You wouldn't know it by looking at him, but apparently Senator Boehner has a delicate tummy. He tells us about it in the interview.

Boehner says Obama's bills makes him 'want to throw up'

See?

The top House Republican said Tuesday that the liberal bills being pushed by President Obama and congressional Democrats make him "want to throw up" and that Mr. Obama's first 100 days in office have shown he has "no plan for keeping America safe."

Oh, for the good old days when president was ticking off the rest of the world, starting wars for no reason, disregarding terrorist warnings and seeing evil doers behind every bush.

Unfortunately, for Boehner and the Right, paranoia is not conducive to feelings of well being or safety. Catch-22.

Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio said in an interview that decisions such as closing Guantanamo Bay prison and releasing classified memos on CIA interrogation techniques reflect a dangerous, "piecemeal approach" to national security.

"I'm just looking at some of these tactical moves that they've made, and I don't see how they fit into a larger picture," he said in an interview with editors and reporters at The Washington Times. "They have no plan for taking on the terrorists, and they have no plan for keeping America safe. What is the overarching strategy here?"

I have to applaud Senator Boehner for publicly admitting woefully inadequate cognitive abilities. It takes a big man to admit his shortcomings.

The "overarching strategy" can be found here, Obama's NSC Will Get New Power, btw. Always glad to help out the cognitively challenged.

He attacked Democratic initiatives such as a "hate crimes" bill being considered this week in the House, which would boost the federal government's authority to go after "bias-motivated violence." Conservative critics say the bill amounts to a gag rule for preachers and other religious figures who do not support homosexuality.

The bill "makes me want to throw up," Mr. Boehner said, blasting the idea of going after someone for "what we think they were thinking as opposed to what they did."
OMG! Obama's not only coming after our guns, but he wants our preachers too! And then he wants us put in jail for what we think! OMG! OMG! OMG!

It's just hard for me to believe that a grown man like Boehner could say something like this with a straight face. It's even harder for me to believe the number of people who actually believe this crap.

They ought to be just damned glad that there aren't laws against total stupidity in this country.

As I said before this is crap. Are you listening right wingers? It's just absolute BS. In fact, the language of the bill includes,

"Nothing in this Act, or the amendments made by this Act, shall be construed to prohibit any expressive conduct protected from legal prohibition by, or any activities protected by the free speech or free exercise clauses of, the First Amendment to the Constitution."

So you see, Fox News and the Right Wing Propaganda Machine, or even your hate spouting preachers will not be affected in any way. So you'll have to find something else to talk about at your next tea party.

The 10-term lawmaker criticized Mr. Obama's bid to shut down Guantanamo before figuring out where the high-risk terrorist detainees would be placed.

"We have a fabulous facility in Cuba. It is state of the art," he said. "I have no confidence that any detainees we send back to Yemen are going to be in prison for a very long time, and then they're right back on the battlefield."

Yeah, we should just keep them forever in order to make the Right feel safer. Brilliant!

I have a better idea. Let's move out the detainees and since it's such a "fabulous facility in Cuba" with "great food", we could open it up as a resort for vacationing right wingers. I got this from the right wing blogosphere.

It’s a tropical paradise with great food, comfortable accommodations and culturally sensitive religious services. It’s cleaner and more pleasant than the countries of origin of any of the inmates, and is far too good for them.

Too good for them, but great for tired right wingers who need a little rest far away from Obama and all of those America hating liberals. Hasta la vista!

Mr. Boehner also criticized Mr. Obama's release of Bush administration Justice Department memos approving "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding, saying it "handcuffs our intelligence professionals." He also challenged the premise that most of the information had been reported, arguing that an official government account is categorically different than a press report.

"They should have fought this court case all the way to the end instead of rolling over for their friends in the [American Civil Liberties Union]," Mr. Boehner said of the lawsuit that prompted the disclosure.

Boehner says he don't want the memos out because it would "handcuff our intelligence professionals". That's a little odd considering that our intelligence professionals say it doesn't work anyway. Like here and here and here.

So torture yields basically either no intelligence or bad intelligence. It don't work and Boehner's all for it. I have to give them credit, right wingers can go farther with no intelligence or bad intelligence than any other group that I've ever seen.

Senator Boehner also mentioned another of the Right's greatest fears, the ACLU. Imagine an organization that stands up for a person's civil rights, no matter who or what they are. That's just un-American.

Senator Boehner, champion of red herrings and straw dogs.

Champion of the ignorant beyond belief is North Carolina Congresswoman Virginia Foxx. Take a look at what she said:

Rep. Foxx: "The bill was named after a very unfortunate incident that happened, where a young man was killed, but we know that that young man was killed in the commitment of robbery. It wasn't because he was gay. The bill was named for him, the hate crimes bill was named for him, but it's, it's really a hoax, that that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills."[House Floor Speech, 4/29/09]

I mean, even the killers said they did it because he was gay.

I'm glad that these people are finally starting to be seen as the reactionary fringe group that they always have been.

Later.

Right Wing Analysis 101: There Will Be a Test.

2009-04-29T03:00:00.012-05:00

I really don't believe in pounding someone when they're down, however, considering all the trouble they've caused this country and since they are practically writing this post, why not?

Once again we'll delve into the twisted psyche of the Right and see just what kind of fun stuff we can come up with.

To be fair, we have to keep in mind that the Right is experiencing extremely high stress at the moment. They're still shellshocked from the 2008 election, only 21% of the population will admit to being Republican and Sen. Arlen Specter has left the Titanic. Thrown overboard is closer to the truth.

So, let's talk about Specter and the Right's reaction to his joining their nemesis.

“I would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don’t have a set of beliefs.”— Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC

“Guess now that Larry Craig is gone & Specter realized there was no teabagging at the teaparty, he had to go Dem for Frank to fondle him.”— RedState.com founder Erick Erickson, on Twitter.

“RINO Specter is the first to go! He knows that we conservatives are taking back the party and there’s simply no room for him. He’s just showing his true colors and being what he has been all along: a DEMOCRAT!!!!!! Now, if we could only dump Snowe and Collins….”a Free Republic poster

“I think the threat to the country presented by this defection really relates to the issue of whether or not in the United States of America our people want the majority to have whatever it wants, without restraint, without a check or a balance…. This is not a national story, this is a Pennsylvania story.”— Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

That's right Senator, the majority of the country want the majority party to have whatever it wants. You don't have to worry about checks and balances, that's our job and we'll do it.

Check out the comments at the bottom of the above article to see how the Right's rank and file handle adversity.

The Right's philosophical leader, the venerated Rush Limbaugh doesn't see it as a defection, but rather an ideological cleansing of his party.

"A lot of people say, 'Well, Specter, take [Sen. John] McCain with you. And his daughter [Meghan]. Take McCain and his daughter with you if you're gonna…" he told listeners, dissolving in laughter.

"…..It's ultimately good. You're weeding out people who aren't really Republicans," he said.

I remember when Rush ragged Chelsea Clinton, now Meghan McCain. You know, I really don't think that Rush cares much for girls.

While Rush was trying to keep his party pure, other right wing commentators were busy planting the notion of Swine Flu being introduced into this country by illegal aliens into their fertile yet empty minds. Of course, that's the only possible explanation.

Despite the fact that there is no evidence to support such claims, talk radio hosts Michael Savage and Neal Boortz, radio and Fox TV personality Glenn Beck, and columnist Michelle Malkin are spreading them faster than the contagion.

"Illegal aliens are bringing in a deadly new flue strain. Make no mistake about it," blares Michael Savage.

"I've blogged for years about the spread of contagious diseases from around the world into the US as a result of uncontrolled immigration," writes Michelle Malkin.

"What happens if there's a rash of deaths in Mexico... and if you're a family in Mexico and people are dying and Americans are not, why wouldn't you flood this border?" announces Glenn Beck.

Oh! But wait, there's an even more logical explanation.

"What better way to sneak a virus into this country than to give it to Mexicans....then spread a rumor there there are construction jobs here, and there they come," blathers Boortz.

Savage — "make no mistake about it" — believes that radical Islamic countries planted the virus in Mexico knowing that humans make the "perfect mules for bringing the strain into America."

Don't you just love well thought out and rational discourse?

Bonnie Fuller answers them point by point in her article that I stole these quotes from.

Specter's not the only Republican that the Right may decide that needs to be cleansed.

WASHINGTON – Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said Tuesday he will support the nomination of an Indiana University law professor to head the Obama administration’s internal law office.

Some Republicans have promised to try to block Johnsen’s confirmation either because of her support for abortion rights or because she criticized the legal justification used by the Bush administration for the torture of detainees.

OMG! The head of the Excutive Branch law office actually following the law? Well, we know that concept is just way too radical for the staid Right. No wonder they think the Left is crazy.

Despite all of the above, we know that the Right stands firm on whatever they consider principles, which, BTW, I believe still have about a day left on the bidding over at e-bay. When a Republican says something it's etched in stone.

While the stimulus was being debated in January, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor called a group of reporters into his office to outline the GOP's objections. As we filed in, we walked past a giant poster ridiculing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) for allegedly pushing for high-speed rail connecting Disneyland and Las Vegas.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," Cantor called that project an example of "waste and pork-barrel spending."

Asked about high-speed rail at a recent local event in Virginia, Cantor was all thumbs up. "If there is one thing that I think all of us here on both sides of the political aisle from all parts of the region agree with, it's that we need to do all we can to promote jobs here in the Richmond area," Cantor said of the high-speed rail.

No wonder the Right's base is confused, I know I am.

Now we will go from the questionably sane members of the Right to a couple that there's no question about.

The image at the top is the Twitter posts from this guy.

An Oklahoma City man who announced on Twitter that he would turn an April 15 tax protest into a bloodbath was hit with a federal charge of making interstate threats last week, in what appears to be first criminal prosecution to stem from posts on the microblogging site.

Daniel Knight Hayden, 52, was arrested by FBI agents who identified him as the Twitter user CitizenQuasar. In a series of tweets beginning April 11, CitizenQuasar vowed to start a “war” against the government on the steps of the Oklahoma City Capitol building, the site of that city’s version of the national “Tea Party” protests promoted by the conservative-leaning Fox News.

Hayden’s MySpace page is a breathtaking gallery of right wing memes about the “New World Order,” gun control as Nazi fascism, and Barack Obama’s covert use of television hypnosis, among many others.

I really don't understand this guy, we have television and the internet in Oklahoma, hell, some houses even have indoor plumbing, so there's really no excuse for this.

But I think this will make him a frontrunner for Sarah Palin's running mate in the 2012 election. Palin/Quasar, it'll sure look good on your bumper.

I tried to see if I recognized anyone on his friends list, but it's kinda hard since we all kinda tend to look alike in Oklahoma.

Unlike Citizen Quasar, this next guy was just kinda bummed out about Obama getting elected. So, he whacked a couple of deputies. He'll have to do better than that to get the Glenn Beck decoder ring.

An offense report filed against Cartwright the day he died outlines an angry husband who threatened his wife, kept guns and knives on hand, was "severely disturbed" that Barack Obama had been elected president, and believed the U.S. government was conspiring against him.

I was going to save this groundbreaking conclusion for the last, but for some reason I'm putting here, probably hoping it will segue into the next item.

The Right has a tenuous grasp of reality. Shocking, huh?

Ohio State University has done a study and found that the folks on the Right actually think Stephen Colbert is serious and is making fun of the Left. Very, very tenuous.

"Our results aren't that conservatives don't get the joke. It's that how you see the joke depends on who you are," says Kristen Landreville, a PhD student in communications at Ohio State University and one of three co-authors. "If you're conservative, you think the joke's on liberals because he's openly making fun of liberals."

And they think the country would be better off with them in charge.

The right may be down, but they're by no means out. They have a cunning plan.

Washington, D.C. (April 28, 2009) – As the White House and Congressional leaders seek to move the country dramatically left, some of America’s most prominent conservative leaders, strategists, academic voting behavior experts and professional pollsters have come together to form Resurgent Republic, an independent, not-for-profit organization that aims to shape the debate over the proper role of government. More giveaways to Big Business and the rich.

Resurgent Republic will promote market-oriented policies, deregulation lower taxes and economic growth, for Big Biz and the rich and strong national security policies. open the doors of the treasury to defense contractors It will help policy makers, think tanks, interest groups and others advocate for policies that are consistent with conservative principles, and oppose policies that stifle job creation, weaken national security and undermine values that have made America a great country. eight more years of Bush or putting lipstick on a pig---no, not Limbaugh in drag

So, let's review:

What have we learned about the Right, it's inhabitants and it's policies?

If you used any form of the words Bat Guano, you get an A.

Have your educational institution contact me to get that put on your transcript, Right Wing Analysis 101.

Later.

What the Right is Thinking, Fantasizing, Muddling, Mulling Over and/or Wanting to Foment.

2009-04-26T05:06:00.009-05:00

First of all, it's pretty obvious that they still believe that they're in the majority, even though they're not.

They also seem to believe that there is a ground swell in this country for a revolution to overthrow our new liberal/socialist/fascist/whatever government that the actual majority voted in.

They actually think that the rest of us are so clueless that we can't understand that the Obama Administration and the Democrat Congress are dismantling the Constitution and bringing in communism as our new form of government. They know this because, by God they love this country and care enough to take interest in what's going on. They stay informed, they listen to talk radio, they watch Fox News, they click on WorldNetDaily and Newsmax and they're all saying the same things, so it must be true.

Oh yeah, and they're going to take our guns away from us. Just like Hitler did.

But hang on a minute, where were all these Constitution lovers during the last eight years. How many of them really realize that there's a lot more to the Constitution than the 2nd Amendment?

Imagine the furor if Barack Obama had said these words:

"I don't give a goddamn," Bush retorted. "I'm the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."

"Mr. President," one aide in the meeting said. "There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution."

"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back. "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"

I really don't remember their outrage when this happened. They didn't complain when George W. Bush called our Constitution a "Goddamned piece of paper" and they didn't complain when Bush ignored the Constitution and broke the law in doing so.

We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship. The constitutional rights we learned about in high school civics were suspended. That was thanks to secret memos crafted deep inside the Justice Department that effectively trashed the Constitution. What we know now is likely the least of it.

Of course, to a card carrying member of the Silent "Majority", none of this stuff actually happened. It was just hype perpetrated by the liberal media. Really.

Let's take a look at what motivates these people.

Here's what a joke looks like in the extreme Right. I think it epitomizes the Right's "Audacity of Hope".

What does President Lincoln, President Kennedy, and Presedent Obama have in common?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nothing Yet .

I get this neat stuff in my e-mail. It's kinda scary. There's lots of folks out there who really believe this stuff. They are afraid of their government, they are paranoid and they are armed.

Here's a really neat one, it has a biblical theme and it pretty much covers the whole Right Wing Fantasy Land misinformation campaign. You can see it all here.

It's titled "The Promised One". Obama, of course is the Promised One. Here's the happy ending.

> >> And the people said, "Wait a minute. That is unfair!!"

> >> And the world said, "Neither are these other idiotic

> >> programs you have embraced. Lo, you have become a Socialist state and a

> >> second-rate power. Now you shall play by our rules!"

> >> And the people cried out,"Alas, alas!! What have we done?"

> >> But yea verily, it was too late... The people set upon The

> >> One and spat upon him and stoned him, and his name was dung. And the

> >> once mighty nation was no more; and the once proud people were without

> >> sustenance or shelter or hope. And the Change The One had given them was

> >> as like unto a poison that had destroyed them and like a whirlwind that

> >> consumed all that they had built. And the people beat their chests in

> >> despair and cried out in anguish, "Give us back our nation and our pride

> >> and our hope!!" But it was too late, and their homeland was no more.

> >> .......................

> >> You may think this is a fairy tale, but it's not. It's

> >> happening RIGHT NOW!> >>> >>

After reading this, if your not wetting your knickers, you must not be a "real American". Mine's dry too.

You must be thinking, "Why would anyone rather believe untruths and be miserable when it's just as easy to believe the truth?" We all know that knowing the truth doesn't make you happy but at least the things that we're concerned about merit that concern. I mean, we're not going to get off our butts, go buy tea and go protest a 3% tax increase on the richest 5% of the country.

When I first read the next vitriolic screed I thought it was written by one of the "Silent Majority" members who had let the right wing propaganda take her off the deep end and needed to vent their rage before they spontaneously combusted.

It was surprising to find out that the woman who wrote this is quite accomplished. I figure that she is just another of the Right's hired guns that they use to manipulate the rubes.

It's about the Obama's trip to the G20 Summit and her indignation over the Obama's performance during that trip

You can read it all here, but here's some bits and pieces.

Yo, first couple!

Yeah, that's really the title.

OK, Barack and Michelle - it's my turn now.

As long as you seem to be on the road of informality, throwing tradition, etiquette, proper diplomacy, protocol and common sense out the window and replacing it with 21st century casual, I'm taking the liberty, as an American citizen, to give you a message from my heart: stop it!

For two people of your political and diplomatic level, your breezy disregard for proper behavior is embarrassing.

Don't you just love how the Right feels that they are experts on all matters and therefore they should be the arbitrator on all matters, because the rest of us are just too stupid to understand grown up things. Like this.

We've been treated to you repeatedly criticizing and apologizing for our country on foreign soil in front of world leaders. Then, to make it worse, you bowed to the Saudi king, a full, from-the-waist, bow!

What was that about? Bowing signifies subservience! You can make book that the Saudis and all the Middle East understands that. Barack, the president of the United States of America is not subservient to anyone.

That bow was inappropriate and demeaning to your office and to all Americans. You should be ashamed, at the very least, embarrassed.

You can kinda see my problem with taking these people's selective indignation too seriously.

This was going to be it, but I received a new "joke" today. I just thought I'd share it with you.

Obama walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder. The bartender says, Hey, where did you get that? The parrot says, Kenya ...they're all over the place!

When you stop rolling around on the floor check out this video and think about if the Right is who you want leading this country into the future.

Did you know?

I don't think the Right could even come close to grasping the implications.

Later.

Standing With Mississippi.

2009-04-25T03:49:00.003-05:00

Heather Young sent me the following information about the Mississippi Center for Justice and their Standing With Mississippi campaign to force Mississippi's corrupt (my word) Republican Governor Haley Barbour to take federal money to help Mississippi's working class and stop acting like a posturing dumbass (again, my words).

OK, Heather I've signed the petition and here's my endorsement.

For those of you who don't know who Haley Barbour is, lucky you. Haley's a big time, Southern, good old boy, anything that helps the rich and screws the poor must be a good thing, Republican party philosopher/propaganda expert. He was even chairman of the Republican National Committee from '94-'97.

Here's a little more background on Barbour courtesy of Think Progress.

Family members and lobbyists profited from Katrina tragedy: "Among the beneficiaries are Barbour's own family and friends, who have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from hurricane-related business. A nephew, one of two who are lobbyists, saw his fees more than double in the year after his uncle appointed him to a special reconstruction panel."

Owned controlling interest in 2002 New Hampshire phone jamming company: For nearly two hours on election day 2002, subcontractors for the telemarketing firm GOP Marketplace tied-up Democratic and union phone banks with repeated hang up calls. Multiple GOP officials eventually either pled guilty to or were convicted of criminally violating federal communications law. Barbour's investment group, Helm Partners, was not only a major investor in GOP Marketplace, but it also held a controlling interest in the firm.

As a lobbyist, he represented firm indicted in Tom DeLay's money laundering scandal: As a lobbyist for Barbour Griffith & Rogers, Barbour represented The Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care Inc., "a corporate coalition of 14 of the country's largest for-profit nursing home companies." The Alliance wrote a check for $100,000 "ended up illegally funding Republican candidates for the Texas statehouse" in 2002. The check was eventually used as evidence in the case that led to indictments for money laundering against former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX).

A former tobacco lobbyist, he killed Mississippi's successful anti-smoking program: From 1998 to 2002, Barbour's lobbying firm "was paid a total of $3.8 million by the tobacco companies." As governor of Mississippi, he led an effort to defund and ultimately kill the state's anti-smoking program, considered to be "the nation's most successful anti-smoking programs."

Directed large amounts of reconstruction funds to wealthy homeowners: Barbour and Mississippi's two Republican Senators steered an "unprecedented" $23.5 billion in federal reconstruction aid, but by waiving a HUD requirement that "70 percent of the funds are supposed to be allocated to low- and moderate-income people." Barbour "badly skewed" the funds towards "wealthy homeowners," with only 25 percent reaching "the poorer segments of the population."

What a guy.

Here's the plug from Standing with Mississippi.

Petition to Governor Barbour: Accept Stimulus MoneyMississippi

Center for Justice launches national online petition in favor of stimulus

Mississippi Center for Justice launched an online campaign, “Standing With Mississippi,” designed to inform Mississippians—and other friends around the country—about Governor Haley Barbour’s intended rejection of nearly $60 million in Unemployment Insurance benefits provided to Mississippi as part of the Federal stimulus package.

“Standing With Mississippi” encourages people to voice their support for providing every available dollar to Mississippians who have lost their employment through no fault of their own.

As the poorest state in the nation, Mississippi can least afford to put partisan politics ahead of people’s basic needs. Mississippi desperately needs its rightful share of the stimulus package. The money that Governor Barbour is rejecting will help 39,600 hardworking families weather this recession.

Supporters are encouraged to sign the petition and learn more at: http://www.StandingWithMississippi.org

The petition comes at a time when Governor Barbour has called a public meeting for April 16 to discuss the stimulus money. Mississippi Center for Justice believes hardworking Mississippians deserve every available resource to support their basic needs of food and shelter during such a difficult economic time.

There's a lot of good folks in Mississippi, sign the petition and help them out. Thanks.

Later.

I'm working on some right wing propaganda to show just how unbalanced the Right actually is, so stay tuned.

Just how stupid do you have to be to be a Republican? Global Currency, Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Mary Fallin and GOP SOS Budget.

2009-04-01T20:54:00.005-05:00

I don't know? Is it just a tenuous grasp of reality or is is just plain stupidity? Paranoia? Persecution complex? Superiority complex? Having Jesus talking in their heads 24 hours a day? The Right Wing Propaganda Machine? Analytically challenged? Greedy? No, that one's a gimme.

I mean just what is it that makes Republicans/Conservatives the way they are?

I sure as hell don't know. But I do know that there's plenty of evidence that something's wrong with them.

Just one example is Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). She appeared on Glenn Beck's Paranoid r' Us show to brag about the great job that she's doing in stopping America's rush into the One World Currency crisis that is currently sweeping Right Wing Fantasy Land.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) appeared on Glenn Beck's TV show yesterday, to talk up her proposed constitutional amendment to stop the Obama administration from replacing the dollar with a global currency:

Bachmann boasted that she's picked up 30 cosponsors so far, to which Beck replied: "I can't believe that you've only got 30 cosponsors. I mean -- how is it you could walk around going, "I just -- this is just, hey, save the dollar.' And only 30 people are willing to say, 'Eh that sounds like a good thing, let's give that a shot.'"

OK, we have two supposedly educated adults here talking about something that's not even real. And to top it off, Bachmann has convinced 30 other supposedly educated adults to put their names on a public document to stop something that there's no such thing as.

What's even more amazing is that these indredibly, gullible freaks of nature have their own following of even more incredibly, gullible freaks who think that the rest of us who don't believe the crazy crap are stupid. And this is how the GOP and their base make fantasy policy.

The 30 genii that cosponsered Bachmann's "I'm so damned dumb that I don't know what's real" constitutional amendment proposal are: Whacked out nut jobs, I mean, are:

Todd Akin (R-MO), Spencer Bachus (R-AL), Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), Judy Biggert (R-IL), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Paul Broun (R-GA), Henry Brown (R-SC), Dan Burton (R-IN), Michael Conaway (R-TX), John Culberson (R-TX), Mary Fallin (R-OK), John Fleming (R-LA), Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Phil Gingrey (R-GA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Walter Jones (R-NC), Steve King (R-IA), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Doug Lamborn (R-CO), Tom McClintock (R-CA), Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), Ron Paul (R-TX), Joseph Pitts (R-PA), Bill Posey (R-FL), Tom Price (R-GA), David Roe (R-TN), John Shadegg (R-AZ), Glenn Thompson (R-PA), Zach Wamp (R-TN)

Now think about it. Wanting to amend the Constitution to prevent something that's not real from happening.

Oh yeah, Oklahoma's own Mary Fallin is a typical family values Republican. In 1998, in typical Oklahoma politics fashion Mary's state trooper bodyguard resigned after admitting to "unprofessional conduct”, but it had nothing to do with making the animal with two backs. Wink, wink, nod, nod. There was nothing more than a little hand holding and kissing, you know, like friends do. I never realized that the Republicans were such a friendly bunch.

Meanwhile Oklahoma's holier than thou Republican Governor Frank A. Keating who at the time was railing against Bill Clinton's "unprofessional conduct", said nothing. There's nothing quite like living in a Red State.

Back in the real world, the GOP trotted out their tired old sow and put some new lipstick on it and called it their budget plan today.

Later

Brit Hume and Joe the Plumber at the Media Research Center Confessional and Evan Bayh is Senator Strangelove.

2009-03-21T04:49:00.005-05:00

OK, it's official. It's straight from the horse's ass, er, mouth.

Last night the euphemistically named Media Research Center gave Brit Hume of Fox News its “William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence.”

Media Research Center is one of the right wing propaganda outfits that make sure that the peasants don't clue in on the fact that most of what they believe runs totally opposite to their own self interests. You know, "All things which are good come from the wealthy and large corporations." Yes, there are a lot of folks who believe just that.

Media Research Center was founded by Buckley's nephew Brent Bozell. Bozell makes out really well by confirming that the right wing garbage that the less attentive of us take for truth is, indeed, truth. You know, Iraq brought down the World Trade Center and Barack Obama is a covert Muslim terrorist and the anti-Christ. After all, he is a multi-tasker.

Brit said a lot if interesting things that night. One of the more humorous things was:

HUME: What are we getting?…We’re getting bloggers and websites and all sorts of individual entrepreneurs, and we have a vaster menu of choices today than we’ve ever had. But I think that we also have the danger that everything will be presented from one political viewpoint or the other, and that the media that confront us are going to be more partisan than ever — which means that the Media Research Center will have a mission for many years to come, and a good thing that is.

Brit's worried that the media will be more partisan than ever. Brit works for Fox News. Are you starting to see the irony? Thank God for His creation of Fox News to protect us from the truth.

Then Brit really let the cat out of the bag. Apparently Fox News research needs to go no farther than Media Research Center. In fact they don't even need to go that far, because Media Research Center comes to them.

HUME: I want to say a word, however, of thanks, to [MRC president] Brent [Bozell] and to the team at the Media Research Center and all the contributors who make that work there possible. […] also for the tremendous amount of material that the Media Research Center provided me for so many years when I was anchoring Special Report. I don’t know what we would have done without them. It was a daily, sort of a buffet of material to work from, and we — we — we certainly made tremendous use of it.

A buffet of bullshit and people keep coming back for more. Fox News, we repeat Media Research Center crap and you decide. It's just incredible the amount of people who have decided that they prefer bullshit.

It was a night of confessions. One man conservative think tank and emerging conservative leader Samuel Wurzelbacher, AKA Joe the Plumber, admitted to the crowd that rich white guys make him horny.

"God, all this love and everything in the room -- I'm horny," declared Joe.

Whether this will displace Jeff Gannon as the conservative's favorite male prostitute, only time will tell. My money's on Joe.

Joe went on to say:

"Unfortunately, we have a chairman up there who wants to redefine conservatism; he wants to make it hip hop, put it in a new package and sell it," Wurzelbacher said. "You can't sell principles; either you have them or you don't."

Poor Joe, he actually thinks that what conservatives have are principles.

Media Research Center's Anything But The Truth festival was a great success and a good time was had by all. The most often heard comment was "Hee, hee, hee, Joe said "horny"."

Meanwhile, in the real world, some Democrats after seeing how much fun the Republicans were having with their circular firing squad, decided that they wanted one too.

Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) proclaimed today on MSNBC's Morning Joe the beginning of a new group of conservative Democrats that could work to block Obama's budget priorities.

Bayh and his colleagues have joined with Republicans to insist that the president gain a super-majority of 60 votes to pass any of his major reforms. Others warned the president not to use existing budget rules that require only a simple majority of 51 votes to pass either his clean energy or his health care reforms. Now, if the Moderate Dems Working Group votes alongside Republicans against Senate Democrats, they will be able to block Obama's major reforms, which need at least 60 votes to pass.

It looks like things are getting back to normal. The Republicans are taking the express to Right Wing Fantasy Land and some Democrats standing in line for their tickets.

Enjoy the weekend.

Later.

Journolist: Source of Right Wing Paranoia and Other Malidies.

2009-03-17T23:27:00.004-05:00

I know it's been on HBO for more than a month and most of you have already seen it, but it fits.

If you haven't seen it, click on it for the schedule.

OK. When I heard about this, I was just a bit upset.

The left has moved into a secret email listserve where left-wing bloggers, policy guys, and journalists collaborate online to form news stories that inevitably skew to the left.

I mean, no one let me know about it.

So naturally I just thought that my input wasn't wanted. But remembering the source, it was from REDSTATE, one of the many sites that right wingers go to in order to get their neuroses validated. You know, "Yes, you have every reason to be paranoid." and for the persecution complexed, "Yes, white, male, conservatives are the most oppressed group in America." So, I thought that I would check into it before I sent my resignation to the Vast Left Wing Blogger/Liberal Media Conspiracy to Make Conservatives Look Like Slack Jawed Knuckle Draggers. The VLWBLMCMCLLSJKD and I have had a long and happy association and I hated to end it.

You've gotta admit that REDSTATE had an impeccable source.

i’m told otherwise. I am told, quite reliably I might add, that left wing bloggers and policy guys use this site as an express train to get their ideas into the mainstream media. And with sympathetic reporters who take the presuppositions made as truth, then add to those some original reporting, you have not an objective media, but a left wing echo chamber dominating print journalism and mainstream television journalism.

When you're told something, quite reliably, well hell, it has to be true.

It's not just REDSTATE, it's all over the right wing blogosphere now.

It all started with this article from Politico, JournoList: Inside the echo chamber. It appears to be a masterfully lame attempt to make a lot out of very little. You know, like Wall Street.

There actually is a JournoList. It's a list server operated by Ezra Klein, associate editor at The American Prospect. And this is what he has to say about the right wing hysteria.

As for sinister implications, is it "secret?" No. Is it off-the-record? Yes. The point is to create a space where experts feel comfortable offering informal analysis and testing out ideas. Is it an ornate temple where liberals get together to work out "talking points?" Of course not. Half the membership would instantly quit if anything like that emerged. There are no government or campaign employees on the list. More to the point, there are a number of folks who are straight news reporters and consciously eschew partisanship. Also, Erick Erickson writes:

I’m told such luminaries as David Shuster at MSNBC, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, a host of New York Times magazine writers, Frank Rich, and others all collaborate on this list.I'm not sure who told him that.

Not one of those people is on Journolist. If they were, I imagine I'd get booked for more spots on Maddow. It is true that the list is center to left. That's not about fostering ideology but preventing a collapse into flame war. The emphasis is on empiricism, not ideology.

Honestly, Olbermann, Maddow and Rich, not a one of them are on Journalist. So this is obviously just another example of the Right's perceptions being, once again, greater than the sum of the problem. At least it's entertaining.

Later.

Southern Pride and Ignorance.

2009-03-13T13:35:00.003-05:00

You know, being a redneck doesn't mean that you have to be ignorant.

Just because you're born a working class, white guy in a southern state doesn't mean that you have to be the lame caricature of the under educated, closed minded, Limbaugh listening doofus.

If you don't have all the things that your heart desires, it's not the fault of African Americans, immigrants, New Yorkers, Democrats or liberals. It's pretty much your own fault for believing the crap that's put out by the Right Wing Propaganda Machine.

That's right, those Republicans that you look to that are somehow going bring back those halcyon, antebellum days when all the white folks down south were wealthy and got the respect that they deserved. Dream on. It ain't going to happen.

If you're working your butt off for a less than living wage, chances are it's because of the way you vote. If you're voting for the person because they wave the flag and thump the Bible, because they wear a little flag in their lapel, because they blame someone else for your low wages, because the NRA tells you to, because they're white or because you're just too damned lazy to check the facts yourself, then you're screwing yourself and your family. In other words, you're proudly ignorant and see no reason to change.

That's no problem. It's a free country and I would fight for your right to stay blissfully ignorant. I mean, if you don't mind being played for a chump by the people you vote for, that's your business.

Cheap labor. Even more than race, it's the thread that connects all of Southern history -- from the antebellum South of John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis to Tennessee's Bob Corker, Alabama's Richard Shelby and the other anti-union Southerners in today's U.S. Senate.

It's at the epicenter of a sad class divide between a desperate, poorly educated workforce and a demagogic oligarchy, and it has been a demarcation line stronger than the Mason-Dixon in separating the region from the rest of the nation.

In their zeal to destroy unions and their hard-fought wage-and-benefits packages, the Southern senators could not care less that workers in their home states are among the lowest paid in the nation. Ever wonder why the South remains the nation's poorest region despite generations of seniority-laden senators and representatives in Congress?

The idea of working people joining together to have a united voice across the table from management scares most Southern politicians to death. After all, they go to the same country clubs as management. When Mississippi Republican Roger Wicker warned of Democratic opponent Ronnie Musgrove's ties to the "Big Labor Bosses" in this year's U.S. Senate race, he was protecting the "Big Corporate Bosses" who are his benefactors.

The South today may be more racially enlightened than ever in its history. However, it is still a society in which the ruling class -- the chambers of commerce that have taken over from yesterday's plantation owners and textile barons -- uses politics to maintain control over a vast, jobs-hungry workforce. After the oligarchy lost its war for slavery -- the cheapest labor of all -- it secured the next best thing in Jim Crow and the indentured servitude known as sharecropping and tenant farming. It still sees cheap, pliable, docile labor as the linchpin of the Southern economy.

Think about it.

Later

The Obama Budget, Lobbyists/Parasites in Overdrive and Capital Punishment.

2009-02-27T10:20:00.003-06:00

The Obama budget is a radical departure from the budgets that we have been getting since Ronald Reagan. The Obama budget focuses on the inequity of wealth distribution that has grown over the last 30 years. In other words, it benefits us peasants, peasants being the folks who bust their butts at a 40 hour a week job for a paycheck that buys less and less as time goes by. At least the ones still lucky enough to have a job. So we should all be getting giddy and start dancing in the street, right?

Oddly enough there are those out there who are already getting apoplectic over the thought of the working class getting some slack. It's not so odd really considering that the most vehement objections are coming from long time government parasites.

Lobbyists Line Up to Torpedo Speech Proposals

Health Care, Agribusiness, Mining and Defense Groups Raise War
Chests to Sway Legislators and the Public

I'm sure the legislators will be more easily swayed than the rest of us, so keep an eye on them.

The folks on the Right have been putting the blame for the financial meltdown on Barney Frank, Bill Clinton and even Jimmy Carter. The Right of course, has very little grounding in reality or factual information. However, they are experts at convincing their followers in the truth of fairy tales.

Here's an example of what the Right would call a left wing fairy tale.

Both retired FBI officials asserted that the Bush administration was
thoroughly briefed on the mortgage fraud crisis and its potential to cascade out
of control with devastating financial consequences, but made the decision not to
give back to the FBI the agents it needed to address the problem. After the
terrorist attacks of 2001, about 2,400 agents were reassigned to
counterterrorism duties.

I've never proponent of the death penalty. For one thing we know that too many mistakes have been made. For another, I don't really like the idea of a government being able to legally kill it's own citizens.

Some states may be doing away with capital punisment, not on any moral grounds but on financial ones.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — When Gov. Martin O'Malley appeared before
the Maryland Senate last week, he made an unconventional argument that is
becoming increasingly popular in cash-strapped states: abolish the death penalty
to cut costs.

The dollar will trump morals any time. Just ask any lobbyist.

Or you can ask some gun dealers.

The gun laws in the United States allow the sale of multiple
military-style rifles to American citizens without reporting the sales to the
government, and the Mexicans search relatively few cars and trucks going south
across their border.

What is more, the sheer volume of licensed dealers — more
than 6,600 along the border alone, many of them operating out of their houses —
makes policing them a tall order. Currently the A.T.F. has about 200 agents
assigned to the task.

Now if you would like to do something helpful before you start surfing the porn sites.

Have a good weekend.

Later

Annie Leonard and The Story of Stuff.

2009-02-27T09:58:00.002-06:00

This is just too good not to get out there.

Click on the pic or go to The Story of Stuff.

Annie Leonard made this simple enough that even I could understand it.

It's the story of all the crap that we buy from cradle to grave. 20 minutes long, loaded with things that we need to know and entertaining all the way.

It's brilliant, watch it.

Later

Barack, You, Me and America Won Tonight.

2008-11-04T23:27:00.005-06:00

I just watched the scene at Grant Park on television. Incredible.

I just want to thank Barack Obama and the rest of the country for wanting to make the effort to turn this country around.

I can't even describe the pride I feel right now.

And I have to say that John McCain's concession speech showed that he is probably a much better man than the one he portrayed during the campaign. Despite the boos from the crowd,

McCain looked better in defeat than he has at any time during the campaign.

It's the start of a new era. Let's try to make it a good one.

Later.

The McCain Lie Counter.

2008-09-15T10:32:00.002-05:00

The Democratic party is actually starting to show some backbone. I know, it's hard to believe.

But they are taking on the McCain/Palin campaign lies with a site that keeps track of them.

Naturally all the lies have citations, it's not a right wing site.

The Democratic Party Lie Counter will come in handy between now and November if the McCain campaign continues on it's present course.

Pierre Tristam has a great essay on lies and why they work at Daytona Beach newsjournalonline.com, it's titled Flat-out lies finding a receptive audience in voters seeking denial. Here's some of it.

The McPalin campaign knows. No need for rumors and innuendoes. It flat-out lies. Repeats the lies. Then lies again when the lies are exposed. There's Palin's lie about the infamous Bridge to Nowhere: She campaigned for it, then kept the $223 million in federal tax dollars when Washington killed its support. Still, she keeps repeating her "thanks but no thanks" line rally after rally. There's Palin's lie about how "we began a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence," as she told the Republican convention, even though not an inch of that pipeline has been built, not an inch will be built for years, and it may never be built at all. There's Palin's lie about being an ethical reformist even though she thought nothing of billing taxpayers for 312 nights spent at home, at $60 a night, on days she commuted 45 minutes to her governor's office in Anchorage.
Then there's McCain's fantasies about balancing the budget while cutting taxes, fighting wars and "changing the tone of Washington" while slandering Barack Obama's darkish background. It's what Justice William Brennan once defined, in a different context, the reckless disregard for the truth.
But to succeed, deception needs a receptive audience. It needs the incurious, the unquestioning, the toadying. The effectiveness of the lies, in a year when comatose fleas should capably beat the shrewdest Republican, is telling -- not about the candidates' venality, but about the electorate's want: This isn't an election about change. It's an election about extending the denial that made the last eight years possible. Many Americans, maybe most, want to convince themselves that America's moral authority and example is undiminished despite the last eight years. (And who can blame them? Who doesn't wish it weren't so?) The last thing those brave Americans want is change. They want leadership that validates their delusion. Palin-McCain is their narcotic bridge to nowhere.

I've been "debating" right wingers lately and that last paragraph is so true. These people are convinced that Democrats are anti-American and in league with Osama bin Laden, really.

It's time to get serious about your politics, our country is at stake.

Later

John McCain is Willing to Be Anything, Say Anything & Do Anything, Lobby-Anti-Lobby, Global Peace Index, Israeli Appeasers, Ted Kennedy,Alien Trucker

2008-05-21T01:43:00.011-05:00

I finally got around to getting the garden done today, so I'm tired and looking for something east.

Thanks John McCain.

It's kind of incredible that John McCain is taken seriously as a presidential candidate.

But then, we still have the same Mainstream Media and the same fools who voted for George W. Bush in 2004 out there acting like "staying the course" is a viable solution.

Not much you can do with someone who experienced Bush's first four years and wanted four more of the same. But surely we can do something about the pitiful excuse for who passes themselves off as news organizations nowadays.

There are still a lot of folks out there who honestly believe that the media has a liberal bias. There are a lot of folks out there who still think that Obama is a Muslim. Hell, there's still people out there who think that we just haven't found Saddam's WMDs yet.

If you're one of them, you'd just as well stop reading now.

The MSM is so bad that Barack Obama is even pointing it out.

ABC News' Sunlen Miller reports: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., offered up a
criticism of the press' coverage of Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign,
during a town hall with seniors in Gresham, Ore., today.

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting has an article titled, The Press Corps’ Unshakeable Crush on McCain Some straight talk about the media’s favorite ‘maverick’.

A candidate could only get away with such an elaborate and long-running con with
the media as willing accomplices. “The press loves McCain,” explained NBC host
Chris Matthews (9/10/06). “We’re his base.”

Talk about straight from the horse's ______. Add your own noun.

The Carpetbagger Report has some 20 odd McCain flip flops and they're still updating. Here's the latest.

* McCain pledged in February 2008 that he would not, under any
circumstances, raise taxes. Specifically, McCain if he were a “‘read my lips’
candidate, no new taxes, no matter what?” referring to George H.W. Bush’s 1988
pledge. “No new taxes,” McCain responded. Two weeks later, McCain said,
“I’m not making a ‘read my lips’ statement, in that I will not raise
taxes.”

* McCain’s campaign unveiled a Social Security policy that the senator
would implement if elected, which did not include a Bush-like privatization
scheme. In March 2008, McCain denounced his
own campaign’s policy.

Just a couple of days ago John McCain showed just how tenuous his grasp of how the world works really is. I mean, he says if that's what the average American thinks, then he does too. Brilliant.

But as the National Security Network’s Ilan Goldenberg notes,
“if the ‘average American’ thinks that Ahmadinejad is the ultimate leader of
Iran” it would be McCain’s job as president “to dissuade them of this notion -
not reinforce it.”

Remember Obama's preacher? Of course you do. It's all the Mainstream Media could talk about for quite some time. McCain solicits a couple of way out there, religious nuts and that's hardly worth mentioning.

May 20, 2008 John McCain has some seriously screwed-up holy men surrounding
him. First, there's the Rev. John Hagee, a hate-monger and certifiable loon who
believes that Hurricane Katrina was God's judgment on New Orleans for planning a
gay parade, calls Catholicism a "false
cult system" that conspired with Hitler to exterminate the Jews, and
believes that America's divine duty is to destroy Iran. Then there's the Rev. Rod Parsley, who garnishes his bigoted theology by
calling Islam "the greatest religious enemy of our civilization and the world"
and saying that Muhammad was "a mouthpiece of a conspiracy of spiritual evil."

Firedoglake has certainly noticed the media inconsistency, Welcome To An Edition Of “If A Democrat Did This It’d Be On The Evening News”.

If you've been paying attention, then you know all about McCain's lobbyists running his campaign problem. John McCain now wants to seen as the anti-lobby candidate. Here's what some of his own people think about that little brainstorm.

Some of McCain's advisers said Monday they are mystified by the new policy,
which they said gives Obama an opening to attack their candidate.

"The most interesting thing in every campaign is the self-inflicted
wound. This is a great case," said one GOP fundraiser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss
McCain's campaign decisions candidly. "When asked to name the 10,000 things
people think are the most important issue, this doesn't make the list."

Another adviser said: "There's scratching of heads. What is going
on? Why are we doing this?"

If this is an example of McCain's decision making, watch out if he gets elected.

But the McCain campaign does understand its strongpoints, get its non-thinking supporters to flood the internet with prepackaged McCain propaganda. Thanks Huffington Post.

McCain Campaign: Comment Trolls Wanted

Wishing you could be a campaign surrogate, but don't have a national platform?
Do you find blogging your own opinions tedious? Wish you could have someone tell
you what to think during this political season? Well look no further than John
McCain's new blog outreach!

You can even get McCain brownie points. Makes you wonder how these people could even come close in an election.

Select from the numerous web, blog and news sites listed here, go there, and
make your opinions supporting John McCain known. Once you’ve commented on a
post, video or news story, report the details of your comment by clicking the
button below. After your comments are verified, you will be awarded points
through the McCain Online Action Center.

Enough of John McCain. There's 167 days left until the election and I'm sure John will have plenty of stuff to keep us shaking our heads an saying, "Huh?".

According to the Global Peace Index, the U.S. ranks 97 out of a possible 140 countries. Not bad after seven years of George W. Bush. It's worth clicking on, just to see all the flags.

The table below provides the GPI rankings for the 140 countries analysed in 2008
and the 121 countries analysed in 2007, as well as year-on-year comparison.
Countries most at peace are ranked first. A lower score indicates a more
peaceful country. You can click on a country to see the detail of its peace
indicators and drivers.

I just found out that the Israeli government is comprised of a bunch of appeasers. It looks like President Bush had better give them a history lesson.

Israel’s Vice-Prime Minister, Haim Ramon, admitted Monday that the government of
Israel has, for the last several weeks, been holding talks with the Hamas party,
in contradiction with Israel’s stated policy of 'isolating and attacking’ the
elected Hamas-led government of the Palestinian people.

Can you imagine what they were thinking while Bush was giving them his little "appeasement" speech?

I want to wish Teddy Kennedy the best in his latest fight, not against the Right, but brain cancer. He has been a part of history for most of my life and we need more like him.

And my buddy Rocky over at Alien Trucker been going through some bad luck. Rocky and I have a lot in common, we're both in our 50's (me more than him), we both have blogs, we both understand the need for medical marijauna and we've both had our legs stop working for a while.

But he's still putting that blog out tho', go over and and check out the music video 99 Red Balloons, I'm listening to it now. It's an anti-war piece that takes me back to the days when I started to have to think seriously about the draft.

Hump day, enjoy.

Later

Peggy Noonan, Kathleen Parker, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post Play the Race Card.

2008-05-19T06:47:00.001-05:00

This image is from a fascinating photo essay by Anthony Karen for Mother Jones. It's about Ms. Ruth, the Aryan outfitter.

It's not a slam piece on the KKK and if you check out the essay and the audio with each picture, don't be surprised if you come away from it with a certain amount of admiration for Ms Ruth.

In the audio on the last picture, Ms Ruth talks about how the KKK would go after white men who didn't treat their families as well as they should have. Personally, I know of an instance involving my mother's sister in North Carolina, when the KKK gave her husband a good beating for not taking care of his wife and kids. That happened more than 50 years ago.

It's really worth checking out.

But it's not the KKK that I want to talk about. It's the kind of sneaky racism that's poping up in the Mainstream Media.

Who would have thought that the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal would allow thinly veiled racist remarks to disgrace their pages. They did and Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker are making big money for their garbage.

Here's some of what Peggy Noonan wrote in the WSJ.

Main thought. Hillary Clinton is not Barack Obama’s problem. America is Mr.
Obama’s problem. He has been tagged as a snooty lefty, as the glamorous,
ambivalent candidate from Men’s Vogue, the candidate who loves America because
of the great progress it has made in terms of racial fairness. Fine, good. But
has he ever gotten misty-eyed over . . . the Wright Brothers and what kind of
country allowed them to go off on their own and change everything? How about
D-Day, or George Washington, or Henry Ford, or the losers and brigands who
flocked to Sutter’s Mill, who pushed their way west because there was gold in
them thar hills? There’s gold in that history.

John McCain carries it in his bones. Mr. McCain learned it in school,
in the Naval Academy, and, literally, at grandpa’s knee. Mrs. Clinton learned at
least its importance in her long slog through Arkansas, circa 1977-92.

I've never gotten misty-eyed over any of those things. Does Peggy want to question my love of country? I don't know what credentials Ms. Noonan has to make her the final arbiter of someones love of country or their patriotism.

Maybe she could get me on the fact that my relatives were just enlisted men instead of Admirals. My Dad was a PFC, 100% disabled from wounds he recieved from a German 88 round at St. Lo in France. His brother was a Staff Sargent, he was put out of the war by calling artillery in on his own position after being surrounded while trying to close the Falaise Pocket. He came home with a steel plate in his head and a glass eye. He also got a battlefield commisssion to First Lieutenant and a Silver Star. My Mother's first husband was KIA in the Battle of the Bulge. I was in the Army from 72 to 75.

I'm proudly voting for Barack Obama. Want to question this "snooty lefty's" love of country, Peggy?

How about Kathleen Parker's The 'Bubba' vote in the WaPo.

It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American
values. And roots.

Yet, white Americans primarily—and Southerners, rural and small-town folks
especially—have been put on the defensive for their concerns with "guns, God and
gays," as Howard Dean put it in 2003. And more recently, for clinging to "guns
or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them," as Obama described
white, working-class Pennsylvanians who preferred his opponent.

What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America
that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. What they sense is that
their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes
the new national narrative. And they fear what else might get lost in the
remodeling of America.

In the first place, I don't appreciate being referred to as "Bubba". I do know plenty of people who will cast their vote based solely on one or all the God, guns or gay issues, even though it's not in their own best self-interests. They are good people, but they see crap like this and it only reinforces their prejudices.

I don't know what the hell "blood equity" is supposed to mean. The only hard-won American value that I can think of is freedom and that's the thing that the Republicans have been trying to take away from us.

I can at least respect Ms. Ruth because she comes by it honestly. Noonan and Parker are just rabble-rousing for a paycheck. They should hit the streets and try to make a honest living.

On the same subject, from Editor & Publisher.

(May 18, 2008) -- Liberal bloggers and commenters at The Washington Post op-ed
section are rightly criticizing a column this week by syndicated scribe Kathleen
Parker that questions Barack Obama’s “deep-seated” Americanism. But she is only
following the footsteps of Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal who raised
similar issues three weeks ago – and was praised by NBC’s Brian Williams for a
“Pulitzer” worthy effort.

From Salon.com.

In one of the most repellent columns one will ever read, syndicated
columnist Kathleen Parker defended Fry's claim that Obama is something other
than "a full-blooded American." Advancing an argument that Atrios guest blogger
aimai aptly described as "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!," Parker
said "we now have a patriot divide" in America that "has nothing to do with a
flag lapel pin . . . or even military service." Instead:

Slate.

First Obama had to distance
himself from some bizarre comments made by his former pastor. Then he had to
explain why he doesn't wear a flag lapel pin often enough to suit Charlie Gibson of ABC News. Then he had
to distance himself from a former
member of the Weather Underground to whom
he was introduced when he decided to run for the Illinois Senate but with
whom he has since had scant contact. Then he had to distance himself from Hamas,
a terrorist organization he has repeatedly condemned, simply because its chief
political adviser, Ahmed Yousefat, expressed admiration for him. Now Peggy Noonan of the Wall
Street Journal demands that Obama demonstrate he carries sufficient love
within his breast for … Sutter's Mill.

And Media Matters.

While Media Matters for America did not identify specific instances of
Obama's getting "misty-eyed" over the Wright brothers, the 1944 Allied invasion
of Europe, George Washington, the 1849 California Gold Rush -- or Henry
Ford, for that matter -- the title of his latest book,
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, suggests that
Noonan should have looked there before suggesting that Obama has yet to address
"[w]hat ... he think[s] of America." She needn't have read past the prologue to
find this:

I think America has more often been a force for good than for ill in the
world; I carry few illusions about our enemies, and revere the courage and
competence of our military. I reject a politics that is based solely on racial
identity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or victimhood generally. I think
much of what ails the inner city involves a breakdown in culture that will not
be cured by money alone, and that our values and spiritual life matter at least
as much as our GDP.

That's all, from a snooty, lefty, Bubba.

Later

The McCain Maverick Mythunderstanding.

2008-05-18T04:55:00.000-05:00

Image from Slowpoke Comics.

If you believe that John McCain is a maverick, chances are that you're right of center or else you get most of your information from the Mainstream Media. Aren't you happy that you've got the internet.

While McCain may only be a maverick in his own mind, the Mainstream Media are happy to perpetuate John's fantasy.

Don't take my word for it. Eric Boehlert at Media Matters proves it.

"The campaign's general-election strategy is to sell the McCain brand to
show voters that he is distinct from President Bush and other Republicans," the
Post reported.

So guess what members of the press, including those at MSNBC, CNN, NBC,
The Washington Post, Newsweek,
the Politico, and The Boston Globe, have been doing incessantly in recent weeks.
They've been making glowing references to the durability and appeal of the
"McCain brand." I mean, how lucky can the Republicans get? The press is echoing
precisely the message that the candidate's advisers want repeated again and
again. What are the odds?

Still think that there's a liberal media out there doing its best to undermine everything that's great or good about this country?

Check this out. CNN does its part to keep President Bush from looking like the hypocritical, idiot that he is.

In reports during the 10 and 11 a.m. ET hours of the May 15 edition of CNN
Newsroom, CNN aired comments by Robert Gibbs, Sen. Barack Obama's communications
director, responding to President Bush's remarks that "[s]ome seem to believe we
should negotiate with terrorists and radicals," reportedly
in reference to Obama, but CNN spliced the audio clip to omit part of the
statement in which Gibbs noted that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, like
Obama, has reportedly said that the United States needs to be willing to meet
with Iran. CNN had left intact Gibbs' reference to Gates in the audio clip of
Gibbs' comments it aired during the 9 a.m. hour of the program.

Pretty sneaky, huh?

But this isn't about the liberal media myth, it's about the John McCain/maverick myth.

To be honest, if you define maverick as willing to change your position in a heartbeat, then John McCain is truly a maverick.

After Bush's little Obama "appeasment" speech to the Israeli Knesset, John McCain jumped right on board with the President.

Yes, there have been appeasers in the past, and the president is exactly right,
and one of them is Neville Chamberlain. I believe that it’s not an accident that
our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the
United States. He didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists
in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home.

I guess that thinking that you're a maverick effects the memory. Because he seemed not to remember Reagan's arms-for-hostages negotiations.

Now his campaign is saying that they never used the word "appeasement". Appeasement, appeasers, big difference.

PFOTENHAUER: Senator McCain responded directly himself and said he took the
president at his word, that those comments were not directed toward Senator
Obama. […]

SHUSTER: Nancy, does the McCain campaign believe that talking to our
enemies is the same as appeasing them?

PFOTENHAUER: We have never used the term appeasement and you know
that.

McCain conveniently forgets that, not too long ago, he was one of those appeasers.

"They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them,
one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous
administrations had such antipathy toward Hamas because of their dedication to
violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so ... But it's
a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and
a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving
them that."

So it shouldn't be too hard to believe that the man who made the following statement is now sucking up to the NRA.

The NRA is entitled to their advocacy. I don’t think they help the Republican
Party at all, but I don’t think they should in any way play a major role in the
Republican Party’s policy making. [CNN, 5/12/00]

You know a man must be a maverick if he says something like this,

“The political tactics of division and slander are not our values. They are
corrupting influences on religion and politics, and those who practice them in
the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of
America shame our faith, our party and our country… Neither party should be
defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of
intolerance.”

and then seeks the endorsement of a lunatic like John Hagee, who says things like this,

“Behold I will send for many fishers and after will I send for many hunters. And
they the hunters shall hunt them” - that will be the Jews - “from every mountain
and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.” If that doesn't
describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust... you can't see that. So think about
this - I will send fishers and I will send hunters. A fisher is someone who
entices you with a bait. How many of you know who Theodore Hertzel was? How many
of you don't have a clue who he was? WOO... Sweet God! Theodore Hertzel is the
father of Zionism. He was a Jew that at the turn of the 19th century said -
“this land is our land, God wants us to live there”. So he went to the Jews of
Europe and said, “I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel”. So few
went, Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did
not went through the hell of the Holocaust. Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is
someone who comes with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the
Bible says - Jeremiah righty? - “they shall hunt them from every mountain and
from every hill and out of the holes of the rocks”, meaning: there's no place to
hide. And that will be offensive to some people. Well, dear heart, be offended:
I didn't write it. Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How
did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God
said, “my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come BACK to the
land of Israel”. Today Israel is back in the land and they are at Ezekiel 37 and
8. They are physically alive but they're not spiritually alive. Now how is God
going to cause the Jewish people to come SPIRITUALLY alive and say, “the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, He is God”?"

Wow, I never realized that the Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves. I bet they were "appeasers" too. It's just amazing that there are people out there who actually believe this garbage. Bruce Wilson of Talk to Action really put a lot of research in on John Hagee. If you missed the link above, here it is again.

Maverick McCain does have a set of standards, but they seem to be mostly double standards.

John McCain and the Dictator Money Trail

John McCain will fire you for lobbying for Burma, but he'll still take
your money.

Speaking of money, John McCain shows what a maverick he can be when it comes to his budget as president. He's a maverick because he's the only person that thinks building up Bush's deficit is the right thing for the country.

McCain’s Budget Would Create Largest Deficit In 25 Years, Largest
Debt Since WWII

You gotta admit, that's different.

McCain's health care policy is more Republican than maverick.

In fact, John McCain is more Republican than maverick.

Bush to join McCain at high-dollar campaign event.

Later

The Myth of Appeasement: A Right Wing Fantasy, brought to you today by George W. Bush and John McCain.

2008-05-15T23:34:00.002-05:00

I'm really starting to get tired of trying to find euphemisms to describe Republicans.

Right wingers have their own places to go in order to validate their faith in the fantasy land that they inhabit.

Fox News, WorldNetDaily, NewsMax, just to name a few. Plus they have the whole right wing blogosphere, that does nothing but parrot the official line. Dumbasses.

The Dumbass-in-Chief, while addressing the Knesset in Israel, showed us all just how important a knowledge and understanding of history is. He showed us by his absolute lack of it.

Bush said, in an obvious attempt to discredit Barack Obama,

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if
some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.

We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in
1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if only I could have talked to
Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this
what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly
discredited by history.

Not wanting to be outdone in the ignorance of history contest, John McCain jumped right in to agree with Bush.

Senator John McCain, who has been critical of President Bush on the
environment and other policies this week, on Thursday morning wholeheartedly
endorsed Mr. Bush’s veiled rebuke in the Israeli Knesset of Senator Barack Obama that talking to “terrorists and radicals'’ was no different than appeasing
Hitler and the Nazis.

Unfortunately, for Bush, McCain and the rest of the Right, history does not agree with their versions of appeasement, at least, according to the U.S. Army's Stratigic Studies Institute.

APPEASEMENT RECONSIDERED:

INVESTIGATING THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE 1930s

Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at appeasement within the
context of the political and military environments in which British
and French leaders operated during the 1930s. He examines the
nature of appeasement, the factors underlying Anglo-French policies
toward Hitler from 1933 to 1939, and the reasons for the failure of
those policies. He finds that Anglo-French security choices were
neither simple nor obvious, that hindsight has distorted judgments
on those choices, that Hitler remains without equal as a state threat,
and that invocations of the Munich analogy should always be closely
examined.

If you don't trust the Army, which is usually the wise thing to do, here's a couple of others.

War in our time: the myth of appeasment

The myth of appeasement at Munich

Everyone seems to forget that appeasement was our national policy toward the Soviet Union.

Fog Fact No. 3: Sometimes “appeasement” works well; it was American policy
for 50 years.

After the Second World War the Soviet Union annexed the Baltic states,
Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, part of East Prussia and part of Slovakia. Then,
mostly through rigged elections, it turned Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary,
Romania and Bulgaria into puppet states and used military force, when necessary,
to maintain that status.

Neither the United States — nor anyone else — seriously challenged any
of that.

In 1938 Great Britian was no where near being able, militarily, to get into a war with most modern and strongest military power in Europe.

Britain was not in a position to project military power east of
the Rhine;
the Royal Navy was preoccupied with the Italian and
Japanese threats; and
the Royal Air Force was in the middle of
rearming. Moreover, as Richard
Overy points out, Chamberlain had
been prime minister for only a year, and
he was “understandably not
prepared to crown that period by deliberately
courting a war that all
his military advisers warned him would destroy the
Empire.”

Britain was not even in a position to contribute to the ground
defense of France and the Low Countries. The British army had
no defined
strategic role in the 1930s outside of home and imperial
defense, and it was
not until after Munich that the Chamberlain
government reintroduced
conscription and concluded that a
continental commitment for the British
army was unavoidable.

France wasn't much better off.

Yet as General Maurice Gamelin, the Chief of the French
General Staff,
confessed after Germany’s military reoccupation of
the Rhineland in 1936,
“The idea of sending a French expeditionary
corps into the Rhineland, even
in a more or less symbolic form, is
unrealistic. . . . our military system
does not give us this possibility.Our active army is only the nucleus of the
mobilized national army. . . . None of our units are capable of being placed
instantly on a complete war footing.”

If you would like to really get into the appeasement debate, I would suggest, Appeasement and Rearmament: Britain, 1936-1939 by James Levy.

Oh yeah, and that Senator whose quote Bush used was a Republican.

And here's another right wing dumbass, radio talk-show host Kevin James showing that a knowledge of history is not required by the Right Wing Propaganda Machine.

Later

Olbermann: Mr. President, the war isn't about you.

2008-05-14T23:14:00.003-05:00

I saw Olbermann's commentary tonight. Ithink it's well worth seeing or reading. The transcript is here. It's about time someone in the MSM really tells it like it is.

Blue Girl went over this yesterday, with the experience of her own knee problems, she says Bush is lying, too.

That makes three of us.

Robert Novak, Mike Huckabee, John McCain and Associates, Frank Donatelli and Roy Blunt appearing in Republicans are just crazy.

2008-05-14T02:30:00.001-05:00

There's more important news out there, we still have troops dying, for apparently no reason, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the mess in Burma and the earthquake in China.

But this morning I was just trying to comprehend, what on earth would make any rational human being want to vote Republican.

While I'm no fan of Bob Novack, I did read his piece about Huckabee wanting to deep six McCain's presidential run.

You remember Mike Huckabee? He ran for the Republican nomination and he is the poster boy for the Religious Right. He's also the guy who wants to do away with the Constitution and replace it with his own interpretation of the Bible.

"[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I
believe it's a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change
the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the
Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's
standards," Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life
amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Well, Huckabee's been making kissyfaces at McCain for quite a while now and Novak comes along and says that's all a front for an evil plan to help Obama win in November. Somehow the country deserves the plague of an Obama presidency to get it back on the right track and open the door for the Right Reverend Mike Huckabee to take over the country in 2012.

Nevertheless, reports out of the evangelical community dispute Huckabee's
support. One experienced, credible activist in Christian politics who would not
let his name be used told me Huckabee in personal conversation with him embraced
the concept that an Obama presidency might be what the American people deserve.
That fits what has largely been a fringe position among evangelicals, that the
pain of an Obama presidency is in keeping with the Bible's prophecy.

Of course, Huckabee's denying everything. Would a Baptist preacher lie?

I e-mailed Gov. Huckabee for a response, and he quickly shot back: "it’s total
and absolute nonsense! I told Bob this last week in a phone call. He went with
the story with his 'unnamed source.' Should have been listed as an 'unbrained
source.' He must have liked the story no matter how ludicrous it is. There was
NO conversation between Mike Farris and me to that effect. None. I don’t know of
anyone who feels that 'America deserves Obama.'

I, for one, do believe we deserve Obama.

Over on Huckabee's own blog, his denials are most vociferous and he even manages to put the usual right wing innuendo on Obama's character. Pretty slick for a country preacher.

Where do people dream up this stuff? Forget the “anonymous” sources—there’s
nothing anonymous about my stand and here it is. We don’t “deserve” Obama—we
DESERVE a President with the character, convictions, experience, and wisdom to
see the problems we face and try to lead us to solve them. We deserve a
President who truly loves this country and from whom there is no doubt as to his
respect for Faith, Family, and the kind of Freedom that those before us have
given their lives to pass on to us. John McCain meets that criteria and that’s
why I am campaigning for him and not hoping for Obama. The nonsense that I want
Obama to win this year so I can run in 2012 is absurd. I love my country more
than my own ambition. So let the record and truth be clear. And let the
“anonymous” sources either show the courage to stand up and be accountable for
their comments or shut up and leave commentary to people who aren’t afraid of
their own shadow.

Somehow, I just can't make myself believe that Mike Huckabee puts very much before his ambition.

If you go to Mike's blog, be sure to read the comments. Are these really the kind of people that we want making the decisions for our country? You can just feel the zeal dripping from their commentary.

Getting away from Huckabee, here's a quote from John McCain.

The people that surround me are honorable people.” - John
McCain [Town Hall Meeting, Exeter, NH 03/12/08]

And here's some of those "honorable" people that he surrounds himself with. They are all good Republicans, they'll do anything for enough money. The list is long, but here's one example.

Frank Donatelli

McCain Tapped Lobbyist Frank Donatelli To Run His Efforts At RNC. McCain
tapped lobbyist Frank Donatelli to become deputy chairman of the Republican
National Committee. The New York Times reported Donatelli will “act as the
main liaison between the committee and the McCain campaign.” Donatelli is
a lobbyist at McGuire Woods and previously served as a lobbyist at Akin Gump
Strauss Hauer & Feld. His clients have included AT&T, Exxon Mobil,
PhRMA, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Verizon. [New York Times, 3/7/08; McGuire
Woods, accessed 5/12/08; Senate Lobbying Disclosure Records, accessed
5/12/08]

Donatelli Enlisted to Improve Ethiopia’s Relationship with U.S. In a
September 2005 letter sent to Ambassador Kassahun Ayele of the Federal
Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Donatelli set forth his obligations under their
contract, namely to provide “government relations and related public
communications services to assist and work with Ethiopia in Washington, D.C., in
promoting and strengthening Ethiopia’s relations with the United States and, in
general, providing such other appropriate advice and assistance as will serve to
achieve these purposes.” [FARA Database, accessed 3/18/08, Letter signed by
Frank Donatelli on 9/6/05] •

Human Rights Watch: “The Ethiopian Government’s Human Rights Record
Remains Poor.” According to Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2008, “The
Ethiopian government’s human rights record remains poor, both within the country
and in neighboring Somalia, where since early 2007 thousands of Ethiopian troops
have been fighting an insurgency alongside the Transitional Federal Government
of Somalia. Government forces committed serious human rights violations,
including rape, torture, and village burnings, during a campaign against
Ethiopian rebels in eastern Somalia Region (Region 5). Abuses took place
in other parts of the country, notably in Oromia State where local officials
carried out mass arrests, extra-judicial killings and economic sanctions.”
[Human Rights Watch, accessed 5/12/08, emphasis added]

It's not just the Republican presidential candidates that are so out of touch that they don't seem to realize what they're saying. House Minority Whip Roy Blunt went on CNN and admitted that McCain would be just like a third term for Bush. He thinks that's a good thing.

Why would anyone, with even a semi-functioning brain, vote Republican?

It's Wednesday. Think about it.

Later