Sunday, January 31, 2010

The Perverse Legal Views of Conservatives

































Conservative lawyer William "Col. Mustard"Jacobson is a lying jackass. Yes I realize that calling a conservative lawyer a jackass is redundant, You Disagree With Tony Kennedy (When He Reaches a Conservative Result), You Oppose the Rule of Law

Paul and I have compiled some examples of conservative academics arguing that Obama needs to be sent to Sally Quinn Reeducation Camp or something for disagreeing with an innovative constitutional doctrine just announced by a bare majority of the Court. At the time, though, I missed an even funnier argument, namely William Jacobson's assertion that by criticizing the Court, Obama was threatening the rule of law itself:

The attack on the Supreme Court exposes the intolerance of this President. The politician who campaigned and allegedly champions the rule of law actually has very little use for the rule of law when it does not advance his political agenda.

This is an...interesting argument. Let's examine some other examples of prominent public officials who, in disagreeing with decisions announced by the Supreme Court, therefore oppose the rule of law:

* "The 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade is a good time for us to pause and reflect. Our nationwide policy of abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy [sic] was neither voted for by our people nor enacted by our legislators — not a single state had such unrestricted abortion [sic] before the Supreme Court decreed it to be national policy in 1973. But the consequences of this judicial decision are now obvious: since 1973, more than 15 million unborn children have had their lives snuffed out by legalized abortions. That is over ten times the number of Americans lost in all our nation's wars...Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution." --Saint Ronald Reagan, 1983
* "After a day of consideration, the McCain Campaign has decided to come out hard against yesterday's 5 to 4 decision to grant more rights to court review for enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country," McCain said. He went on to quote from Justice Roberts dissent in the case, rail against "unaccountable judges," and say that the courts are about to be clogged with cases from detainees."
Jacobson is a paid of member of the it is permissible for Republicans to do it, but not Democrats club. And even for a conservative lawyer he seems abysmally ignorant of the law and history.

Like a petulant child that resents being schooled in the facts, during the SOTU address right-wing conservative Justice Alito was seen mouthing the words "not true". Justice Alito’s conduct and the Court’s credibility

There’s a reason that Supreme Court Justices — along with the Joint Chiefs of Staff — never applaud or otherwise express any reaction at a State of the Union address. It’s vital — both as a matter of perception and reality — that those institutions remain apolitical, separate and detached from partisan wars. The Court’s pronouncements on (and resolutions of) the most inflammatory and passionate political disputes retain legitimacy only if they possess a credible claim to being objectively grounded in law and the Constitution, not political considerations.

.... By contrast, the behavior of Justice Alito at last night's State of the Union address -- visibly shaking his head and mouthing the words "not true" when Obama warned of the dangers of the Court's Citizens United ruling -- was a serious and substantive breach of protocol that reflects very poorly on Alito and only further undermines the credibility of the Court. It has nothing to do with etiquette and everything to do with the Court's ability to adhere to its intended function.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Fond Memories of Republicans and Their Values




































Abramoff's White House "Fruit"
Despite administration denials, superlobbyist-turned-felon Jack Abramoff did have political traction in the White House, according to a damning draft report released Monday by Rep. Henry Waxman's (D-Calif.) House government oversight committee. Among the findings: Before he was disgraced, Abramoff provided gifts and meals to White House officials, met with President George W. Bush at least six times, and influenced a State Department dismissal and a presidential political endorsement.
After strangling, wife sues ex-Bush attorney for $30 million

After strangling, wife sues ex Bush attorney for $30 millionWife fears husband's 'past associations'

The wife of a former high-ranked Bush administration lawyer who was charged earlier this month with her attempted murder has brought a civil suit against him for $30 million.

As previously reported, John Michael Farren is accused of flying into a rage after his wife served him with divorce papers on January 6, beating her unconscious with a metal flashlight, and then attempting to strangle her. She fled to a neighbor's house with their seven-year-old and four-month-old after triggering an alarm which brought the police to arrest Mr. Farren.



Republican Sex Perverts
* Republican anti-abortion activist Howard Scott Heldreth is a convicted child rapist in Florida.

* Republican County Commissioner David Swartz pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 11 and was sentenced to 8 years in prison.

* Republican judge Mark Pazuhanich pleaded no contest to fondling a 10-year old girl and was sentenced to 10 years probation.

* Republican anti-abortion activist Nicholas Morency pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer and offering a bounty to anybody who murders an abortion doctor.

* Republican legislator Edison Misla Aldarondo was sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping his daughter between the ages of 9 and 17.

* Republican Mayor Philip Giordano is serving a 37-year sentence in federal prison for sexually abusing 8- and 10-year old girls.

* Republican campaign consultant Tom Shortridge was sentenced to three years probation for taking nude photographs of a 15-year old girl.

* Republican racist pedophile and United States Senator Strom Thurmond had sex with a 15-year old black girl which produced a child.

* Republican pastor Mike Hintz, whom George W. Bush commended during the 2004 presidential campaign, surrendered to police after admitting to a sexual affair with a female juvenile.

* Republican legislator Peter Dibble pleaded no contest to having an inappropriate relationship with a 13-year-old girl.

* Republican Committee Chairman Jeffrey Patti was arrested for distributing a video clip of a 5-year-old girl being raped.

* Republican activist Marty Glickman (a.k.a. "Republican Marty"), was taken into custody by Florida police on four counts of unlawful sexual activity with an underage girl and one count of delivering the drug LSD.

* Republican legislative aide Howard L. Brooks was charged with molesting a 12-year old boy and possession of child pornography.

* Republican Senate candidate John Hathaway was accused of having sex with his 12-year old baby sitter and withdrew his candidacy after the allegations were reported in the media.

* Republican preacher Stephen White, who demanded a return to traditional values, was sentenced to jail after offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him.

* Republican talk show host Jon Matthews pleaded guilty to exposing his genitals to an 11 year old girl.
All of these stories are good reason to go to the polls in 2010 and 2012 and make sure we all return the party of "values" to being the majority party that runs all three branches of government.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Proof the Media Loves Democrats More Than Republicans



















Media ignore Obama's accomplishments to claim he has "little to show for '09"
Media baselessly claim Obama "has little to show" for first year that "amounts to a long parade of rebuffs"

Columnists attack Obama effectiveness. For instance, a January 1 Washington Times column by Pruden is headlined "Obama has little to show for '09." In a January 26 Wall Street Journal column, Bret Stephens asserted that "Mr. Obama's first year in office amounts to a long parade of rebuffs," adding that Obama's "personal salesmanship has failed to overcome the defects of legislation."
Obama had numerous accomplishments in his first year

Passing stimulus, generating jobs. On February 17, 2009, Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus bill into law. In December 2009, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued a report estimating that "in the third quarter of calendar year 2009, an additional 600,000 to 1.6 million people were employed in the United States" due to that legislation. According to the White House Council of Economic Advisers, CBO has increased its estimate to 800,000 to 2.4 million additional employed through the fourth quarter of that year. Moreover, a November 20, 2009, New York Times article reported that the "consensus" among "dispassionate analysts" is that "the stimulus package, messy as it is, is working," citing nonpartisan analyses of gross domestic product and total employment figures by several companies specializing in economic forecasting. Further, a January 25 USA Today article stated that, according to its "quarterly survey of 50 economists," "[u]nemployment would have hit 10.8% -- higher than December's 10% rate -- without Obama's $787 billion stimulus program," adding, "The difference would translate into another 1.2 million lost jobs."

Eliminating wasteful spending. Obama was able to achieve some significant cuts to wasteful spending -- most notably, the elimination of the F-22 fighter jet program after he successfully lobbied the Senate to vote to strip out financing for more jets from a defense funding authorization bill. The Washington Times reported on January 14 that Obama won "60 percent of his proposed cuts" and also managed "to get Congress to ax several programs that had bedeviled President George W. Bush for years."

Sotomayor nomination. On May 26, 2009, Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court to replace the retiring Justice David Souter. She was confirmed by the Senate on August 6, 2009, and sworn in August 8, making her the first Hispanic justice, and only the third woman, on the court.

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The first bill President Obama signed into law, on January 29, 2009, was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which expands the rights of workers to sue employers over wage discrimination claims.

SCHIP expansion. On February 5, 2009, Obama signed a bill expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to cover 4 million more lower-income children.

Public lands bill. On March 30, Obama signed an omnibus public lands bill, which The New York Times reported "allows for 2 million more acres to be declared wilderness... [with] more than 1,000 miles designated as scenic rivers, and adds land for national trails."

Credit card reform. On May 21, 2009, Obama signed into law a bill providing what USA Today called the "most sweeping changes to the credit card industry in 40 years," adding restrictions on interest rate increases and fees and restricting the marketing of credit cards to college students.

Transparency. The Washington Post reported that moves by the Obama administration to improve government transparency "included a ban on lobbyist gifts; restrictions on the hiring of lobbyists; publication of White House visitor logs and other records; and a move to bar lobbyists from serving on advisory boards." A report by Common Cause, Democracy 21, the League of Women Voters, and U.S. PIRG stated that: "The cumulative effect of the Administration's actions has been to adopt the strongest and most comprehensive lobbying, ethics and transparency rules and policies ever established by an Administration to govern its own activities."

Tobacco regulation. On June 22, 2009, Obama signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which, for the first time, gave the U.S. Food & Drug Administration the authority to regulate the manufacturing, marketing, and sale of tobacco.

National service. On April 21, 2009, Obama signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which expands the scope of AmeriCorps and provides opportunities for young people and senior citizens to join in service programs.

Stem cell research. On May 9, 2009, Obama signed an executive order easing restrictions on the use of federal money for embryonic stem cell research.

Please Bring Back Republican Control of Government



















Please Bring Back Republican Control of Government

Right now, the OMB is projecting a debt/GDP ratio of 77 percent by 2019 — 69 percent if you net out financial assets acquired via the TARP and all that. This may be somewhat over-optimistic, but stay with it for a bit.

As I’ve been pointing out, the projected debt/GDP ratio will be high by US historical standards, but within a range that a number of advanced countries have entered without catastrophe in the past. Still, it’s not good. And I had a thought that I haven’t seen anyone else explore (apologies if someone has already done this.) Namely, what would things look like if we hadn’t had 8 years of gross fiscal irresponsibility from the Bush adminstration?

There were two big-ticket Bush policies. One was the tax cuts, which cost around $1.8 trillion in revenue; add in interest costs, and we’re presumably talking about more than $2 trillion in debt. The other was the Iraq War, which has cost at least $700 billion, and will cost more before we finally extract ourselves.

Without these gratuitous drains on the budget, it seems fair to assert that we’d be coming into this economic crisis with a federal debt around 20 percent of GDP ($2.8 trillion) smaller than we are. And that, in turn, means that we’d be looking at projected net debt in 2019 of around 50 percent of GDP, not 70.

And that would definitely not be a scary number. Net federal debt was 49 percent of GDP in 1993, at the end of the Reagan-Bush years; Bill Clinton did move to reduce that number, and succeeded, but the nation wasn’t facing imminent crisis.

The bottom line, then, is this: the irresponsibility of the Bush years has left us poorly positioned to deal with the current crisis, turning what should have been an easily financed economic rescue into a more difficult, anxiety-producing process.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Beware of Conservative Budget Peacocks



















Beware of Conservative Budget Peacocks

1. They never mention revenues.

There are two sides to every balance sheet, and the federal budget is no exception. Deficits occur when spending is too high, but they also happen when revenue levels are too low. The budget deficit in FY 2009 was a whopping 9.9 percent of GDP, the highest it has been since World War II. And that enormous deficit was caused as much by a dramatic decline in tax revenues as it was by an increase in spending. In fact, the size of the revenue decline was four times larger than all of the new spending initiatives started since President Obama took office. Tax revenues in 2009 were at their lowest levels since 1950. When revenues decline by 17 percent, as they did last year, deficits skyrocket.

- 2. They offer easy answers.

Beware anyone offering easy answers. We face a very large budget gap over the coming decade, and the scale of the problem is such that no one solution is going to solve it all. It is going to take a mix of increased revenues, spending reductions, and improved government efficiency to get our fiscal house in order. Those who claim that we could get the budget back to sustainability if we only cut out earmarks, or say that the solution is to simply freeze discretionary spending, are just peddling fiscal snake oil.

The budget deficit is likely to average about $900 billion per year over the next five years. Even by the most expansive definition of “pork-barrel spending,” earmarks amount to less than $20 billion a year. Eliminating them all would reduce the deficit by less than 3 percent. The federal government is certainly going to have to do a better job of spending each dollar wisely and diligently seek ways to improve efficiency across the board. But earmarks are actually a vanishingly small drain on our nation’s overall finances, and eliminating them will not even get us one-twentieth of the way to balance.

Freezing discretionary spending, the spending that Congress reappropriates every year, at current levels will similarly yield only very small budgetary savings. The federal government spent a bit more than $625 billion on non-defense discretionary programs in 2009. The Congressional Budget Office projects that, in five years, the federal government will spend about $660 billion on the same programs. Freezing non-defense discretionary spending at current levels would therefore only produce a total savings of $35 billion in 2015. That year, the budget deficit is expected to be around $760 billion. Saving $35 billion would solve less than 5 percent of the problem. There may be some savings to be found in non-defense discretionary programs, but a spending freeze would accomplish extremely little in the way of measurable deficit reduction.

There are no easy answers to our budgetary challenges. We have an aging population, rising health care costs, and a tax code full of loopholes, exceptions, and targeted subsidies. It is going to take more than simple solutions to meet these challenges. If you hear the words, “all we have to do to balance the budget is…” then you know whoever spoke them hasn’t fully grasped the scope of the problem.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Neocons and merit. They are "effectively insulated from failure"




































Neocons and merit. They are "effectively insulated from failure"


Despite all the failures of the neoconservative movement in foreign policy over the last eight years, Newsweek writes that we are witnessing “the return of the neocons.” However, the article provides little hard evidence that neoconservative foreign policy has actually gained renewed credibility. Neocons simply “agree…that they are not about to go away.” And despite the premise of the piece, the article notes why neoconservatism is, in the words of Newsweek, “alive and well“:

“They are effectively insulated from failure,” says Stephen Walt of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, one of the neocons’ most frequent antagonists. “Even if you’ve totally screwed up in office and things you’ve advocated in print have failed, there are no real consequences, either professionally or politically. You go back to AEI and Weekly Standard and continue to agitate or appear on talk shows as if nothing has gone wrong at all.”

One such prominent neocon is Bill Kristol, whom Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart once asked, “Are you ever right?” But it hasn’t just been Kristol’s ideological opposites that have criticized him. According to Newsweek, neocons, other Republicans, and even his own late father have criticized him:

“He would rather take an interesting wrong position than a dull correct one,” says a longtime neocon who did not want to be named because the two are friendly. Several people who know Kristol describe his Palin boosterism—his very public campaign to persuade John McCain to put her on the Republican ticket—as a schoolboy-like infatuation, sparked when a Weekly Standard cruise docked in Juneau. [...] “Bill’s a very close friend of mine, but he does an awful lot of things just to get publicity,” says one prominent Republican who also did not want to be named for fear of offending Kristol. [...]

Even his father had his qualms. “My poor son has got it wrong again,” he sometimes lamented to an old family friend.

Even far right-wing hawk and Fox News analyst Ralph Peters took a jab at neoconservatives. “These are men for whom too much came too easily in life, so it was all too easy for them to view our troops as mere tools to implement their visions,” he said, adding that he doesn’t consider himself a neocon.
The leaders of the conservative movement are by all definitions - inherited unearned wealth, unearned reputations for expertise, elite educations and have a kind of neocon welfare structure where they never have to submit a resume or prove their accomplishments, thus always have high paying jobs pontificating or supposedly doing research and thinking grand thoughts. There is a class war and these neocons are the elite in charge of it.

Deficits and Convenient Republican Memory Lose








































Deficits and Convenient Republican Memory Lose
INHERITING RECKLESSNESS: "Reagan proved deficits don't matter," Vice President Cheney said in 2002 when pushing for a fresh round of tax cuts. With this attitude in hand, Bush passed on a budgetary nightmare to his successor. Bush came into office with an advantage few presidents have enjoyed -- a $230 billion surplus. But due to a $1.35 trillion tax cut in 2001, a $1.5 trillion tax cut in 2003, and a massive defense buildup through the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Bush quickly blew through that surplus. The next president will "inherit a fiscal meltdown," Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) warned in February 2008, as the Bush administration projected a budget deficit of $400 billion. After the financial crisis emerged last fall and the ensuing bailouts, Bush's budget deficit ballooned to over $1 trillion. As Center for American Progress Vice President for Economic Policy Michael Ettlinger explained, budget deficits swelled under Bush because his supply-side tax policies slashed revenues while failing to deliver strong economic performance.

SIMPLE HONESTY: Obama has already made a departure from the Bush budget legacy by instilling new openness and transparency. Last week, the New York Times reported that Obama will not reject "four accounting gimmicks that President George W. Bush used to make deficit projections look smaller." In 2005, the Washington Post editorial board called Bush's budget proposal a "farce" for using accounting tricks. Obama's changes include accounting for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (Bush relied on "emergency supplemental" war spending), assuming the Alternative Minimum Tax will be indexed for inflation, accounting for the full costs of Medicare reimbursements, and anticipating inevitable expenditures for natural disaster relief. The result of Obama's openness is a budget that is $2.7 trillion "deeper in the red over the next decade than it would otherwise appear." As The Wonk Room explained, "that debt was always there. It was just being hidden." "For too long, our budget process in Washington has been an exercise in deception -- a series of accounting tricks to hide the extent of our spending," Obama remarked yesterday.

THE NEW FISCAL HAWKS: While purporting to be deficit hawks, the Republican-led Congresses from 2001 to 2006 rubber-stamped the Bush agenda that created the current fiscal crisis. "[W]e're hopeful...that eventually the Democrats will decide...to move aside and let Republicans govern in the way that President Bush has led us to do," said former senator Rick Santorum in September 2006. The Congress shuttled through pork-stuffed legislation, massive tax cuts, and huge increases in defense spending. Yet those same members are trying to stifle the Obama agenda with concerns about the budget -- even as they proposed a $3.5 trillion tax-cut-only recovery package. The recovery package "spends far too much," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said recently. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) remarked, "It's very wasteful...if you throw in the interest it's about $1.3 trillion." Yet many of the same Republicans eagerly supported Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cuts in 2001. Influential Republicans in Congress have also indicated that they may oppose Obama's housing plan because it is allegedly too expensive.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Do Democrats or Republicans Put More Money in the Average American's Pocket









































Who is better for the economy

Since 1929, Republicans and Democrats have each controlled the presidency for nearly 40 years. So which party has been better for American pocketbooks and capitalism as a whole? Well, here’s an experiment: imagine that during these years you had to invest exclusively under either Democratic or Republican administrations. How would you have fared?

As of Friday, a $10,000 investment in the S.& P. stock market index* would have grown to $11,733 if invested under Republican presidents only, although that would be $51,211 if we exclude Herbert Hoover’s presidency during the Great Depression. Invested under Democratic presidents only, $10,000 would have grown to $300,671 at a compound rate of 8.9 percent over nearly 40 years.
More here, The Record: Stock Market, Economy Do Better Under Democrats

What else would we expect from a Republican. The first thing he does is desecrate the U.S. flag, Brown victory party featured flag calling for a ‘second’ revolution, tea party-inspired civil war.

Inequalities

The Census Bureau has tracked the economic fortunes of affluent, middle-class and poor American families for six decades. According to my analysis, these tabulations reveal a wide partisan disparity in income growth. The real incomes of middle-class families grew more than twice as fast under Democratic presidents as they did under Republican presidents. Even more remarkable, the real incomes of working-poor families (at the 20th percentile of the income distribution) grew six times as fast when Democrats held the White House. Only the incomes of affluent families were relatively impervious to partisan politics, growing robustly under Democrats and Republicans alike.

The cumulative effect of these partisan differences is enormous. If the pattern of income growth under postwar Republican presidents had matched the pattern under Democrats, incomes would be more equal now than they were in 1950 — a far cry from the contemporary reality of what some observers are calling a New Gilded Age.

It might be tempting to suppose that these partisan differences in income growth are a coincidence of timing, merely reflecting the fact that Republicans held the White House through most of the past three decades of slow, unequal growth. The partisan pattern, however, is remarkably consistent throughout the postwar period. Every Republican president since Dwight Eisenhower presided over increasing economic inequality, while only one Democrat — Jimmy Carter — did so.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Conservatives Lack Humility and Ethics


































Ingraham's "D-plus" for Obama undermined by last year's rise in consumer confidence
38 minutes ago

On Fox & Friends, Laura Ingraham gave President Obama "a D-plus" on the economy and asserted that "consumer optimism" is "obviously down." But Ingraham's claim about "consumer optimism" ignores the fact that consumer confidence in December 2009 was 52.9, up from 38.0 in December 2008, an increase of 39 percent.
Ingraham was a Bush supporter. Which goes hand in hand with being a supporter of the unregulated anything goes crush the middle-class kind of economy largely responsible for the Great Recession. If Ingraham has the least bit of humility or intelligence she would apologize to the nation for being an enabler of the free market chaos that has hurt so many Americans. Why do conservatives such as Laura hate America..

Carl Cameron Gets Chummy With Brown Supporters, Ducks Question Of Fox News’ Ethics
As Media Matters has documented, Fox News has boosted the campaign of State Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), the Republican running for special election to the U.S. Senate today. On multiple occasions, Fox News has provided a soapbox for Brown to solicit money and volunteers, and Fox News hosts have appealed for viewers to support Brown’s campaign.
The answer to this abhorrent behavior is easy. Carl and Fox hate America, but they love conservatism. They would like America to think Conservatism and America are the same thing, yet it is truly rare that conservatives stand up for the liberties guaranteed in the Founder's Bill of Rights. They find those rights a hindrance to the authoritarian dystopia they want the U.S.A. to be.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

State Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) Justifies Denying 9/11 Rescue Workers Aid: ‘We Had To Take Care Of Our Own Priorities First’
























State Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) Justifies Denying 9/11 Rescue Workers Aid: ‘We Had To Take Care Of Our Own Priorities First’

As the Plum Line reported yesterday, State Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate special election on Tuesday, voted on October 17, 2001 to deny financial aid to Red Cross rescue workers who had volunteered with 9/11 recovery efforts. As a state representative at the time, Brown was one out of only three legislators who had opposed the overwhelmingly bipartisan measure.

At a campaign rally today in Hyannis, ThinkProgress caught up with Brown for comment on why he voted against the measure:

TP: In 2001, you voted against 9/11 recovery workers, giving them aid, do you have any comment on this story?

BROWN: Yes, it was a time when our budget was down. We had a lot of cuts unfortunately, and we had to take care of our own priorities first.


During the same month Brown was voting down efforts to support 9/11 rescue workers, he was pushing a bill to appropriate a tax-subsidized bond to build a golf course in Norfolk, a city in his district. “Priorities,” indeed.
Brown also had to be pushed to feel a little sympathy for rape victims. Which makes Brown's attitude toward women similar to that of Iranian fundamentalists.

James Dobson Starts New Organization to Sell Hate as an American Value



















James Dobson to start new nonprofit and radio show, giving him ‘greater leeway to hold forth on politics.’

James Dobson Last year, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson announced that he would be stepping down from his organization but would “continue to host Focus on the Family’s flagship radio program, write a monthly newsletter and speak out on moral issues.” The group had been suffering from financial troubles, laying off more than 100 staffers. However, Dobson recently announced that in March, he and his son will instead be launching a new nonprofit and radio show called “James Dobson on the Family.”

- As Steve Benen has noted, “Few modern figures on the political scene hate quite as many people, with quite as much intensity, as James Dobson. Gays, minority faiths, the First Amendment, Girl Scouts, SpongeBob Squarepants…if you don’t think, act, or believe as Dobson does, you’re an enemy. (One of my personal favorites is when Dobson insisted that gay marriage ‘will destroy the Earth.’ He wasn’t kidding.)”

Friday, January 15, 2010

Typical Conservative - Karl Rove Corrupt Serial Liar and Crazy as a Bed Bug



































Typical Conservative - Karl Rove Corrupt Serial Liar and Crazy as a Bed Bug
[G]iven the shape in which the last administration left this country, I'm not sure I would solicit his advice," Axelrod wrote.

Axelrod slammed the "spending spree" of Rove's former boss President George W. Bush, noting that he turned a "$236 billion budget surplus" into a "$1.3 trillion deficit" by the time he left office.

"During eight years in office, the Bush administration passed two major tax cuts skewed to the wealthiest Americans, enacted a costly Medicare prescription-drug benefit and waged two wars, without paying for any of it," he said.
Story continues below...

Axelrod claimed the previous administration's "fiscal responsibility" helped bring about the recession of 2008 and Obama's stimulus package "helped save our economy from an even deeper disaster."

"There's an old saying that everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts," Axelrod said. "I'd urge [Rove] to take that to heart."

Axelrod said Obama's health care plan won't add to the deficit over time -- as predicted by the Congressional Budget Office -- but didn't point out that the deficit for the 2009 fiscal year totaled $1.4 trillion.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Conservative Candy Always Has a Nutty Filling



































Chuck Norris Hunts for Obama's 'Secret Vault' as Interpol Conspiracy Theories Get Wilder
Now for a little reality check: The Interpol office in New York does indeed get an exemption from the Freedom of Information Act under Obama's order. But as Ron Noble, Interpol's secretary-general, told us last week, there is nothing especially sinister about that: the office has files on suspected terrorists provided by the law-enforcement agencies of its member countries—and those agencies would be loath to share them if they thought their internal reports (including the names of informants, the transcripts of wiretaps, and other confidential evidence) might be made public. (If you think that's unusual, try filing a FOIA request for FBI or DEA files on their current criminal suspects.)


Targeting Reid, Republicans Forget Bush Forced Lott Out
The preposterous Republican campaign to equate Harry Reid's off-the-record "dialect" comment with neo-Confederate Trent Lott's lavish public praise of Strom Thurmond has shifted into overdrive. But even as Michael Steele, Jon Kyl and other leading lights of the Party of Hate press Reid like Lott before him to surrender his Senate leadership post, they conveniently omit President George W' Bush's essential role in forcing Lott's resignation. Just as important, the GOP is silent as to why Bush, desperate to improve the Party's image with minority voters, threw Lott under the bus.


Sarah Palin is just another right-wing Iraq/9-11 conspiracy nut. And a back tracking liar.

Glenn Beck: Obama is a Marxist, Great Depression Happened in 1948, and Beck Has The Charts To Prove It. It has become a fairly reliable axiom that if Glenn Beck believes it, its not true.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Some Conservatives Gossip. Some Conservatives Enjoy Their Delusions.




































Glenn Greenwald on Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's new book, Game Change.
No event in recent memory has stimulated the excitment and interest of Washington political reporters like the release of Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's new book, Game Change, and that reaction tells you all you need to know about our press corps. By all accounts (including a long, miserable excerpt they released), the book is filled with the type of petty, catty, gossipy, trashy sniping that is the staple of sleazy tabloids and reality TV shows, and it has been assembled through anonymous gossip, accountability-free attributions, and contrived melodramatic dialogue masquerading as "reporting." And yet -- or, really, therefore -- Washington's journalist class is poring over, studying, and analyzing its contents as though it is the Dead Sea Scrolls, lavishing praise on its authors as though they committed some profound act of journalism, and displaying a level of genuine fascination and giddiness that stands in stark contrast to the boredom and above-it-all indifference they project in those rare instances when forced to talk about anything that actually matters.

This reaction has nicely illuminated what our press corps is. The book is little more than royal court gossip, churned out by the leading practitioner of painfully sycophantic, Drudge-mimicking cattiness: Time's Mark Halperin. And all of the courtiers, courtesans, court spokespeople (i.e., "journalists") and hangers-on who populate our decadent little Versailles on the Potomac can barely contain their glee over the opportunity to revel in this self-absorbed sleaze. Virtually every "political news" TV show is hyping it. D.C. reporters are boasting that they obtained early previews and are excitedly touting how intensively they're studying its pages in order to identify the most crucial revelations.
This is not a book about how conservative policies destroyed 3 trillion dollars of our national economic wealth. No. Its mostly unsubstantiated bits of rumors about John Edwards sex life and something Harry Reid said that was taken out of context. Its not about how Bush and Cheney committed treason by lying about WMD and make-believe terror connections. Nope its about the really spicy stuff that conservatives like Helperin and Drudge think are important.

Rudy Giuliani lives in a wonderful world. Its all peaches and cream. A wonderland of sorts. Its not the real world, but if he wants to enjoy living his life, like most conservatives, in LaLa land that is his right, Giuliani still in denial about Bush-era terror attacks
After falsely claiming on Good Morning America that "[w]e had no domestic attacks under Bush," Rudy Giuliani stated during CNN's The Situation Room, "I did omit the words 'since September 11th.' I apologize for that. I should have put it in." However, Giuliani continued to ignore several domestic attacks that took place under Bush after 9/11 -- including the 2002 attack at the Los Angeles International Airport, the 2002 DC-area sniper shootings, and the 2006 SUV attack at the University of North Carolina - and dismissed the 2001 anthrax attacks, which were characterized by John Ashcroft as "a terrorist act," because, Giuliani said, "as far as we know, that was not done in the name of Islamic terrorism."

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Conservative, Republican, tea bagger or Right-winger - all mean lying cowardly bed wetter



































Conservative, Republican, tea bagger or Right-winger - all mean lying cowardly bed wetter

How Could Giuliani Forget 9/11? Maybe he's just suffering from conservative demetia. Its very common among Republicans.

Glenn Beck cares, but he doesn't care what people think. Bill O'Reilly cares but doesn't care about what people think. Glenn and Bill whine about people in the United States of America having the nerve to fact check them and find they're both filled with enough noxious gas to be considered walking WMD. After the show they probably both went to the restroom to change their diapers.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Andrew Breitbart Big Journalism and Little Humility or Truth









































Big Journalism, bigger ego

In between childish Twitter fits and chasing down Maoist Christmas tree ornaments, Andrew Breitbart somehow found the time to launch the third of his "Big" websites, introducing to us all this morning BigJournalism.com. Breitbart himself authored the introductory post, offering a maudlin retelling of a telephone conversation he had with Bertha Lewis of ACORN, and in the process explaining how Andrew Breitbart's BigJournalism.com will be a celebration of how great and courageous a journalist Andrew Breitbart thinks he is:

I couldn't believe I was having this conversation. It felt like a scene from a movie that conveniently ties plot points together when two critical characters in the storyline share a moment of implausible significance - where the intrepid reporter finally runs his target to ground.

[...]

Challenging the party line now is akin to showing one's John Birch Society membership card. It's a form of intimidation that creates timidity in those not ideologically in line, and grants free rein for leftists to use establishment journalism as a cudgel with which to beat their ideological opponents. In one year there have been too many administration lies and too many media cover-ups and passes to treat the future as anything but a hostile environment.

[...]

I'm skeptical and biased - and I think it's what makes me good at what I do. No journalism symposium can convince me otherwise.

[...]

Throughout the ACORN story I applied my conscience to the material. Strategy and tactics were built around my understanding that the mainstream media would be the enemy of the truth, and that we would have to go to extreme measures to get the American people to see and to contemplate what was on the shocking and historic O'Keefe and Giles tapes.

Fittingly, much of Breitbart's post is devoted to the fact that he posted a correction to the BigGovernment.com story falsely claiming that Bertha Lewis was the "Bertha E. Lewis" who showed up in White House records as a visitor to the executive mansion. According to Breitbart: "This week I issued my first correction, even though I wasn't proved wrong. I just couldn't prove I was right. I can live with that rule." There are three things to point out here: First, he was proven wrong. Bertha Lewis of ACORN bears the middle initial "M". Second, it may have been the first correction he issued, but it certainly wasn't the first time a correction was needed. Third, saying you ran a correction even though you didn't think you had to doesn't make you a good journalist, it shows that you pay lip service to journalistic standards about which you don't really care.
Sounds like Breitbart is going to be the Glenn beck of the intertubes. Both feel their distorted acid trip version of reality is the new gospel truth.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Founding Father's Nightmare - Conservatives Support Torture




































Getting Away with Torture

In the fall of 2002, Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen on his way home from Tunisia, was pulled out of line by US officials while changing planes at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport. He was locked up for twelve days, much of that time incommunicado, and harshly interrogated. When he was finally allowed to make a phone call, after a week in captivity, he called his mother in Canada, who found him a lawyer.

The lawyer saw Arar on Saturday. The very next night-a Sunday evening-immigration officials held an extraordinary six-hour hearing starting at 9 PM, orchestrated from Washington, D.C. When Arar asked to have his lawyer present, they told him that she had chosen not to participate in the hearing. In fact, the only "notice" they had provided was to leave a message on the lawyer's office voice mail that Sunday night. She got the message Monday morning, and immediately called the immigration service. They told her, falsely, that Arar was being transferred to New Jersey, and she could contact him the next day. In fact, that night federal agents took him on a federally chartered jet to Jordan, and from there to Syria.

In Syria, Arar was handed over to intelligence officials who imprisoned him in a cell the size of a grave, three feet by six feet by seven feet. Syrian security agents tortured him, including beating him with an electric cable, while asking the same questions that FBI interrogators had been asking at JFK-was he a terrorist, was he linked to al-Qaeda, did he know various other persons thought to be associated with al-Qaeda? (The Syrian security forces are widely known for their use of torture, as the US State Department reports every year in its annual Human Rights Country Reports.) After a year, the Syrians released Arar, concluding that he had done nothing wrong.

Arar returned to Canada-this time bypassing JFK. Canada launched a major independent investigation, which concluded that he was wholly innocent, and that Canadian officials had erred in providing the Americans with misleading information about him while he was in US custody. The Canadians erroneously told US officials that Arar was a target of a terrorist investigation; in fact, he had merely been identified as someone who should be contacted to see if he had any information about the target, and was not suspected of any terrorist activity himself. The Canadian parliament offered Arar a unanimous apology, and Canada paid him CAD $10.5 million in compensation.[*]

But the Canadians were unaware that the US intended to send Arar to Syria, and they had no part in that decision. It was the US, not Canada, that locked up Arar without charges, blocked his access to the courts, spirited him off to Syria, and then provided the Syrians a dossier of questions to ask him while he was being tortured. Arar filed suit in a US court, suing the federal officials who had a part in his mistreatment-including Attorney General John Ashcroft, Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, and FBI Director Robert Mueller. As a volunteer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, I am one of Arar's lawyers.

Arar's claims were simple: to forcibly send him to Syria to be tortured violates the Constitution's due process clause, which the Supreme Court has interpreted as forbidding conduct that "shocks the conscience," as well as the Torture Victim Protection Act, which allows torture victims to sue those who subject them to torture "under color of foreign law." Courts have long held that torture is the paradigmatic example of conduct that "shocks the conscience" and violates due process. And Arar alleged that the US defendants sent him to Syria for the purpose of subjecting him to torture under Syrian law. These allegations were largely confirmed not only by the Canadian investigation, but also by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general. In twenty-five years as a lawyer, I have never had a clearer and more egregious case of abuse.

Yet thus far the US courts have shut the door entirely on Arar, not even allowing him to offer proof of his claims. In Arar's latest setback, an eleven-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled on November 2, 2009, that "special factors counseling hesitation" barred Arar's core claim that his constitutional rights were violated when he was sent to be tortured. The Supreme Court has ruled that suits for damages are generally available for such violations of constitutional rights, but has refused to permit suits where Congress has provided an alternative remedy, or where "military discipline" would be undermined by permitting soldiers to sue their commanding officers. The Bush administration argued that Arar's claim for damages should similarly be dismissed because it implicated sensitive issues of national security, foreign policy, and secret diplomatic communications between the US and foreign governments. The seven-judge majority agreed, finding that any adjudication would likely involve classified information, and could not proceed

without inquiry into the perceived need for the [extraordinary rendition] policy, the threats to which it responds, the substance and sources of the intelligence used to formulate it, and the propriety of adopting specific responses to particular threats in light of apparent geopolitical circumstances and our relations with foreign countries.

Two things are remarkable about the majority's reasoning. First, the rationale quoted above appears to presume that sending people to be tortured may be permissible depending on the "geopolitical circumstances" or "the threats to which [the torture] responds." But under our law and international law, torture is never permissible, and thus these concerns ought not even enter the picture. Second, to dismiss Arar's case at this early stage, the court had to find that, even accepting as true his allegations that federal officials sent an innocent man to be tortured, Arar would be entitled to no remedy. The court concluded, without actually reviewing any classified evidence, that Arar's case was too sensitive to adjudicate, because it would require court review of national security policy and confidential diplomacy. The court suggested that Arar ask Congress for a remedy instead-notwithstanding that he is a foreign national with no voice in the US political process, and that US officials have prohibited him from entering the country for any purpose.

Four judges dissented. Judge Guido Calabresi, former dean of the Yale Law School, predicted that "when the history of this distinguished court is written, today's majority decision will be viewed with dismay." Judge Rosemary Pooler dismissed the majority's national security concerns as "hyperbolic and speculative," and maintained that Arar should have a remedy "to reinforce our system of checks and balances, to provide a deterrent, and to redress conduct that shocks the conscience."

Judge Barrington Parker, appointed to the Second Circuit by President George W. Bush, wrote that "if the Constitution ever implied a damages remedy, this is such a case-where executive officials allegedly blocked access to the remedies chosen by Congress in order to deliver a man to known torturers." Had Arar been able to get to a court to challenge his removal before federal officials put him on a plane, the court would plainly have had authority to review the case and forbid the removal; courts routinely enjoin removal when a foreign national faces a substantial risk of torture. The fact that the defendants lied to Arar's lawyer to keep her from filing an action when the torture could have been averted, in Parker's view, only strengthened the case for a damages remedy after the fact; otherwise, the courts are essentially rewarding the obstruction of justice.

Judge Robert Sack reasoned that if Arar had been tortured by federal officials at JFK, he would indisputably have a right to sue, and that the defendants' choice to outsource his torture abroad should not insulate them from liability:

I do not think that whether the defendants violated Arar's Fifth Amendment rights turns on whom they selected to do the torturing: themselves, a Syrian Intelligence officer, a warlord in Somalia, a drug cartel in Colombia, a military contractor in Baghdad or Boston, a Mafia family in New Jersey, or a Crip set in South Los Angeles.

What no judge pointed out, however, is that this is the same court of appeals that has regularly entertained lawsuits for torture and other gross human rights violations against foreign government officials, even when the wrongs were committed wholly outside the United States and affected only foreigners. One might think that such cases, in which we stand in judgment over other countries' alleged wrongs, would be even more diplomatically sensitive to adjudicate. Yet one month after the court dismissed Arar's suit, it affirmed a $19 million judgment against Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, the former leader of a Haitian death squad, for rape, torture, and attempted killing of three Haitian women by forces under his control. Under this precedent, had Arar been able to sue the Syrians who participated in his torture, the federal courts would have been ready and able to hear his claims. (He could not because none of the Syrians were in the United States, a prerequisite to the court exercising jurisdiction.) But because he sought to hold US officials accountable, his claims were too sensitive even to consider. International human rights, it seems, are something the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit stands ready to impose on others, but not on ourselves.

The same week that the court of appeals in New York dismissed Arar's case, a court in Milan, Italy, convicted twenty-two American CIA agents, a US Air Force lieutenant colonel, and two Italian military intelligence agents for the "extraordinary rendition" of a Muslim cleric, Abu Omar. He was abducted from the streets of Milan in 2003 and delivered to the Egyptian security service, which imprisoned him for four years without charges and tortured him, before returning him to Italy, uncharged.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

How Conservatives Shafted the Troops in Afghanistan


















Army History Finds Early Missteps in Afghanistan

In the fall of 2003, the new commander of American forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, decided on a new strategy. Known as counterinsurgency, the approach required coalition forces to work closely with Afghan leaders to stabilize entire regions, rather than simply attacking insurgent cells.

But there was a major drawback, a new unpublished Army history of the war concludes. Because the Pentagon insisted on maintaining a “small footprint” in Afghanistan and because Iraq was drawing away resources, General Barno commanded fewer than 20,000 troops.

As a result, battalions with 800 soldiers were trying to secure provinces the size of Vermont. “Coalition forces remained thinly spread across Afghanistan,” the historians write. “Much of the country remained vulnerable to enemy forces increasingly willing to reassert their power.”

That early and undermanned effort to use counterinsurgency is one of several examples of how American forces, hamstrung by inadequate resources, missed opportunities to stabilize Afghanistan during the early years of the war, according to the history, “A Different Kind of War.”

This year, a resurgent Taliban prompted the current American commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, to warn that the war would be lost without an infusion of additional troops and a more aggressive approach to counterinsurgency. President Obama agreed, ordering the deployment of 30,000 more troops, which will bring the total American force to 100,000.

But as early as late 2003, the Army historians assert, “it should have become increasingly clear to officials at Centcom and D.O.D. that the coalition presence in Afghanistan did not provide enough resources” for proper counterinsurgency, the historians write, referring to the United States Central Command and the Department of Defense.

“A Different Kind of War,” which covers the period from October 2001 until September 2005, represents the first installment of the Army’s official history of the conflict. Written by a team of seven historians at the Army’s Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and based on open source material, it is scheduled to be published by spring.

The New York Times obtained a copy of the manuscript, which is still under review by current and former military officials.

Though other histories, including “In the Graveyard of Empires” by Seth G. Jones and “Descent Into Chaos” by Ahmed Rashid, cover similar territory, the manuscript of “A Different Kind of War” offers new details and is notable for carrying the imprimatur of the Army itself, which will use the history to train a new generation of officers.

The history, which has more than 400 pages, praises several innovations by the Pentagon, particularly the pairing of small Special Operations Forces teams with Afghan militias, which, backed by laser-guided weapons, drove the Taliban from power.

But, once the Taliban fell, the Pentagon often seemed ill-prepared and slow-footed in shifting from a purely military mission to a largely peacekeeping and nation-building one, fresh details in the history indicate.

“Even after the capture of Kabul and Kandahar,” the historians write, “there was no major planning initiated to create long-term political, social and economic stability in Afghanistan. In fact, the message from senior D.O.D officials in Washington was for the U.S. military to avoid such efforts.”

In one telling anecdote from 2004, the history describes how soldiers under General Barno had so little experience in counterinsurgency that one lieutenant colonel bought books about the strategy over the Internet and distributed them to his company commanders and platoon leaders.

In another case, a civil affairs commander in charge of small-scale reconstruction projects told the historians that he had been given $1 million in cash to house and equip his soldiers but that bureaucratic obstacles prevented him from spending a penny on projects. It took months to reduce the red tape, the historians say.

The historians also say that such anecdotes underscore the resourcefulness of commanders faced with unclear guidance and inadequate resources. But limited manpower still had an impact on operations, the history indicates.

When the Taliban was on the run in the spring of 2002, Lt. Gen. Dan K. McNeill, the incoming commander of American forces, traveled to Washington seeking guidance. The message conveyed by the Army’s vice chief of staff, Gen. Jack Keane, was, “Don’t you do anything that looks like permanence,” General McNeill recalled. “We are in and out of there in a hurry.”

Largely as a result of that mandate, General McNeill took only half of his headquarters command from the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, N.C. But as the conflict became more complicated, requiring diplomatic and political operations as well as military ones, General McNeill lacked enough planning personnel, the history suggests. He was replaced in 2003 by an even smaller headquarters unit, the history says.

The lack of resources was also apparent in the training of Afghan security forces, the history shows.

Early in the war, the training program was hampered by poor equipment, low pay, high attrition and not enough trainers. Living conditions for the Afghan army were so poor that Maj. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry likened them to Valley Forge when he took command of the training operation in October 2002.

“The mandate was clear and it was a central task, but it is also fair to say that up until that time there had been few resources committed,” Mr. Eikenberry, now the ambassador to Afghanistan, told the historians, referring to the army training program.

The historians say resistance to providing more robust resources to Afghanistan had three sources in the White House and the Pentagon.

First, President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had criticized using the military for peacekeeping and reconstruction in the Balkans during the 1990s. As a result, “nation building” carried a derogatory connotation for many senior military officials, even though American forces were being asked to fill gaping voids in the Afghan government after the Taliban’s fall.

Second, military planners were concerned about Afghanistan’s long history of resisting foreign invaders and wanted to avoid the appearance of being occupiers. But the historians argue that this concern was based partly on an “incomplete” understanding of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan.

Third, the invasion of Iraq was siphoning away resources. After the invasion started in March 2003, the history says, the United States clearly “had a very limited ability to increase its forces” in Afghanistan.

The history provides a detailed retelling of the battle of Tora Bora, the cave-riddled insurgent redoubt on the Pakistan border where American forces thought they had trapped Osama bin Laden in December 2001. But Mr. bin Laden apparently escaped into Pakistan along with hundreds of Qaeda fighters.

Is America Absolutely Positive it Will Do or Sacrifice Anything for Safety



















The degrading effects of terrorism fears
I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but David Brooks actually had an excellent column in yesterday's New York Times that makes several insightful and important points. Brooks documents how "childish, contemptuous and hysterical" the national reaction has been to this latest terrorist episode, egged on -- as usual -- by the always-hysterical American media. The citizenry has been trained to expect that our Powerful Daddies and Mommies in government will -- in that most cringe-inducing, child-like formulation -- Keep Us Safe. Whenever the Government fails to do so, the reaction -- just as we saw this week -- is an ugly combination of petulant, adolescent rage and increasingly unhinged cries that More Be Done to ensure that nothing bad in the world ever happens. Demands that genuinely inept government officials be held accountable are necessary and wise, but demands that political leaders ensure that we can live in womb-like Absolute Safety are delusional and destructive. Yet this is what the citizenry screams out every time something threatening happens: please, take more of our privacy away; monitor more of our communications; ban more of us from flying; engage in rituals to create the illusion of Strength; imprison more people without charges; take more and more control and power so you can Keep Us Safe.

Andrew Breitbart Makes the A-List of Conservative Propagandist



















News Hounds reports, Fox Nation Still Carrying Bogus Breitbart Report

When we last encountered an Andrew Breitbart link, on the internet sewage plant otherwise known as Fox Nation, he was fomenting more hatred and fear of Obama with his story about a scary Warhol Mao and a scary drag queen ornament on the White House Christmas tree. But Andy’s back on Fox Nation with another article about a scary (read African American) ACORN personality. Thing is, though, that his article is totally bogus. But never letting bogusity (my new word for 2010) get in the way of juicy racist red meat, which gets those Fox Nation residents salivating, Fox Nation is still running with it as a lede: ACORN CEO Visited White House Week Before Scandal Broke.” The “Nation” has posted 284 comments full of the usual Obama hatred and perfunctory racism - Yum, Yum. Looks like Fox Nation will be treating us, in 2010, to the same old, same old prolefeed that was its hallmark in 2009.

Fox Nation still has Andy’s article, “White House Visitor’s Log: ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis in Obama Residence Week Before Sting Videos Launched.” The article claims that, in the release of visitor’s records to the White House, the name “Bertha Lewis” came up. Never one to waste an opportunity to smear Obama, Andy immediately came to the conclusion that this was the same Bertha Lewis who is head of a group which is the focus of racist, right wing scapegoating for all the ills of our society. And as Obama is connected to ACORN, he is equally guilty of whatever transgressions which the racist, radical right accuse ACORN of – ergo, any smear of ACORN is a smear of Obama too. So enter Andy with his article which provides a linkage of Obama to the nefarious ACORN – right there in the White House – oh, noooo…..!!!! In the article, Andy mentions that this “visit” was just 5 days before James O’Keefe released his “undercover journalism on the systemic corruption within ACORN.”

Comment: ROFLMAO. As noted by Politico’s Ben Smith, “An administration official tells me that, indeed, this is a different Bertha Lewis, an ordinary visitor who came in through the White House visitor's office. One clue: The ACORN official's middle initial, according to her New York voter registration record on Nexis, is "M." An ACORN spokesman says her middle name is "Mae.” Looks like Andy’s “journalism” is as dubious as big pimping daddy James O’Keefe. And one more thing about the “systemic corruption” of ACORN – “A Congressional Research Service report commissioned by the House Judiciary Committee says ACORN hasn’t violated any federal regulations the past five years.” (So “scandal?” – I don’t think so.) Andy didn’t mention that in his article which is still on Fox Nation. Let’s see if it gets corrected. I’m not holding my breath. Happy new year, Fox Nation. Hope you had a nice "white" Christmas. Keep on feeding your “readers” their daily dose of dreck. It just gives me lots of fun stuff to write about.
News Hounds regularly fact checks Fox Rightwing Talking Points. A news channel it is not.

Friday, January 1, 2010

Conservatives Display Cognitive Disconnect From Realit and Morality


































CNN's Rick Sanchez and Sen. John Ensign (R-NV)
CNN's Rick Sanchez just grilled Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) about Ensign's affair with the wife of an aide and his ham-fisted efforts to cover things up.

Ensign came on prepared to keep politicizing the failed terror attacks by using them to attack President Obama. But Sanchez quickly turned the tables by bringing up Ensign's personal woes, leaving the senator visibly surprised.


Ensign cannot manage his marriage and let his parents pay off his mistress to keep quiet, but hey he is suddenly an expert on second guessing actual experts on national security. Ensign in typical conservative fashion thinks his obviously poor and hypocritical judgment does not disqualify him from exploiting the mistakes of others.


A look back at a president who America was lucky to survive. Survival of a sort, we'll be paying for his mistakes for decades. No wonder conservatives are in a rush to blame Obama for the economy, The Most Dangerous President Ever - How and why George W. Bush undermines American security

And so, by strategy, inclination and conviction, George W. Bush has been pursuing a reckless, even ridiculous, but always right-wing agenda -- shredding a global-security structure at a time requiring unprecedented international integration, shredding a domestic safety net at a time when the private sector provides radically less security than it did a generation ago. No American president has ever played quite so fast and loose with the well-being of the American people.
Our grandchildren will be wondering why Bush and Cheney were not tried and jailed for treason.

Its 2010 and Americans that are interested in the facts, morality and justice are wondering why BigGovernment.com, James O’Keefe and Andrew Breitbart and are not on trial for using manipulated video to smear an organization of people devoted to helping America's poorest and most vulnerable citizens.