Sunday, March 27, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Study These Charts, and Then Tell Me America Isn't in Trouble
The horrible evidence of the impact of conservative policies on America can be found here. Wealthy business interests have rigged America's economic system to benefit themselves and screw everyone else. A few examples: (You may need to click to enlarge them)
Oh, and by the way, don't let anyone snow you with the phony "rich people pay all the taxes lie". The lower income groups pay sales taxes, state income taxes, real estate taxes, excise taxes, you name it. And the share of taxes as a share of GDP is the lowest it's been in over 50 years.
This is what America is coming to. Just what do you intend to do about it?
Oh, and by the way, don't let anyone snow you with the phony "rich people pay all the taxes lie". The lower income groups pay sales taxes, state income taxes, real estate taxes, excise taxes, you name it. And the share of taxes as a share of GDP is the lowest it's been in over 50 years.
This is what America is coming to. Just what do you intend to do about it?
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Trace the Upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa
Right here,courtesy of Slate. Good animated map with a good chronology of the uprisings. Check it out.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
The Last Word on David Broder
It's right here. You owe it yourself to read all of it. Excerpt:
In fact, this fetish [of "balance" in political reporting] became so obsessive that, in the end, it became the great, tragic irony of David Broder's professional life. Because at last he simply could not bear to part with his fantasies about what he wished America to be and face the brutal realities of what America was actually becoming, David Broder -- this "Dean of the Washington press corps" -- totally missed out on covering the greatest story of his time; the utter collapse of the American news media and the mutation of the GOP from a political party into a dangerously fascistic cesspit of oligarchs, lunatics and rubes.
In fact, this fetish [of "balance" in political reporting] became so obsessive that, in the end, it became the great, tragic irony of David Broder's professional life. Because at last he simply could not bear to part with his fantasies about what he wished America to be and face the brutal realities of what America was actually becoming, David Broder -- this "Dean of the Washington press corps" -- totally missed out on covering the greatest story of his time; the utter collapse of the American news media and the mutation of the GOP from a political party into a dangerously fascistic cesspit of oligarchs, lunatics and rubes.
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Enlarge This Chart. And Then Enlarge Your Understanding of How Things Actually Work in America
These are some of the proposals being pushed the hardest by the Republicans:
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Scott Walker: Dangerous, Radical Right Wing Fanatic
In addition to his war against working men and women, radical right-wing Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is backing a plan so extreme, so downright lunatic-right in its orientation, that it would shock a John Bircher. Highlights include:
1. ELIMINATING MEDICAID: The Budget Repair Bill includes a little-known provision that would put complete control of the state’s Medicaid program, known as BadgerCare, in the hands of the state’s ultra-conservative Health and Human Services Secretary Dennis Smith. Smith would have the authority to “to override state Medicaid laws as [he] sees fit and institute sweeping changes” including reducing benefits and limiting eligibility.
2. POWER PLANT PRIVATIZATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL NEGLECT: The same budget bill calls for a rapid no-bid “firesale” of all state-owned power plants. One progressive blogger called the proposal “a highlight reel of all of the tomahawk dunks of neo-Gilded Age corporatism: privatization, no-bid contracts, deregulation, and naked cronyism” and suggested that the provision will open the way for large, politically connected corporations to buy up the state’s power plants on the cheap.
3. DANGEROUS DRINKING WATER: Republican lawmakers have introduced bills in both the Senate and the House which would repeal a rule requiring municipal governments to disinfect their water.
4. DESTROYING WETLANDS: In January, Walker’s proposed regulatory reform bill exempted a parcel of wetland owned by a Republican donor from water quality standards.
5. FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY: Walker signed a bill this week requiring a 2/3 supermajority in the legislature to pass any tax increase. Republican lawmakers are now reportedly considering a constitutional amendment that would make the rule permanent. A similar constitutional amendment in California has been called the “source of misery” of that state’s crippling budget crisis and has forced lawmakers to “gut public education, slash social services and health care programs, close prisons, and lay off record numbers of public employees.”
6. DISENFRANCHISING VOTERS: This week, Republican lawmakers moved forward on a bill that would require voters to present a photo ID from the DMV at the polls, making it significantly more difficult for the elderly, the disabled, college students, and rural residents to participate in elections. While Republican lawmakers insist the bill is necessary to prevent voter fraud, there have been almost no documented cases of fraudulent voting in the state. Instead, the Wisconsin State Journal writes, the GOP bill is going “overboard in limiting ballot access in a state proud of its long history of high participation in elections.”
7. CUTTING JOBS, LOSING THE FUTURE: Last fall, Walker killed an $810 [million] federally funded high-speed rail project, forcing the Transportation Department to pull its funding. Walker’s decision killed 130,000 expected jobs and forced the Spanish company Talgo to close its Milwaukee factory and layoff its 40 person staff. A spokeswoman for the company told The Daily Reporter that “the state’s decision to back away from the high-speed rail project sends a terrible message to businesses considering locating in the state.”
8. STIFLING INNOVATION: In late January, Walker introduced a bill that would ban wind-powered energy from Wisconsin and exacerbate the state’s dependence on out-of-state coal. If passed, it’s estimated that the law would immediately eliminate $1.8 billion in new wind power investments and jeopardize eleven currently proposed wind projects. After a public outcry earlier this month, Walker’s bill is (for now) dead.
9. “NAKED POWER GRAB”: Earlier this month in a party-line vote, the legislature ceded “extraordinary control” of the state’s rule-making oversight process to the governor. Walker now has complete power to draft agency rules which the legislature must then either approve or reject. The law gives Walker the power to write rules for formerly independent state agencies like the state Departments of Justice and Education — and most ominously the Government Accountability Board, the state’s ethics watchdog.
Democrats, this is the kind of wretched garbage we get thrown in our faces WHEN WE DON'T VOTE. We let right-wing crooks and idiots like Scott Walker and his rich cronies set public policy. There is a recall movement underway in Wisconsin. Walker becomes eligible fore recall in January 2012. LET'S GET RID OF HIM and flush his right-wing clown circus out of power once and for all.
1. ELIMINATING MEDICAID: The Budget Repair Bill includes a little-known provision that would put complete control of the state’s Medicaid program, known as BadgerCare, in the hands of the state’s ultra-conservative Health and Human Services Secretary Dennis Smith. Smith would have the authority to “to override state Medicaid laws as [he] sees fit and institute sweeping changes” including reducing benefits and limiting eligibility.
2. POWER PLANT PRIVATIZATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL NEGLECT: The same budget bill calls for a rapid no-bid “firesale” of all state-owned power plants. One progressive blogger called the proposal “a highlight reel of all of the tomahawk dunks of neo-Gilded Age corporatism: privatization, no-bid contracts, deregulation, and naked cronyism” and suggested that the provision will open the way for large, politically connected corporations to buy up the state’s power plants on the cheap.
3. DANGEROUS DRINKING WATER: Republican lawmakers have introduced bills in both the Senate and the House which would repeal a rule requiring municipal governments to disinfect their water.
4. DESTROYING WETLANDS: In January, Walker’s proposed regulatory reform bill exempted a parcel of wetland owned by a Republican donor from water quality standards.
5. FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY: Walker signed a bill this week requiring a 2/3 supermajority in the legislature to pass any tax increase. Republican lawmakers are now reportedly considering a constitutional amendment that would make the rule permanent. A similar constitutional amendment in California has been called the “source of misery” of that state’s crippling budget crisis and has forced lawmakers to “gut public education, slash social services and health care programs, close prisons, and lay off record numbers of public employees.”
6. DISENFRANCHISING VOTERS: This week, Republican lawmakers moved forward on a bill that would require voters to present a photo ID from the DMV at the polls, making it significantly more difficult for the elderly, the disabled, college students, and rural residents to participate in elections. While Republican lawmakers insist the bill is necessary to prevent voter fraud, there have been almost no documented cases of fraudulent voting in the state. Instead, the Wisconsin State Journal writes, the GOP bill is going “overboard in limiting ballot access in a state proud of its long history of high participation in elections.”
7. CUTTING JOBS, LOSING THE FUTURE: Last fall, Walker killed an $810 [million] federally funded high-speed rail project, forcing the Transportation Department to pull its funding. Walker’s decision killed 130,000 expected jobs and forced the Spanish company Talgo to close its Milwaukee factory and layoff its 40 person staff. A spokeswoman for the company told The Daily Reporter that “the state’s decision to back away from the high-speed rail project sends a terrible message to businesses considering locating in the state.”
8. STIFLING INNOVATION: In late January, Walker introduced a bill that would ban wind-powered energy from Wisconsin and exacerbate the state’s dependence on out-of-state coal. If passed, it’s estimated that the law would immediately eliminate $1.8 billion in new wind power investments and jeopardize eleven currently proposed wind projects. After a public outcry earlier this month, Walker’s bill is (for now) dead.
9. “NAKED POWER GRAB”: Earlier this month in a party-line vote, the legislature ceded “extraordinary control” of the state’s rule-making oversight process to the governor. Walker now has complete power to draft agency rules which the legislature must then either approve or reject. The law gives Walker the power to write rules for formerly independent state agencies like the state Departments of Justice and Education — and most ominously the Government Accountability Board, the state’s ethics watchdog.
Democrats, this is the kind of wretched garbage we get thrown in our faces WHEN WE DON'T VOTE. We let right-wing crooks and idiots like Scott Walker and his rich cronies set public policy. There is a recall movement underway in Wisconsin. Walker becomes eligible fore recall in January 2012. LET'S GET RID OF HIM and flush his right-wing clown circus out of power once and for all.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Vile Racist Haley Barbour Refuses to Denounce KKK Co-Founder
The Confederate-loving governor of Mississippi, the disgusting Haley Barbour, has refused to denounce a proposal from the treason/traitor-loving group Sons of Confederate Veterans that Mississippi issue a license plate honoring Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the worst humans in the history of this or any other country. Let's take a look at Forrest's horrifying record, from Dennis G. at Balloon Juice:
There are vile, violent and evil men populating the history of our Nation, but you have to look long and hard to find folks as immoral, dishonorable and deceitful as Nathan Bedford Forrest. He is a patron saint of white supremacy, racism and treason.
So naturally, he should be celebrated as a wingnutopia role model.
He was an entrepreneur and in the years leading up to the Civil War he made a fortune buying and selling people. He was the co-fonder of the “NegroMart” a wholesale mega store for slaves and when the war started he was filthy rich.
During the war he organized a gang of excessively violent and vengeful riders who were very skilled at the hit and run tactics of guerrilla fighting. He has been greatly mythologized over the years by the Church of The Lost Cause, but he was little more than a war criminal. Perhaps his most famous crime was the Massacre at Fort Pillow in 1864 where he ordered his troops to murder hundreds of surrendering troops. As Forrest himself put it in his first report of the killing field:
“The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for two hundred yards. The approximate loss was upward of five hundred killed, but few of the officers escaping. My loss was about twenty killed. It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners.”
One of the men under Forrest’s command wrote to his wife:
“the poor, deluded negroes would run up to our men, fall upon their knees, and with uplifted hand scream for mercy, but were ordered to their feet and then shot down.”
And historian Richard Fuchs, in his detailed study of the massacre described it as:
“...simply an orgy of death, a mass lynching to satisfy the basest of conduct – intentional murder – for the vilest of reasons – racism and personal enmity.”
When the war ended Forrest returned home but could not re-open his NegroMart, so he worked with other white supremacist to find new ways to steal the labor of the recently freed slaves. Over the years they used many tools but it all stated with terrorism and the theft of labor was maintained for a century with violence. When a fellow traitor told Forest about plans to form the Ku Klux Klan, Forrest told him:
“That’s a good thing; that’s a damn good thing. We can use that to keep the niggers in their place.”
Soon Forrest was the first Grand Wizard of the KKK and bragging that he had 500,000 men under his command. The result over the next century was a body count in the thousands and uncountable ruined and damaged lives.
And Forrest wasn't done inflicting suffering, oh no. Read on, again from the invaluable Dennis G:
Turns out that by the end of his life, Forrest was back in the slavery business and helped to create a model for stealing labor and keeping slavery alive under a different name. It was a very successful model that was replicated all over the South.
In the Mississippi River on the shores of Memphis sits President’s Island. Now it is an odd mix of industrial parks and wildlife areas.
Back in the 1870s Nathan Bedford Forrest saw it as an opportunity. During the Civil War the very fertile island became the home of escaping slaves and by 1865 a community of about 1,500 Freemen lived on the island. Like many other post war African American communities, it was a community that all but disappeared as white supremacists used terrorism and murder to in the words of NBF, “...keep the niggers in their place.” According to the history of President’s Island a 1947 article in the local Memphis paper explained that the former Freemen “were absorbed into the community”.
By the late 1860s, early 1870s Forrest had failed as a businessman running the Marion & Memphis Railroad into bankruptcy. As he failed in that business his involvement in the KKK gave him new opportunities. Somehow he managed to get control of the land on President’s Island and convert it into one of the South’s first prison work farms. Here, newly imprisoned Negros could be forced under the lash to grow corn and cotton. According to the President’s Island history, Forrest:
offered to pay the county 10 cents a day for each worker and to provide food, clothing and housing. His offer was accepted, and a five-year contract was signed.
Forrest was an entrepreneur who helped to create this model of buying and selling prisoners. His system for stealing labor kept slavery alive well into the next century (and some might fairly argue that the system of forced prison labor is still alive and well today—and there is a strong case for that POV).
Working conditions at Forrest’s prison slave camp were horrible. Illness was very common and in an act of karma or divine humor, some folks speculate that NBF died because a case of dysentery he acquired from drinking impure water at his slave camp interacted badly with his diabetes.
After his his death—and despite Grand Jury investigations into stories of abuse—his son continued to run the family’s neo-NegroMart/prison farm business for years. And his family continued to live off stolen labor just as it had before the Civil War.
And it is this piece of human filth--slave trader, war criminal, murderer, terrorist, slave master--that Haley Barbour just can't bring himself to say anything bad about. Remember, Barbour is the Confederate-loving son of a bitch who keeps Jefferson Davis's personal flag in his office.
HALEY BARBOUR, JIM DE MINT, AND ALL THE OTHER CONFEDERATE WORSHIPPING SCUM IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY ARE NOT AMERICANS. THEY DESPISE AMERICA AND HATE EVERY IDEAL THIS COUNTRY WAS FOUNDED ON. THEY ARE TREASON-LOVING CONFEDERATES. THEIR LOYALTY IS TO THE SO-CALLED "LOST CAUSE", NOT AMERICA.
Period.
There are vile, violent and evil men populating the history of our Nation, but you have to look long and hard to find folks as immoral, dishonorable and deceitful as Nathan Bedford Forrest. He is a patron saint of white supremacy, racism and treason.
So naturally, he should be celebrated as a wingnutopia role model.
He was an entrepreneur and in the years leading up to the Civil War he made a fortune buying and selling people. He was the co-fonder of the “NegroMart” a wholesale mega store for slaves and when the war started he was filthy rich.
During the war he organized a gang of excessively violent and vengeful riders who were very skilled at the hit and run tactics of guerrilla fighting. He has been greatly mythologized over the years by the Church of The Lost Cause, but he was little more than a war criminal. Perhaps his most famous crime was the Massacre at Fort Pillow in 1864 where he ordered his troops to murder hundreds of surrendering troops. As Forrest himself put it in his first report of the killing field:
“The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for two hundred yards. The approximate loss was upward of five hundred killed, but few of the officers escaping. My loss was about twenty killed. It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners.”
One of the men under Forrest’s command wrote to his wife:
“the poor, deluded negroes would run up to our men, fall upon their knees, and with uplifted hand scream for mercy, but were ordered to their feet and then shot down.”
And historian Richard Fuchs, in his detailed study of the massacre described it as:
“...simply an orgy of death, a mass lynching to satisfy the basest of conduct – intentional murder – for the vilest of reasons – racism and personal enmity.”
When the war ended Forrest returned home but could not re-open his NegroMart, so he worked with other white supremacist to find new ways to steal the labor of the recently freed slaves. Over the years they used many tools but it all stated with terrorism and the theft of labor was maintained for a century with violence. When a fellow traitor told Forest about plans to form the Ku Klux Klan, Forrest told him:
“That’s a good thing; that’s a damn good thing. We can use that to keep the niggers in their place.”
Soon Forrest was the first Grand Wizard of the KKK and bragging that he had 500,000 men under his command. The result over the next century was a body count in the thousands and uncountable ruined and damaged lives.
And Forrest wasn't done inflicting suffering, oh no. Read on, again from the invaluable Dennis G:
Turns out that by the end of his life, Forrest was back in the slavery business and helped to create a model for stealing labor and keeping slavery alive under a different name. It was a very successful model that was replicated all over the South.
In the Mississippi River on the shores of Memphis sits President’s Island. Now it is an odd mix of industrial parks and wildlife areas.
Back in the 1870s Nathan Bedford Forrest saw it as an opportunity. During the Civil War the very fertile island became the home of escaping slaves and by 1865 a community of about 1,500 Freemen lived on the island. Like many other post war African American communities, it was a community that all but disappeared as white supremacists used terrorism and murder to in the words of NBF, “...keep the niggers in their place.” According to the history of President’s Island a 1947 article in the local Memphis paper explained that the former Freemen “were absorbed into the community”.
By the late 1860s, early 1870s Forrest had failed as a businessman running the Marion & Memphis Railroad into bankruptcy. As he failed in that business his involvement in the KKK gave him new opportunities. Somehow he managed to get control of the land on President’s Island and convert it into one of the South’s first prison work farms. Here, newly imprisoned Negros could be forced under the lash to grow corn and cotton. According to the President’s Island history, Forrest:
offered to pay the county 10 cents a day for each worker and to provide food, clothing and housing. His offer was accepted, and a five-year contract was signed.
Forrest was an entrepreneur who helped to create this model of buying and selling prisoners. His system for stealing labor kept slavery alive well into the next century (and some might fairly argue that the system of forced prison labor is still alive and well today—and there is a strong case for that POV).
Working conditions at Forrest’s prison slave camp were horrible. Illness was very common and in an act of karma or divine humor, some folks speculate that NBF died because a case of dysentery he acquired from drinking impure water at his slave camp interacted badly with his diabetes.
After his his death—and despite Grand Jury investigations into stories of abuse—his son continued to run the family’s neo-NegroMart/prison farm business for years. And his family continued to live off stolen labor just as it had before the Civil War.
And it is this piece of human filth--slave trader, war criminal, murderer, terrorist, slave master--that Haley Barbour just can't bring himself to say anything bad about. Remember, Barbour is the Confederate-loving son of a bitch who keeps Jefferson Davis's personal flag in his office.
HALEY BARBOUR, JIM DE MINT, AND ALL THE OTHER CONFEDERATE WORSHIPPING SCUM IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY ARE NOT AMERICANS. THEY DESPISE AMERICA AND HATE EVERY IDEAL THIS COUNTRY WAS FOUNDED ON. THEY ARE TREASON-LOVING CONFEDERATES. THEIR LOYALTY IS TO THE SO-CALLED "LOST CAUSE", NOT AMERICA.
Period.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
One of the Many Reasons I Hate Patrick Buchanan
Want to know why this country is so screwed up, and why so many conservative politicians and pundits are so utterly vile and loathsome? Check out this memo sent to Richard (Traitor-Criminal-Psychopath) Nixon in 1971 by the contemptible Buchanan:
Nixon was coldly mixing and pouring volatile passions. Although he was careful to renounce the extreme fringe of Birchites and racists, his means to power eventually became the end. Buchanan gave me a copy of a seven-page confidential memorandum—“A little raw for today,” he warned—that he had written for Nixon in 1971, under the heading “Dividing the Democrats.” Drawn up with an acute understanding of the fragilities and fault lines in “the Old Roosevelt Coalition,” it recommended that the White House “exacerbate the ideological division” between the Old and New Left by praising Democrats who supported any of Nixon’s policies; highlight “the elitism and quasi-anti-Americanism of the National Democratic Party”; nominate for the Supreme Court a Southern strict constructionist who would divide Democrats regionally; use abortion and parochial-school aid to deepen the split between Catholics and social liberals; elicit white working-class support with tax relief and denunciations of welfare. Finally, the memo recommended exploiting racial tensions among Democrats. “Bumper stickers calling for black Presidential and especially Vice-Presidential candidates should be spread out in the ghettoes of the country,” Buchanan wrote. “We should do what is within our power to have a black nominated for Number Two, at least at the Democratic National Convention.” Such gambits, he added, could “cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half.”
(From the New Yorker) [Emphasis added]
Yes folks, if you want to know where the Republicans have been getting their strategy for the past 40 years, here's the blueprint. Buchanan and his ilk, like Karl Rove, hate everything this country stands for, and are willing to plunge the nation into ceaseless conflict for their own benefit. Patrick Buchanan has been a cancer on this country his entire adult life--viciously racist, anti-Semitic (his chief "cause" for a while was defending the rights of Nazi mass murderers and giving moral support to Holocaust deniers), and willing to tell any lie and spread any ugly smear in order to gain advantage.
Lee Atwater said that after the 1950s, it was no longer possible for conservatives to yell "Nigger, Nigger, Nigger" in a campaign. But Patrick Buchanan's entire career was predicated on the assumption that you should yell it louder and more insistently. Because that's how conservatives win.
They appeal to everything that is worst in us.
Nixon was coldly mixing and pouring volatile passions. Although he was careful to renounce the extreme fringe of Birchites and racists, his means to power eventually became the end. Buchanan gave me a copy of a seven-page confidential memorandum—“A little raw for today,” he warned—that he had written for Nixon in 1971, under the heading “Dividing the Democrats.” Drawn up with an acute understanding of the fragilities and fault lines in “the Old Roosevelt Coalition,” it recommended that the White House “exacerbate the ideological division” between the Old and New Left by praising Democrats who supported any of Nixon’s policies; highlight “the elitism and quasi-anti-Americanism of the National Democratic Party”; nominate for the Supreme Court a Southern strict constructionist who would divide Democrats regionally; use abortion and parochial-school aid to deepen the split between Catholics and social liberals; elicit white working-class support with tax relief and denunciations of welfare. Finally, the memo recommended exploiting racial tensions among Democrats. “Bumper stickers calling for black Presidential and especially Vice-Presidential candidates should be spread out in the ghettoes of the country,” Buchanan wrote. “We should do what is within our power to have a black nominated for Number Two, at least at the Democratic National Convention.” Such gambits, he added, could “cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half.”
(From the New Yorker) [Emphasis added]
Yes folks, if you want to know where the Republicans have been getting their strategy for the past 40 years, here's the blueprint. Buchanan and his ilk, like Karl Rove, hate everything this country stands for, and are willing to plunge the nation into ceaseless conflict for their own benefit. Patrick Buchanan has been a cancer on this country his entire adult life--viciously racist, anti-Semitic (his chief "cause" for a while was defending the rights of Nazi mass murderers and giving moral support to Holocaust deniers), and willing to tell any lie and spread any ugly smear in order to gain advantage.
Lee Atwater said that after the 1950s, it was no longer possible for conservatives to yell "Nigger, Nigger, Nigger" in a campaign. But Patrick Buchanan's entire career was predicated on the assumption that you should yell it louder and more insistently. Because that's how conservatives win.
They appeal to everything that is worst in us.
If You Want the Best Source for What's Happening in Egypt...
Try Aljazeera English. And no, I don't have any idea how things in Egypt are going to play out, and neither does anyone else.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
WTF??
Gregg Harper is a freshman Republican U.S. Representative from Mississippi. He was being asked softball-type questions in an interview. Here's one, with his response.
Q. What in the world does the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus do?
A. We hunt liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition.
Ha ha, good one! Say it louder. Rep. Giffords might not have heard you from her hospital bed.
IF A DEMOCRAT HAD SAID THIS ABOUT REPUBLICANS, THERE WOULD BE A MEDIA UPROAR, AND YOU AND I BOTH KNOW IT.
This asshole Harper is a waste of skin. Period.
Q. What in the world does the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus do?
A. We hunt liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition.
Ha ha, good one! Say it louder. Rep. Giffords might not have heard you from her hospital bed.
IF A DEMOCRAT HAD SAID THIS ABOUT REPUBLICANS, THERE WOULD BE A MEDIA UPROAR, AND YOU AND I BOTH KNOW IT.
This asshole Harper is a waste of skin. Period.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Goodbye and Good Riddance to Lieberman
Hi! I'm back! Glenn Greenwald absolutely eviscerates the loathsome Joe Lieberman right here, and the entire sick Beltway Washington Villager culture that lionizes him. Excerpts (you better put on something fireproof here):
But the blood on Joe Lieberman's hands is accounted for by far more than support for the Iraq War. He's long been one of Washington's most indiscriminate, toxic and deceitful supporters of aggressive war generally. Even as the two wars he cheered on were spiraling out of control, he was repeatedly urging new American attacks against Iran, Syria and, most recently, Yemen. Lieberman -- who, needless to say, never served in the military nor have any of his children -- devoted his entire career to attempting to send other Americans' children to fight war after war after war. In sum, as The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch put it when examining the muddled history of Lieberman's opposition to the war in Vietnam: "the only war he ever opposed was the only war he might actually have had to fight in." But, of course, being a relentless warmonger while cowardly hiding yourself and your family far away from the wars you cheer on is not remotely inconsistent with being a Man of Decency and Conscience, as David Brooks and his many Beltway admirers will be the first to tell you.
Then there's Lieberman's vaunted "civility." He was not only one of the most vocal war supporters, but was responsible for some of the most toxic and McCarthyite efforts to stigmatize war opposition as illegitimate and even treasonous. In 2005, he infamously lectured Democratic war critics that "in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril," and in 2007 used the language of treason to pose leading questions to Gen. David Petraeus to induce the General's agreement that war opposition "would give the enemy some comfort." Worse, Lieberman often bolstered these smears with outright lies, such as when he claimed on Meet the Press that we were "attacked on 9/11 by the same enemy we're fighting in Iraq today." Behold his grand civility.
And then there's the leading role Lieberman played in lending Democratic support to the whole litany of Bush/Cheney assaults on basic liberties. He defended the "Bush interrogation program" and even waterboarding, and was one of only two Democrats to vote against banning it. He led the way -- along with his close friends John McCain and Lindsey Graham -- in enacting the Military Commissions Act, which explicitly denied all detainees the right to contest their detention in a court of law: a measure so repressive that the Supreme Court in Boumediene struck it down as unconstitutional, citing Alexander Hamilton's warning that "the practice of arbitrary imprisonments, in all ages, is the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny." Once the Court re-established the habeas right which Lieberman and his comrades snuffed out, it turned out, as federal courts found, that there was no credible evidence to justify the detention of a huge percentage of remaining detainees at Guantanamo: innocent people who would have been imprisoned indefinitely to this day -- without a shred of due process -- if Lieberman had his way.
Read the whole righteous denunciation. And realize what a blessing it will finally be to get that fraudulent, lying, back-stabbing SCHMUCK Lieberman out of the Senate once and for all.
But the blood on Joe Lieberman's hands is accounted for by far more than support for the Iraq War. He's long been one of Washington's most indiscriminate, toxic and deceitful supporters of aggressive war generally. Even as the two wars he cheered on were spiraling out of control, he was repeatedly urging new American attacks against Iran, Syria and, most recently, Yemen. Lieberman -- who, needless to say, never served in the military nor have any of his children -- devoted his entire career to attempting to send other Americans' children to fight war after war after war. In sum, as The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch put it when examining the muddled history of Lieberman's opposition to the war in Vietnam: "the only war he ever opposed was the only war he might actually have had to fight in." But, of course, being a relentless warmonger while cowardly hiding yourself and your family far away from the wars you cheer on is not remotely inconsistent with being a Man of Decency and Conscience, as David Brooks and his many Beltway admirers will be the first to tell you.
Then there's Lieberman's vaunted "civility." He was not only one of the most vocal war supporters, but was responsible for some of the most toxic and McCarthyite efforts to stigmatize war opposition as illegitimate and even treasonous. In 2005, he infamously lectured Democratic war critics that "in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril," and in 2007 used the language of treason to pose leading questions to Gen. David Petraeus to induce the General's agreement that war opposition "would give the enemy some comfort." Worse, Lieberman often bolstered these smears with outright lies, such as when he claimed on Meet the Press that we were "attacked on 9/11 by the same enemy we're fighting in Iraq today." Behold his grand civility.
And then there's the leading role Lieberman played in lending Democratic support to the whole litany of Bush/Cheney assaults on basic liberties. He defended the "Bush interrogation program" and even waterboarding, and was one of only two Democrats to vote against banning it. He led the way -- along with his close friends John McCain and Lindsey Graham -- in enacting the Military Commissions Act, which explicitly denied all detainees the right to contest their detention in a court of law: a measure so repressive that the Supreme Court in Boumediene struck it down as unconstitutional, citing Alexander Hamilton's warning that "the practice of arbitrary imprisonments, in all ages, is the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny." Once the Court re-established the habeas right which Lieberman and his comrades snuffed out, it turned out, as federal courts found, that there was no credible evidence to justify the detention of a huge percentage of remaining detainees at Guantanamo: innocent people who would have been imprisoned indefinitely to this day -- without a shred of due process -- if Lieberman had his way.
Read the whole righteous denunciation. And realize what a blessing it will finally be to get that fraudulent, lying, back-stabbing SCHMUCK Lieberman out of the Senate once and for all.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
A Quote You Need to See
From George Packer in The New Yorker, shooting down the false equivalency lie that "both sides" are equally guilty of using violent and inflammatory rhetoric:
In fact, there is no balance—none whatsoever. Only one side has made the rhetoric of armed revolt against an oppressive tyranny the guiding spirit of its grassroots movement and its midterm campaign. Only one side routinely invokes the Second Amendment as a form of swagger and intimidation, not-so-coyly conflating rights with threats. Only one side’s activists bring guns to democratic political gatherings. Only one side has a popular national TV host who uses his platform to indoctrinate viewers in the conviction that the President is an alien, totalitarian menace to the country. Only one side fills the AM waves with rage and incendiary falsehoods. Only one side has an iconic leader, with a devoted grassroots following, who can’t stop using violent imagery and dividing her countrymen into us and them, real and fake. Any sentient American knows which side that is; to argue otherwise is disingenuous.
(The full article is here.)
I'm sorry, Mr. President. I know you've called for civility and restraint in our political discourse.
But I'm not unilaterally disarming. And I'm not just going to forgive and forget the people who have done nothing but pour out ranting hatred for thirty years.
In fact, there is no balance—none whatsoever. Only one side has made the rhetoric of armed revolt against an oppressive tyranny the guiding spirit of its grassroots movement and its midterm campaign. Only one side routinely invokes the Second Amendment as a form of swagger and intimidation, not-so-coyly conflating rights with threats. Only one side’s activists bring guns to democratic political gatherings. Only one side has a popular national TV host who uses his platform to indoctrinate viewers in the conviction that the President is an alien, totalitarian menace to the country. Only one side fills the AM waves with rage and incendiary falsehoods. Only one side has an iconic leader, with a devoted grassroots following, who can’t stop using violent imagery and dividing her countrymen into us and them, real and fake. Any sentient American knows which side that is; to argue otherwise is disingenuous.
(The full article is here.)
I'm sorry, Mr. President. I know you've called for civility and restraint in our political discourse.
But I'm not unilaterally disarming. And I'm not just going to forgive and forget the people who have done nothing but pour out ranting hatred for thirty years.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
President Obama's Speech in Tuscon This Evening
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The Sick, Perverse, Paranoid Lunacy of the Right
Harold Meyerson lays it out beautifully in this column in The Washington Post. Excerpts:
Last October, Glenn Beck was musing on his radio show about the prospect of the government seizing his children if he didn't give them flu vaccines. "You want to take my kids because of that?" he said. "Meet Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson."
Last April, Erick Erickson, the managing editor of the right-wing RedState blog and a CNN commentator, was questioning the legality of the Census Bureau's American Community Survey on a radio show. "We have become, or are becoming, enslaved by the government. . . . I dare 'em to try to come to throw me in jail. I dare 'em to. [I'll] pull out my wife's shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door."
Do right-wing talk show commentators incite violence against the government? Feel free to draw your own conclusions - but to dwell on the rise of violent rhetoric on the right is to miss an even bigger, though connected, problem. Let's focus, rather, on the first part of Beck's and Erickson's observations: The government wants to take away Glenn Beck's (and by extension, your) kids. The government wants to take a census and will throw Erick Erickson (and by extension, you) in jail if he, and you, don't comply.
Can we see the hands of all the kids taken from their parents because they didn't get flu shots? How about all those people rotting in jail because they didn't cooperate in compiling the census?
Meyerson is calling Beck and Erickson paranoid idiots, damn fools, and liars, which is the absolute truth. I have found, by the way, in dealing with radical right-wingers that they suffer from a pervasive sense of victimization. Their whole ethos can be summed up in one statement: "Poor me! The entire world is out to get people like me!" They embrace and cling to their childish fears and hatreds because it gives them the self-justification they absolutely crave. They routinely threaten violence or use violent imagery. And they attribute all kinds of grotesque, ludicrous motives to the "Evil Librulz" who are apparently out to shove all of their children into gas chambers. It's as I've been saying for years now:
If you want to know what kind of people have been the millstone around America's neck right from the start, it's the far-right conservatives to whom you should look. The radical right today just has better ways of broadcasting their insane, lying nonsense than their ideological forebears had. From right-wing hate radio, the king of which, Rush Limbaugh, is a sickening mixture of racist hatreds and non-stop lies about anyone he doesn't like, to Fox "News", which disseminates right-wing hate propaganda tirelessly every single day and which harbors the most shameless, brazen right-wing liar in America, Sean Hannity, to the twisted newspaper columnists and editorialists such as the mentally ill Ann Coulter and the ultra-right fanatics that control the editorials in The Wall Street Journal, right wing filth pours into the intellectual bloodstream of America in a deadly flood. The radical right has never--NEVER--believed in the founding ideals of this country. The entire history of the conservative "movement" in America has been one long, bloody, savage, relentless war against the phrase, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all mean are created equal...". Conservative violence, conservative hatred, and conservative treason are all grounded in the effort to restrict the meaning of "created equal" to people like themselves, and to people like themselves ALONE. The right-wing fanatics shriek that the progressives and moderates are the enemy. But if these self-pitying pseudo-victims really want to see who's killing America, they need to do only one thing:
Look in the mirror.
Last October, Glenn Beck was musing on his radio show about the prospect of the government seizing his children if he didn't give them flu vaccines. "You want to take my kids because of that?" he said. "Meet Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson."
Last April, Erick Erickson, the managing editor of the right-wing RedState blog and a CNN commentator, was questioning the legality of the Census Bureau's American Community Survey on a radio show. "We have become, or are becoming, enslaved by the government. . . . I dare 'em to try to come to throw me in jail. I dare 'em to. [I'll] pull out my wife's shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door."
Do right-wing talk show commentators incite violence against the government? Feel free to draw your own conclusions - but to dwell on the rise of violent rhetoric on the right is to miss an even bigger, though connected, problem. Let's focus, rather, on the first part of Beck's and Erickson's observations: The government wants to take away Glenn Beck's (and by extension, your) kids. The government wants to take a census and will throw Erick Erickson (and by extension, you) in jail if he, and you, don't comply.
Can we see the hands of all the kids taken from their parents because they didn't get flu shots? How about all those people rotting in jail because they didn't cooperate in compiling the census?
Meyerson is calling Beck and Erickson paranoid idiots, damn fools, and liars, which is the absolute truth. I have found, by the way, in dealing with radical right-wingers that they suffer from a pervasive sense of victimization. Their whole ethos can be summed up in one statement: "Poor me! The entire world is out to get people like me!" They embrace and cling to their childish fears and hatreds because it gives them the self-justification they absolutely crave. They routinely threaten violence or use violent imagery. And they attribute all kinds of grotesque, ludicrous motives to the "Evil Librulz" who are apparently out to shove all of their children into gas chambers. It's as I've been saying for years now:
If you want to know what kind of people have been the millstone around America's neck right from the start, it's the far-right conservatives to whom you should look. The radical right today just has better ways of broadcasting their insane, lying nonsense than their ideological forebears had. From right-wing hate radio, the king of which, Rush Limbaugh, is a sickening mixture of racist hatreds and non-stop lies about anyone he doesn't like, to Fox "News", which disseminates right-wing hate propaganda tirelessly every single day and which harbors the most shameless, brazen right-wing liar in America, Sean Hannity, to the twisted newspaper columnists and editorialists such as the mentally ill Ann Coulter and the ultra-right fanatics that control the editorials in The Wall Street Journal, right wing filth pours into the intellectual bloodstream of America in a deadly flood. The radical right has never--NEVER--believed in the founding ideals of this country. The entire history of the conservative "movement" in America has been one long, bloody, savage, relentless war against the phrase, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all mean are created equal...". Conservative violence, conservative hatred, and conservative treason are all grounded in the effort to restrict the meaning of "created equal" to people like themselves, and to people like themselves ALONE. The right-wing fanatics shriek that the progressives and moderates are the enemy. But if these self-pitying pseudo-victims really want to see who's killing America, they need to do only one thing:
Look in the mirror.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Filthy Right-Wing Criminal Tom DeLay Sentenced to Three Years
The L.A. Times has the story here. DeLay, former Republican leader in the House, was sentenced to three years for money-laundering. It could have been (and should have been) much longer, but I'll take what I can get. I have a particular loathing and contempt for conservatives like DeLay. He was involved up to his neck in an number of corrupt practices and scandals--the North Marianas sweat shops, the Abramoff scandal, the K Street Project to extort lobbyist money for the Republicans, the illegal reapportionment of Texas's house seats. But he always ran to the Moral Majority meetings and the "Values Voter" (retch!) meetings and strutted and preened about what a by-God Christian he is and how evil the awful Librulz are. He's a total, out-and-out son of a bitch, and I hope he loses his appeal so he can always be known to everyone as I know him:
TOM DE LAY: CRIMINAL SCUM
TOM DE LAY: CRIMINAL SCUM
Monday, January 10, 2011
Want to Know the Future of America If the Republicans Prevail?
Then look to the state of Arizona and you'll get a glimpse at the horrifying prospects for our country if we let the radical, extremist, lunatic Right--in other words, the power base of the Republican Party--gain control of our entire nation. Excerpts:
Collectively they [the members of the Arizona legislature] have bankrupted the state through a combination of ideological fanaticism on the Republican right and acquiescence and timidity on the part of G.O.P. moderates and Democrats. Although dozens of states are facing budget crises, the situation in Arizona is arguably the nation’s worst, graver even than in California. A horrific budget deficit has been papered over with massive borrowing and accounting gimmickry, and the state may yet have to issue IOUs to employees and vendors. All-day kindergarten has been eliminated statewide, and some districts have adopted a four-day school week. Arizona’s state parks, despite bringing in 2 million visitors and $266 million annually, have lost 80 percent of their budget, with up to two thirds of the parks now in danger of closure. The legislature slashed the budget for the Department of Revenue, which required the agency to fire hundreds of state auditors and tax collectors; lawmakers boasted that these measures saved $25 million, but a top official in the department estimated that the state would miss out on $174 million in tax collections as a result.
********
...to raise cash, the legislature has pursued a series of wild sell-offs and budget cuts. It privatized the capitol building and leased it back from its new owner, an arrangement that brought in substantial revenue but over time will cost Arizona far more. The legislature has sold off numerous other state properties at bargain prices, and has put up future lottery revenues as collateral on a $450 million loan. Meanwhile, Arizona removed more than 300,000 adults from state health coverage and terminated one health-care program for 47,000 poor children. Funding was slashed at the agency that deals with reports of child abuse and neglect, and also at Children’s Rehabilitative Services, so that parents of children with cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy, and a number of other conditions are now required to pay 100 percent of treatment costs.
********
Backed into an ideological corner on taxes, Arizona continues to cut indiscriminately. The three state universities have scrapped whole degree programs and may soon have to shutter entire campuses. Funding for GED programs and adult-education courses has been reduced to zero. Arizona has furloughed more than 15,000 state employees and has closed thirteen of eighteen highway rest stops. (This latter move provoked an outcry, especially among truckers; state authorities responded by asking roadside businesses to allow motorists to use bathrooms free of charge.) The budget for the Department of Water Resources—an important agency in the desert—has been cut from $23 million to $7 million during the past two years. “Demand for water exceeds supply, and we share what there is with six states,” Herb Guenther, the agency’s director, told me. “We have to protect what we have collectively while looking for new supplies, but everyone is fighting for resources. There’s a cliff coming, and we haven’t figured out how to fly. ‘No government’ is not the answer when it comes to water.”
All of this because the screeching right-wing idiots who run Arizona are fanatically committed to destroying the very government they administer. Arizona is heading for utter disaster. The radical Right is attacking its sickest, youngest, and most vulnerable members, all the while spouting thinly veiled racial hatred. Arizona has DEMANDED that President Obama prove he is a citizen or they won't let him on the ballot in 2012!! Texas and Florida are now headed in the same catastrophic direction, Texas under the idiot, pro-secessionist clown Rick Perry and Florida under an outright scumbag crook named Rick Scott. The Right-wing fanatics will destroy every state we let them take over, and they will destroy the country if they are not stopped. And if you doubt me, read the whole article and see the future of America: Arizona.
Collectively they [the members of the Arizona legislature] have bankrupted the state through a combination of ideological fanaticism on the Republican right and acquiescence and timidity on the part of G.O.P. moderates and Democrats. Although dozens of states are facing budget crises, the situation in Arizona is arguably the nation’s worst, graver even than in California. A horrific budget deficit has been papered over with massive borrowing and accounting gimmickry, and the state may yet have to issue IOUs to employees and vendors. All-day kindergarten has been eliminated statewide, and some districts have adopted a four-day school week. Arizona’s state parks, despite bringing in 2 million visitors and $266 million annually, have lost 80 percent of their budget, with up to two thirds of the parks now in danger of closure. The legislature slashed the budget for the Department of Revenue, which required the agency to fire hundreds of state auditors and tax collectors; lawmakers boasted that these measures saved $25 million, but a top official in the department estimated that the state would miss out on $174 million in tax collections as a result.
********
...to raise cash, the legislature has pursued a series of wild sell-offs and budget cuts. It privatized the capitol building and leased it back from its new owner, an arrangement that brought in substantial revenue but over time will cost Arizona far more. The legislature has sold off numerous other state properties at bargain prices, and has put up future lottery revenues as collateral on a $450 million loan. Meanwhile, Arizona removed more than 300,000 adults from state health coverage and terminated one health-care program for 47,000 poor children. Funding was slashed at the agency that deals with reports of child abuse and neglect, and also at Children’s Rehabilitative Services, so that parents of children with cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy, and a number of other conditions are now required to pay 100 percent of treatment costs.
********
Backed into an ideological corner on taxes, Arizona continues to cut indiscriminately. The three state universities have scrapped whole degree programs and may soon have to shutter entire campuses. Funding for GED programs and adult-education courses has been reduced to zero. Arizona has furloughed more than 15,000 state employees and has closed thirteen of eighteen highway rest stops. (This latter move provoked an outcry, especially among truckers; state authorities responded by asking roadside businesses to allow motorists to use bathrooms free of charge.) The budget for the Department of Water Resources—an important agency in the desert—has been cut from $23 million to $7 million during the past two years. “Demand for water exceeds supply, and we share what there is with six states,” Herb Guenther, the agency’s director, told me. “We have to protect what we have collectively while looking for new supplies, but everyone is fighting for resources. There’s a cliff coming, and we haven’t figured out how to fly. ‘No government’ is not the answer when it comes to water.”
All of this because the screeching right-wing idiots who run Arizona are fanatically committed to destroying the very government they administer. Arizona is heading for utter disaster. The radical Right is attacking its sickest, youngest, and most vulnerable members, all the while spouting thinly veiled racial hatred. Arizona has DEMANDED that President Obama prove he is a citizen or they won't let him on the ballot in 2012!! Texas and Florida are now headed in the same catastrophic direction, Texas under the idiot, pro-secessionist clown Rick Perry and Florida under an outright scumbag crook named Rick Scott. The Right-wing fanatics will destroy every state we let them take over, and they will destroy the country if they are not stopped. And if you doubt me, read the whole article and see the future of America: Arizona.
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Palin and the Rhetoric of Violence
Andrew Sullivan is right on the money in this post on the incessantly violent and ugly imagery that floods out of America's most vicious, lying demagogue, Sarah Palin:
The point here is not that there is any connection between [her] random post[s] and political violence. The point is the worldview Palin holds. It is zero-sum. It expresses itself in clear and stark violent imagery. It is constantly about attack, conflict, combat, "enemy territory", "Big Guns", battle. This rhetorical background is so deeply part of the narrative we barely notice it any more. But it is not truly the language of politics; it's the language of war.
But that's the nature of Palin, and the dangerous, psychotic Right Wing that she epitomizes. Their whole worldview is saturated with violence and bloodshed, with hatred and revenge fantasies, with brutality and CONSTANT threats. Palin and others like her are the true danger to this country's future, and that cannot be said often enough.
And on another note, I offer my condolences to the victims of yesterday's horrible shooting in Arizona. Angry words and paranoid political ranting have their consequences.
The point here is not that there is any connection between [her] random post[s] and political violence. The point is the worldview Palin holds. It is zero-sum. It expresses itself in clear and stark violent imagery. It is constantly about attack, conflict, combat, "enemy territory", "Big Guns", battle. This rhetorical background is so deeply part of the narrative we barely notice it any more. But it is not truly the language of politics; it's the language of war.
But that's the nature of Palin, and the dangerous, psychotic Right Wing that she epitomizes. Their whole worldview is saturated with violence and bloodshed, with hatred and revenge fantasies, with brutality and CONSTANT threats. Palin and others like her are the true danger to this country's future, and that cannot be said often enough.
And on another note, I offer my condolences to the victims of yesterday's horrible shooting in Arizona. Angry words and paranoid political ranting have their consequences.
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