Why Does Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) Love Terrorists and Hate America

Shelby Dismisses The Adverse Effect Of His Holds On The Pentagon, Says He Has No Clue If Nominees Are Qualified

Earlier this month, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) quietly and selfishly put a blanket hold on dozens and dozens of President Obama’s pending nominees in order to secure pork for his state. Some of the nominees who were caught in Shelby’s hold included the candidates for “the top Intelligence officers at the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security as well as the number three civilian at the Pentagon.”

In a new interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Shelby is unapologetic about placing the holds, saying that he wanted to get the “attention” of the administration and was, ironically, concerned about the “lack of transparency and openness and fairness” in the tanker contract affecting Alabama. “I don’t think I abused the rules,” said Shelby defiantly.

Shelby has released most of the holds, but they remain in effect on three Air Force positions. Shelby dismissed the Pentagon’s statement that these holds are inhibiting the agency’s work, and admitted that he has no idea whether they are qualified.

BASH: I spoke with Geoff Morrell over at the Pentagon and just asked him what the impact is of not having these three people in place — one of whom, as you know, is the number two at the Air Force. He said, “Without these people, we’re not firing on all cylinders.” And he also said, “It does adversely affect the organization.”

Are you worried about that? This is a time of war –

SHELBY: The Pentagon is a big place. I don’t think one or two will affect anything except on the margins.

So a fake patriot Republican ( they seem to grow on trees like nuts) does not know or care if command officers and administrators are qualified or that we have troops in two battle zones. He thinks playing childish school yard games of partisan one upmanship with our troops lives is fun.

Stand back multimillionaire Republican pundits at "work" - Let them eat applesauce: Right-wing media mock the uninsured

Right-wing media figures have mocked Democrats' descriptions of hardships faced by their constituents who lack health insurance, including a story Rep. Louise Slaughter told about a woman who wore dentures that previously belonged to her dead sister. For example, Rush Limbaugh said, "So if you don't have any teeth, so what? What's applesauce for?"
Media conservatives ridicule the uninsured

Limbaugh: "What's wrong with using a dead person's teeth? Aren't the Democrats big into recycling?" Responding to Slaughter's account, which he called the "sob story of the day, Limbaugh stated:

LIMBAUGH: You know I'm getting so many people -- this Louise Slaughter comment on the dentures? I'm getting so many people -- this is big. I mean, that gets a one-time mention for a laugh, but there are people out there that think this is huge because it's so stupid. I mean, for example, well, what's wrong with using a dead person's teeth? Aren't the Democrats big into recycling? Save the planet? And so what? So if you don't have any teeth, so what? What's applesauce for? Isn't that why they make applesauce?

Limbaugh previously told a caller who could not afford the $6,000 it would cost to treat a broken wrist that he "shouldn't have broken [his] wrist."

Beck mocks Slaughter's story: "I've read the Constitution ... I didn't see that you had a right to teeth." On his February 26 radio show, Glenn Beck played an audio clip of Slaughter's account then said, "I am wearing George Washington's dentures right now. I'm wearing his teeth right now." He later added, "I just like wearing dead people's teeth. But in America -- I'm sorry, I didn't know that that was -- I've read the Constitution before. I didn't see that you had a right to teeth." Echoing Limbaugh's remarks the previous day, Beck stated, "The environmentalists should be all over Slaughter. 'How dare you say that?' My gosh, they're just recycling. They're just reusing."

Beck sidekick uses baby voice to mock letters Obama receives. On Beck's February 25 radio show, co-host Steve "Stu" Burguiere stated that Obama "gets 10 letters, Glenn, every night." Co-host Pat Gray asked, "From 2-year-old girls?" Then, one of the co-hosts started speaking in a baby's voice: "I have no health care, Mr. Pwesident, and I have no feet and no tonsils because doctors took 'em out."

Conservative blogger Pamela Geller linked to an audio clip of the segment, which she wrote was "[d]a best! the funniest thang evuh!"

Gateway Pundit attacks Slaughter's "sappy lib sob story of the day, hands down." On his Gateway Pundit blog, Jim Hoft linked to a video clip of Slaughter telling the story about the dentures under the headline, "Horror! Lib Dem Claims Her Constituent Wore Dead Sister's Teeth (Video)." After declaring the account the "sappy lib sob story of the day, hands down," Hoft wrote: "Will Obamacare buy me glasses and contacts? Will Obamacare buy me a gold tooth in the front of my mouth with a little heart on it?"

Greedy insensitive ghouls and Conservatives are the exact same thing. Thanks to those Republican mouthpieces we have the proof.

If Ideas Were Currency Republicans Are Bankrupt

Actually ideas are the currency of public policy ( OK, in addition to lobbyist from special interests which both party's need to shed) and Republicans have none, At Health Care Summit, GOP Repeats Same "Start Over" Talking Point from July

At Thursday's White House health care summit, President Obama pleaded with the participants for "a discussion, and not just us trading talking points." Alas, as Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander made clear from the get-go, the President was destined for disappointment. In his opening remarks, Alexander insisted Democrats should abandon the bills they've already passed and start from a fresh sheet of paper. But in proclaiming that "This is a car that can't be recalled and fixed and we ought to start over," Alexander was merely regurgitating a sound bite Republicans first introduced last July.

What's sad - in addition to giving millions of hard working Americans the shaft - is that Lamar represents the great moderate thinks of conservatism - yet he is so far Right of the mainstream American family he cannot began to address the structural problems with an American economy that does not get any American working a forty hour week a living wage and affordable health care coverage.
While Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) represents the selfish self centered egotistical inanity of conservatism - GOP Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) claims extending unemployment benefits is creating ‘hobos.’

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is trying to pass an extension of unemployment benefits, but is facing resistance from Republicans who are throwing up procedural hurdles and trying to use the extension as leverage to push through a tax cut for the wealthiest families in the country. Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) today questioned the necessity of an extension on the grounds that “we intend to have some immediate impact on the economy through what we’re doing.” And discourse in the House isn’t any better, with Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) positing that extending unemployment benefits may be creating “hobos”:

Heller said the current economic downturn and policies may bring back the hobos of the Great Depression, people who wandered the country taking odd jobs. He said a study found that people who are out of work longer than two years have only a 50 percent chance of getting back into the workforce. “I believe there should be a federal safety net,” Heller said, but he questioned the wisdom of extending unemployment benefits yet again to a total of 24 months, which Congress is doing. “Is the government now creating hobos?” he asked.

1.1 million workers are due to have their benefits expire next month, and 5 million will see their benefits disappear by June. There are currently six unemployed workers for every job opening, and even without compensating for population increases, 350,000 jobs a month would need to be generated for two full years just to make up the jobs lost in the recession.

One has to appreciate the total disconnect from reality of Republicans like Heller - currently enjoying a nice wage and subsidized health insurance courtesy the tax payers. If Heller is so concerned about any strain on the public coffers perhaps he'll volunteer his salary as a Republican promoter of a dog eat dog culture to those out of a job because of the economic policies of his buddies like George Bush and Mitch McConnell(R-KY). Heller represents a common problem with Republicans - they behave like irresponsible children that whine when they have to pay for their mistakes.

Conservatives are Good at Whining, Complaining and Stopping Progress, but They Have Zero Ideas

On spending, conservatives are quite conflicted
The government spends too much! Except when it comes to schools and infrastructure and Social Security and ...

Conservatives agree that the government spends too much. But ask them what to cut ...

At last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty called on the attendees to imitate the wife of Tiger Woods: "We should take a page out of her playbook and take a nine iron and smash the window out of big government in this country."

But there’s a problem for Pawlenty and the activists who cheered him: Rank-and-file conservatives actually like big government.

In 2008, the American National Election Study asked a national sample whether federal spending on 12 different programs should be increased, decreased or kept about the same.

As the graph above illustrates, the respondents who identified themselves as "conservative" or "extremely conservative" had little appetite for specific spending cuts.

Very few conservatives said they favored reducing (or cutting out altogether) spending on any program. The least popular program proved to be childcare -- with a grand total of 20 percent of conservatives saying they’d slash it. The most popular is highways; only 6 percent want to cut spending there. Even bugaboos like welfare and foreign aid fare well, attracting the ire of only 15 percent of conservatives. Amazingly, the survey found that, on average, 54 percent of them actually wanted to increase spending.

Political scientist James Stimson has suggested that a fifth of the country consists of what he calls "conflicted conservatives," those who might respond positively to a broad appeal like Pawlenty’s, but not once specific windows start getting smashed.

John McCain(R-AZ) spins lots of big lies for a guy that has sold himself as the model of integrity, McCain: Obama Suspended His Campaign Too!

In fact, of course, McCain returned to Washington of his own volition. And in an interview with TPM today outside the Senate chamber, McCain acknowledged as much -- but also appeared to try to drag Obama into the mess.

"[Bush] didn't ask me to suspend my campaign," said McCain. "I suspended my campaign -- as did Senator Obama -- to come back to Washington because the President had told me that we were in a world financial collapse. That's why I did what I did. I always said that consistently."

It's true that Obama went to Washington to join McCain, Bush, and congressional leaders for a White House meeting on the crisis, which, according to multiple accounts, was engineered by McCain. But unlike McCain, Obama never announced he was suspending his campaign. Quite the opposite, in fact: After McCain's announcement, Obama said he still planned to show up for the presidential debate that Friday, arguing that a president needed to be able to do two things at once.

Asked whether he remembered things the way McCain did, Steve Hildebrand, who ran the Obama campaign's field operation, told TPM: "Nope. We proceeded directly ahead, pointing out along the way that McCain was incapable of doing two things at once."

As for his own decision, McCain acknowledged to TPM that he may have given the Republic a different impression about the role Bush played in it. "If I mischaracterized it, or misstated, fine," he continued. "But I have consistently said, ever since the beginning, at the time, that I was coming back because I was told by the President of the United States that we were on the verge of a financial crisis."

Yesterday, Brooke Buchanan, a spokeswoman for the senator, told us the Republic had mischaracterized McCain's comments in the interview. She said that McCain had in fact told the paper only that President Bush had called McCain while the senator was campaigning, to inform him about the crisis -- not that Bush had "called him in off the campaign trail."

Health Care No Stranger To Reconciliation Process

A History Of Reconciliation

For 30 years, major changes to health care laws have passed via the budget reconciliation process. Here are a few examples:

1982 — TEFRA: The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act first opened Medicare to HMOs

1986 — COBRA: The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act allowed people who were laid off to keep their health coverage, and stopped hospitals from dumping ER patients unable to pay for their care

1987 — OBRA '87: Added nursing home protection rules to Medicare and Medicaid, created no-fault vaccine injury compensation program

1989 — OBRA '89: Overhauled doctor payment system for Medicare, created new federal agency on research and quality of care

1990 — OBRA '90: Added cancer screenings to Medicare, required providers to notify patients about advance directives and living wills, expanded Medicaid to all kids living below poverty level, required drug companies to provide discounts to Medicaid

1993 — OBRA '93: created federal vaccine funding for all children

1996 — Welfare Reform: Separated Medicaid from welfare

1997 — BBA: The Balanced Budget Act created the state-federal childrens' health program called CHIP

2005 — DRA: The Deficit Reduction Act reduced Medicaid spending, allowed parents of disabled children to buy into Medicaid

What's Wrong With Republicans? They Have No Honor.

National Shame Yoo's "Gift to the Obama Presidency"

As the Scooter Libby affair showed, no one circles the wagons like the Republican Party and its conservative allies. Now that Bush torture architects John Yoo and Jay Bybee barely escaped disbarment in the final version of the report from the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, the right-wing counterattack and near orgasmic celebration is well underway. Leading the clarion call is none other than John Yoo himself, who in his Wall Street Journal op-ed today proclaimed his legacy of unlimited war powers - and a virtually unlimited regime of detainee torture - "my gift to the Obama presidency."

Following the cheerleading from the usual Republican mouthpieces including the National Review, Commentary and the Wall Street Journal, Yoo took a victory lap Wednesday, stepping over the broken bodies of American prisoners and shattered national honor. Rewriting both the history of the OPR report and its conclusions, Yoo crowed:

Barack Obama may not realize it, but I may have just helped save his presidency. How? By winning a drawn-out fight to protect his powers as commander in chief to wage war and keep Americans safe...

Without a vigorous commander-in-chief power at his disposal, Mr. Obama will struggle to win any of these victories. But that is where OPR, playing a junior varsity CIA, wanted to lead us. Ending the Justice Department's ethics witch hunt not only brought an unjust persecution to an end, but it protects the president's constitutional ability to fight the enemies that threaten our nation today.

Of course, as the likes of Jack Balkin and Glenn Greenwald documented in detail, only by avoiding ultimate condemnation and exile from the legal community could John Yoo claim to have won "a drawn-out fight." As Greenwald pointed out, OPR's David Margolis assessment of Yoo's legal framework for the commander-in-chief's power to torture hardly constituted exoneration, let alone an endorsement. On page 67, Margolis concluded:

For all of the above reasons, I am not prepared to conclude that the circumstantial evidence much of which is contradicted by the witness testimony regarding Yoo's efforts establishes by a preponderance of the evidence that Yoo intentionally or recklessly provided misleading advice to his client. It is a close question. I would be remiss in not observing, however, that these memoranda represent an unfortunate chapter in the history of the Office of Legal Counsel. While I have declined to adopt OPR's finding of misconduct, I fear that John Yoo's loyalty to his own ideology and convictions clouded his view of his obligation to his client and led him to adopt opinions that reflected his own extreme, albeit sincerely held, views of executive power while speaking for an institutional client.

Weiner Offends The GOP On House Floor: You’re All ‘Owned’ By The ‘Insurance Industry’!

Today, the House of Representatives debated the Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act, legislation that would repeal the 65 year exemption health insurance companies have from anti-trust regulations.

Speaking on the House floor this afternoon, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) lambasted Republicans for being “a wholly owned subsidiary of an insurance industry,”

Glenn Beck a Cancer on Liberty and Enlightened Democracy

Glenn Beck a Cancer on Liberty and Enlightened Democracy - Glenn Beck: Up With Child Labor!

Beck and Progressivism Glenn Beck’s dire warning yesterday at CPAC against progressivism — “the cancer in America” — was truly one for the Texas state history books. In exacting detail, Beck outlined for the uninitiated conservatives in attendance how progressivism is a dangerous form of mind control that has eroded our constitutional order and brought tyranny to our innocent shores.

What is a concerned patriot to do to recover his lost country?

According to the iron-clad logic of the chalkboard, the only way to combat this oppression is to fight for the repeal of the Progressive and New Deal eras and everything progressivism has ever done to this country. And here is what conservatives will get for this brave liberation of the body politic from the horrors of progressivism:

– No one will ever again have to work an 8-hour day or a 40-hour week or be forced to relax on the weekend. (Progressives established the legal framework for the modern workweek.)

– America’s children can get back to the factories. (Progressives banned child labor.)

– Rich people will have incentives to work again and their heirs will be free to find themselves. (Progressives established the graduated income and inheritance taxes.)

– The unemployed can take to the railways. (Progressives created unemployment insurance.)

– Women and minorities will be protected from the hardship of voting. (Progressives expanded suffrage and passed civil rights legislation.)

– The natural resources sector will have more opportunities to ply its trade on millions of acres of national parks and wilderness areas. (Progressives established conservation and the protection of American lands and waterways.)

– The nation’s food and drug supply can come in undisturbed from other nations. (Progressives created regulatory protections for consumers.)

– Citizens won’t have to worry about electing their own Senators or political candidates. (Progressives expanded the right of citizens to select their own leaders in Congress and in party politics.)

– Workers will be free to pay for their own accidents at work and won’t have to listen to meddlesome unions. (Progressives passed workers’ compensation laws and recognitions of labor unions.)

– The minimum wage will no longer harm our economy. (Progressives created a floor for wages.)

– People won’t have to suffer from the indignities of Social Security and Medicare in their old age. (Progressives passed basic social protections for the poor, sick, disabled, and elderly.)

The Revolution starts today. Back to the 1890’s!

Glenn Beck's vision for America is a lot like those of 19th Century despots and plantation owners.

James O'Keefe is a Fraud - Andrew Breitbart , New York Times and Fox Promoted That Fraud

Giles Admits O'Keefe, Breitbart ACORN 'Pimp' Story was a Lie: 'That Was B-Roll, Purely B-Roll'

Speaking to Washington Independent reporter David Weigel today at CPAC, Hannah Giles, who posed as a prostitute in James O'Keefe and Andrew Breitbart's infamous, highly-doctored, heavily-overdubbed, secretly-taped ACORN hit videos, confirms what we've been reporting for several weeks here: O'Keefe never dressed as a pimp in the offices of ACORN.

Reports Weigel today [emphasis added]:
I asked Giles about a criticism that’s often been leveled against them — that they hyped up the video by wearing outrageous clothes in promotional materials and the videos’ introductions that they didn’t wear in the actual stings.

“We never claimed that he went in with a pimp costume,” said Giles. “That was b-roll. It was purely b-roll. He was a pimp, I was a prostitute, and we were walking in front of government buildings to show how the government was whoring out the American people.”

"B-roll" refers to footage shot separately and later inserted during editing, as frequently seen in movies and television. Eg. An overhead helicopter shot of Las Vegas, used to establish where the scene takes place, before cutting to the interior of a casino where the main character is seen playing cards at a table.

Giles admission is in stark contrast to:

* O'Keefe's knowingly deceptive appearances on Fox "News" "dressed exactly in the same outfit that he wore in these ACORN offices up and down the Eastern Seaboard";
* Breitbart's out-and-out lies in his own 9/21/09 column to help promote the videos by claiming they show O'Keefe and Giles "going to the Baltimore offices of ACORN ... dressed as a pimp and a prostitute and asking for - and getting - help for various illegal activities";
* Breitbart's 2/15/10 tweet to The BRAD BLOG claiming that he's "told truth every step of way";
* and the repeated misreports by the New York Times (which they still stand behind despite all lack of evidence) and the many other mainstream outlets who were similarly hoodwinked into reporting the same phony story.

Greg Brock, the New York Times Senior Editor for Standards, as we documented exclusively some weeks ago, is even on email record as citing that Fox "News" appearance by O'Keefe (embedded again at right) as his only evidence to "stand by our reporting" in which the "paper of record" has, time and again, misreprested O'Keefe as having "visited Acorn offices ... dressed so outlandishly that he might have been playing in a risque high school play."

Just two days after the Times described the "outlandish" dress of O'Keefe, the Congress of the United States passed legislation to remove federal funding for ACORN. (A federal judge later found the legislation to be "unconstitutional".)...

The Times has so far refused to retract, apologize and investigate how and why they got the story so incredibly wrong, time and again, even though many have written to their Public Editor, Clark Hoyt (Public@NYTimes.com) to request that he recommend exactly that. Hoyt had previously chided the paper in his column, for being "slow off the mark" in having waited "nearly a week after the first video was posted" before covering the videos. A special editor was then assigned to devote attention to "issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio".

Yet more than six months after the Times first inaccurate reported and dozens which followed, and even Congressional action following their coverage, the "paper of record" still refuses to issue retractions or explanations.

Conservatism in 2010, The Nuts Grow on The Republican Tree of Anti-America Hate

On House GOP Website, Republican Leadership Takes Credit For Obama's Successful Stimulus Project. Conservatives went on a deregulation bender for forty years and caused the Great Recession. Then complained on every network and op-ed page in the conuntry about Obama's attempts to repair the damge they caused. Now they try to take credit for every job created by a stimulus bill most of them voted against. In other words integrity is not a Republican value.

Recently elected right-wing Republican Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) seems to be suffering from the same lack of insight, knowledge and honor that plaques the conservative movement. In other words it fits right in with the Republican party. Scott Brown Shrugs Off Domestic Terrorist Joseph Stack As Just Another Disgruntled Taxpayer

Republicans have to keep reinventing themselves because every Republican President from Nixon to Reagan to George W. Bush has left the country worse than they found it, The Sheer Brilliance of the ‘Mount Vernon Statement’

As we all know conservatives get on their knees four times a day and chant the mantra - the media is liberal, the media is liberal. If that is true how come we have enough over paid, lazy, crazy bed wetting conservatives in the media to form a brigade - one they could be out fighting all the new wars they'd like to start, WaPo adds Thiessen to its op-ed line-up despite his history of false, dubious, and outrageous claims

In light of The Washington Post's decision to hire former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen as a weekly columnist, Media Matters for America has documented several false, dubious, or outrageous claims Thiessen has made about national security and terrorism. In addition, Thiessen has repeatedly baselessly attacked the Obama administration over its handling of national security and terrorism.


Thiessen announced his "New Weekly Column for the Washington Post." On February 12, Thiessen announced in a National Review Online post that "[t]he Washington Post has asked me to write a new weekly online column."
But Thiessen has a history of false, dubious, or outrageous claims about national security and terrorism

Thiessen dubiously claimed that the use of harsh interrogation techniques on KSM thwarted attack in Los Angeles. Thiessen claimed on April 17, 2009, that the use of harsh interrogation techniques -- including waterboarding -- on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) "stopped an attack on the Library Tower in Los Angeles." Thiessen repeated these claims in an April 21, 2009, Washington Post op-ed. But that claim conflicts with the chronology of events put forth on multiple occasions by the Bush administration, as Slate.com's Timothy Noah has noted. Indeed, the Bush administration said that the Library Tower attack was thwarted in February 2002 -- more than a year before Mohammed was captured in March 2003.

Thiessen falsely claimed that there were no domestic terror attacks under Bush after 9-11. In a January 22, 2009, Washington Post op-ed, Thiessen falsely claimed, "When President Bush left office on Tuesday, America marked 2,688 days without a terrorist attack on its soil." In fact, as Media Matters has noted, several domestic attacks took place under Bush after 9-11.

Thiessen falsely equated waterboarding of detainees with U.S. military training. On the January 20 edition of CNN's Amanpour, Thiessen stated: "We -- we waterboarded in the CIA -- the CIA waterboarded three terrorists, just three. ... You know who else the U.S. government has waterboarded? Tens of thousands of American servicemembers during their [Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape] training." However, the Bush administration Department of Justice and Senate Armed Services Committee agree that the two are not comparable, as those who undergo certain interrogation techniques in such training programs are aware that there are safeguards and know they can stop the training immediately if necessary.

Why do Republicans lie so often and with such manufactured outrage. One of the reasons is if they were forced to tell the truth they cannot win any debates over public policy. The facts and morality are on the side of moderate patriotic American, not the right-wing neo-fascists, the pretend patriots that call themselves Republicans. There used to be good Republicans, but you have to get in a time machine and go back to the 1950s to find one.

If Conservatives Love America How Come They're Complaining About Obama Creating Jobs

Judging Stimulus by Job Data Reveals Success

Imagine if, one year ago, Congress had passed a stimulus bill that really worked.

Let’s say this bill had started spending money within a matter of weeks and had rapidly helped the economy. Let’s also imagine it was large enough to have had a huge impact on jobs — employing something like two million people who would otherwise be unemployed right now.

If that had happened, what would the economy look like today?

Well, it would look almost exactly as it does now. Because those nice descriptions of the stimulus that I just gave aren’t hypothetical. They are descriptions of the actual bill.

Just look at the outside evaluations of the stimulus. Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s Economy.com. They all estimate that the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, considers these estimates to be conservative.

Yet I’m guessing you don’t think of the stimulus bill as a big success. You’ve read columns (by me, for example) complaining that it should have spent money more quickly. Or you’ve heard about the phantom ZIP code scandal: the fact that a government Web site mistakenly reported money being spent in nonexistent ZIP codes.

And many of the criticisms are valid. The program has had its flaws. But the attention they have received is wildly disproportionate to their importance. To hark back to another big government program, it’s almost as if the lasting image of the lunar space program was Apollo 6, an unmanned 1968 mission that had engine problems, and not Apollo 11, the moon landing.

The reasons for the stimulus’s middling popularity aren’t a mystery. The unemployment rate remains near 10 percent, and many families are struggling. Saying that things could have been even worse doesn’t exactly inspire. Liberals don’t like the stimulus because they wish it were bigger. Republicans don’t like it because it’s a Democratic program.

It is not only that Republicans resent the heck out of Obama's success, they are also lying about that success. Which goes to the heart of what conservatism is about. No, despite all the chest thumping and flag waving its not about patriotism, Conservatives are not pro America, or pro average America family - they're pro Republican and pro corporate power. Its 2010 and Republicans are pissed off that America is not being run like a plantation in 1850. Yep, vote Republican in 2010 mid-terms and 2012 so we can bring back those old time plantation values.

2010 - What Do Conservatives Stand For ? Hypocrisy and Fascism

Despite His Stimulus Bashing, Almost A Third Of Pawlenty’s Budget Relies On Stimulus Money

In December, Fox News’ Eric Bolling presented Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty as an example of a conservative politician making tough choices to balance his state’s budget. “A big hole and a simple plan to dig out of it, stop spending,” said Bolling while introducing Pawlenty. “Sounds simple enough. Hold the line on taxes, live within your means. That is how my next guest aims to close his state`s billion-dollar-plus projected budget gap.”

During the interview, Bolling asked Pawlenty about whether he would seek federal stimulus funds to help close his budget gaps. Pawlenty criticzied the idea, claiming that it would “delay the inevitable” by “just sending some cash out as a Band-Aid“:

....Yesterday, Pawlenty revealed his proposal to balance Minnesota’s budget. The proposal would cut “$250 million from aid to cities and counties and $347 million from health and human services programs” while lowering taxes for businesses. The Minneapolis Star Tribune notes that “nearly one-third of the governor’s budget fix would rely on $387 million in federal stimulus money. That money isn’t yet in the bank and, if it doesn’t come through, the cuts could be far deeper.”

This isn’t the first time that Pawlenty’s actions have contradicted his words regarding the stimulus. Last August, Pawlenty told Bloomberg’s Al Hunt that most of the stimulus money was “misdirected” and “largely wasted” on projects that won’t create jobs. But weeks before Pawlenty’s comments, his own economic development director went on a 10 city road show titled “Advancing Economic Prosperity” touting the benefits of the stimulus. “Communities and job-seekers throughout Minnesota are seeing tangible results from this funding,” said Dan McElroy, Pawlenty’s “point man on jobs and economic development.”

Paw-hypocrite has a PAC already set up to run for President. If elected we can all look forward to yet another Republican president who has no shame when it comes to talking out both sides of his two faces.

A new low for the Cheneys and their friends - While the GOP bashes Obama for adopting Bush terror policies, the U.S. makes gains against the Taliban and al-Qaida

An extraordinary array of Republicans have been bashing the administration for "Mirandizing" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab over the last few days -- including Lindsey Graham, Kit Bond, Rudy Giuliani, Mitch McConnell and Michele Bachmann, to name a few -- even as the media admirably did its job reporting that the Bush administration had Mirandized every single terror suspect caught on its watch as well. Despite those facts, former Vice President Dick Cheney stepped up the attack on Obama Sunday on ABC's "This Week" -- and also admitted he's a war criminal (but more on that later.)

Meanwhile, U.S. forces captured the most powerful Taliban leader they've grabbed since the war began in 2001, and intelligence sources tell Newsweek they've broken up a big al-Qaida plot in Yemen and Pakistan as well. More on that later too.

Asked about the way the administration treated Abdulmutallab, Cheney skewered the White House. "The proper way to deal with it would have been to treat him as an enemy combatant," says Cheney. "They didn’t know what to do with the guy." ABC's Jonathan Karl confronted Cheney with the fact that his administration had done the same thing with attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid (he didn't say they'd done the same with every terror suspect Bush-Cheney caught) and the former vice-president had to concede, "We could have put him in military custody, I don't question that."

Then Cheney unleashed his full attack, and it turns out he's trashing his old boss, George W. Bush, not just Obama. Reminded of Bush administration boasts of convicting 175 accused terrorists in U.S. courts -- the approach Obama has continued -- Cheney replied, shockingly: "Well, we didn't all agree with that."

He went on: "I won some, I lost some. I was a big supporter of waterboarding. I was a big supporter of enhanced interrogation techniques." (Anyone else hearing this sung to the tune of "My Way"?) This is the start of the Dick Cheney book tour, of course, but it's remarkable how much Cheney is trashing his former boss. Also, admitting he was "a big supporter of waterboarding" strengthens the hand of those who'd like to see Cheney charged as a war criminal.

According to laws on the books and the U.S. history of prosecuting those who torture prisoners, its refreshing in a way to hear one of the moral leaders of conservatism admit that authoritarian fascistic thinking is what guides their thinking and values.

Conservatives Endanger America with Extremist and False Pandering

Patriotic American Demand the Republican Comrades in the Conservative Noise Machine Apologize for Their false and Inflammatory Statements Statements Which Threaten Our National Security.

Since White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan's February 7 appearance on Meet the Press, in which he criticized Republicans for politicizing the Obama administration's response to the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight, Fox & Friends has repeatedly hosted only conservatives and opponents of the Obama administration to discuss Brennan's remarks and the administration's response to the plot. Moreover -- following a trend set by Fox News since the Christmas Day bombing attempt -- Fox & Friends has hosted these guests, most of whom have a history of making false or outrageous statements about American foreign policy or terrorism, undermining their credibility to discuss those topics.

West criticized Obama administration's handling of Christmas Day bombing attempt. On February 8, Fox & Friends hosted Lt. Col. Allen West, a Republican congressional candidate in Florida, to discuss Brennan's Meet the Press appearance and the Obama administration's handling of Northwest Airlines bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. During the segment, West said, "When I look at what's going on right now with the Nigerian terrorist, it's almost like a Greek tragedy of epic proportion." West further stated that the Obama administration has "established a very dangerous paradigm with this Mirandizing" of terror suspects, "because now they're going to continue to come with more and more attacks, because we're -- they're coming here, and we're giving them lawyers."

West reportedly resigned from Army "after pleading guilty to assaulting an Iraqi detainee during interrogation." According to a December 13, 2003, CNN.com report, West admitted that he "threatened to kill" an Iraqi detainee in his custody, that he watched as "four of his soldiers from the 220th Field Artillery Battalion beat the detainee on the head and body," and that, according to military prosecutors, he "followed up on that threat" to kill the detainee by shooting a pistol near his head. A December 14, 2003, Boston Globe article further noted that a "disciplinary proceeding found that the actions by ... West were serious enough to 'merit a court-martial.' "
Fox & Friends hosted Dana Perino, who has advanced false claims about national security in attacking Obama administration

Perino advanced several dubious claims on Fox & Friends, including that Abdulmutallab "bought a one-way ticket" and that "there wasn't a system in place" for the military to hold Richard Reid. On the February 8 edition of Fox & Friends, Fox News contributor and former Bush press secretary Dana Perino criticized the Obama administration for missing "all these red flags," claiming that Abdulmutallab "bought a one-way ticket" to the United States. However, Obama administration officials have stated that Abdulmutallab flew to Detroit on a roundtrip ticket. Further, Perino attempted to rebut the Obama administration's comparison of its use of civilian trials for alleged terrorists with the Bush administration's similar treatment of shoe bomber Richard Reid by falsely suggesting that "there wasn't a system in place" for Bush to order Reid to be held by the military. In fact, such a system was in place by the time Reid pleaded guilty, as many suspects were placed in military detention before that date.

Perino: "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term." On the November 24, 2009, edition of Fox News' Hannity, Perino falsely claimed that "[w]e did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term."
Fox & Friends hosted Michael Goodwin, who has falsely claimed Bush had "a record of zero successful attacks on America after 9/11"

Goodwin criticized Obama administration's handling of Abdulmutallab. Discussing Brennan's remarks on the February 8 edition of Fox & Friends, New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin claimed that the administration "leaked" details of Abdulmutallab's interrogation "clearly for political reasons." He further stated that "the whole thing seems like a giant mess now, and it all goes back to the White House's decision to fight the War on Terror as though it's a criminal justice matter."

Goodwin has claimed that Bush had "a record of zero successful attacks on America after 9/11." In a January 6 New York Post column, Goodwin advanced the false claim that Bush had "a record of zero successful attacks on America after 9/11." In fact, as Media Matters for America has noted, numerous terrorist attacks took place under Bush after 9-11.

These unhinged and corrupt Republicans spokespersons, apparently drunk on their own egotism are portraying America as weak and unable to handle threats to our way of life. Fox, West, Dana Perino, and Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) are encouraging radical terrorists to keep up their activities, by portraying America as a weak country. Write Fox and Hoestra to day and tell them to stop hating America or at least keep their dangerous and false accusations to themselves.

Cheney and Torture - Turning America Into a Stalinist State

Dick Cheney Admits to Torture Conspiracy

On Sunday, Cheney pronounced himself "a big supporter of waterboarding," a near-drowning technique that has been regarded as torture back to the Spanish Inquisition and that has long been treated by U.S. authorities as a serious war crime, such as when Japanese commanders were prosecuted for using it on American prisoners during World War II.

....However, on Sunday, Cheney acknowledged that the White House had told the Justice Department lawyers what legal opinions to render. In other words, the opinions amounted to ordered-up lawyering to permit the administration to do whatever it wanted.

Cheney in fact fully embraces the political policies of the late communist dictator Joseph Stalin. Cheney useds torture for his own enjoyment(sadism is a common trait among authoritarians) and to illicit false information to cover up the lies he and Bush told the American people, Report: Abusive tactics used to seek Iraq-al Qaida link

The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.

Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime.

Rachel Maddow Calls Out Tea Party Republican Stimulus Hypocrites

This may be the most devastating, and most deserved, piece of political journalism this year.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow calls out the numerous Republican hypocrites who "trashed the stimulus, and voted against it," and then exploited it by bragging to their constituents how great this money would be for jobs and economic development in their communities.

You’ve probably seen a few of these on news shows and blogs like ThinkProgess, FDL and others. But not like this.

With Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Conservatives get the Corporate Control of America They Always Wanted

With Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Conservatives get the Corporate Control of America They Always Wanted

One of the most astounding passages in the Supreme Court's mind-boggling decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission -- the January decision holding that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend as much as they choose from their treasuries to support or oppose candidates for elected office -- is this:

"[T]he Government may commit a constitutional wrong when by law it identifies certain preferred speakers. By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker's voice. ... The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each."

This ode to the First Amendment is inspiring, until you recognize that the "disadvantaged class" reference is to corporations.

When it comes to speech protections, there are surely many rational ways to distinguish corporations from real, live persons. One is that corporations are not real, live persons! Another is that for-profit corporations exist for the purpose of making money, and that this monomaniacal focus distinguishes them in very important ways from humans, who care not only about making money, but building community, expressing themselves, fairness, equality, justice, protecting future generations, stewarding the planet and much more. And other consequential difference, compounding these other points of difference, is that large and even not-so-large corporations have a lot more money, and can easily mobilize resources on a scale that vastly outdistances anything that real people can do.

Thus the rather obvious conclusion that corporate money can distort elections and the political process. This is hardly speculative: large corporations dominated the political process even before Citizens United, a fact widely understood. Eighty-five percent of people in the United States believe big business has too much power in Washington. [1]

What may not be quite so obvious is how extraordinary are the resources that corporations can mobilize as against what is now spent on elections.

Consider these juxtapositions --

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Total amount spent on federal elections in the 2008 election cycle: $5.285 billion [2]

Amount spent by Obama campaign in the 2008 election: $730 million [3]

Average amount raised by incumbent Members of the House of Representatives in the 2008 election: $1.356 million (challengers: $335,101) [4]

Average amount raised by incumbent Senators in the 2008 election: $8.741 million (challengers: $1,152,146) [5]

Exxon profits 2007-2008: $85 billion [6]

Top-selling drug, Lipitor, revenues, 2007-2008: $27 billion [7]

Goldman Sachs bonus and compensation expense for 2009: $16.2 billion [8]

Value of Lockheed's defense contracts in 2008: $15 billion [9]

The amount spent on cigarette advertising and promotion by the five largest cigarette companies in the United States in 2006: $12.49 billion [10]

Microsoft cash on hand: $33.4 billion [11]

----

And these comparisons, from the states --

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Amount spent on candidate races in California state elections, 2008: $225 million [12]

Revenues of the 97th largest corporation in California, Public Storage, 2008: $1.7 billion [13]

Amount spent on candidate races in Ohio state elections, 2008: $107 million [14]

Revenues of the 10th largest corporation in Ohio, Progressive Insurance, 2008: $12.8 billion [15]

Amount spent on candidate races in North Dakota state elections, 2008: $7.3 million [16]

Revenues of the largest corporation in North Dakota, 2008: $5 billion [17]

Amount spent on candidate races in Alabama state elections, 2008: $15.5 million [18]

Revenues of the second largest corporation in Alabama, Vulcan Materials, 2008: $3.6 billion [19]

Republicans Trying to Kill Medicare. Again.

Back in October, Republicans leaders slammed party chief Michael Steele for his "Seniors' Bill of Rights" which promised "no cuts to Medicare." Not because they weren't issuing dire - and mythical - warnings that Democrats were "sticking it to seniors with cuts to Medicare." No, the GOP brain trust was furious precisely because Steele's was a promise they were already intent on breaking. After all, the same Republican Party which tried to kill Medicare in the 1960's and gut it in the 1990's is now trying to privatize the program to death.

Conservative Bed Wetters Play Politics With Terrorism

Bed Wetters at Fox News launch all-out war against John Brennan

In the wake of White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan's criticism of Republicans for politicizing the Obama administration's response to the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight, Fox News guests and hosts have responded by attacking Brennan and the administration over its handling of the bombing plot. Fox has gone so far as to ask whether Brennan should resign, and has repeatedly hosted Republican Sen. Kit Bond to say that he should.

*Brennan: "I'm tiring of politicians using national security issues such as terrorism as a political football"

Brennan criticizes politicians who are using national security for "political or partisan purposes." On the February 7 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, Brennan criticized "politicians using national security issues such as terrorism as a political football," saying, "They are going out there, they're, they're unknowing of the facts, and they're making charges and allegations that are not anchored in reality." He further stated, "I'm just very concerned on the behalf of the counterterrorism professionals throughout our government that politicians continue to make this a political football and are using it for whatever political or partisan purposes, whether they be Democrats or Republicans."

Brennan repeats criticism in USA Today op-ed. In a February 9 USA Today op-ed, Brennan wrote: "Politics should never get in the way of national security. But too many in Washington are now misrepresenting the facts to score political points, instead of coming together to keep us safe." He further stated, "Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda."


All the conservative crocodile tears of abject fear that al-Qaeda is going to kill them all as they sleep is even good political theatrics. Its a public relations gift from Republicans to al-Qaeda. al-Qaeda now gets to watch their TVs and the net videos, and claim they are winning because the world can see how afraid the U.S. is as a nation.

Who is, in the real world, weak on terror? Conservatives.

The Bush Administration and its Republican Allies in Congress Are Failing on All of the Key Measures of Victory in the War on Terrorism

• The Bush Administration has failed to bring to justice the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks: 2,545 days after September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, and other key al Qaeda leaders remain free.



• The Bush Administration has failed to combat the threat of al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist networks: the intelligence community and national security experts have assessed that al Qaeda has expanded its reach, regenerated its capabilities to pre-9/11 levels, and represents the gravest threat to America's national security.



• The Bush Administration has failed to reduce global terrorist attacks: the number of worldwide terrorist attacks has grown dramatically in the past several years.



• The Bush Administration has failed to stabilize and secure Afghanistan: independent reports warn that Afghanistan faces grave threats from resurgent terrorist violence, a burgeoning drug trade, a weak government, and faltering economy.



• The Bush Administration has failed to prevent the Taliban, al Qaeda and other terrorist groups from gaining safe haven: the intelligence community has assessed al Qaeda has regained its safe haven in the tribal areas of Pakistan while the Taliban have assumed de facto control over a vast portion of eastern Afghanistan.

Not to mention that invading Iraq, based on lies and childish exaggerations about WMD and connections to al Qaeda, has cost trillions of dollars and gotten American troops killed that would now be with their families or fighting actual terrorists in Afghanistan. Send your Republican Congressman or Senator( and conservative pundits like Sean Hannity) an adult diaper today, they need one.

John Boehner (R-OH) Performs Miracle - Talks Out of His Face and Ass

John Boehner (R-OH) Performs Miracle - Talks Out of His Face and Ass

After slamming the Obama administration for "secret deliberations" and going back on his campaign promise to televise the health care debate, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) criticized the President yesterday for televising the bipartisan health care summit on Feb. 25, asking "is this a political event or is this going to be a real conversation?"

Boehner had been a rather vocal supporter of C-SPAN's request to televise the earlier negotiations, writing to the network in January that "House Republicans strongly endorse your proposal and stand ready to work with you to make it a reality."

Well now, it seems, the idea of televising the health care summit has Boehner a bit squeamish.

Last night, Fox News' Greta Van Susteren asked him what he thinks about the fact that it's going to be televised, and added that "the American people are probably delighted that we're getting this televised."

Boehner responded: "I think that's fine, but you know, is this a political event or is this going to be a real conversation?"

Van Susteren didn't let that slide: "Well, except that we've been hammering them about the transparency. The president said, you know, he was going to put everything on C-SPAN, so we can't criticize him now for when he finally does put it on C-SPAN."

John Boehner (R-OH) is just your typical conservative - no principles, no values, no vision, no plan. If he hates government so much why is he collecting a nice salary and subsidized health care courtesy tax payers.

Having It Both Ways on Medicare

One of the truly amazing things about the health care debate is the way Republicans have managed to pose as defenders of Medicare. The death panel thing has been absolutely central to their argument. For example, when I was debating Roger Ailes on This Week, his response to my Massachusetts comparison — that the Senate bill was basically the same as Romneycare — was to start blustering that Mitt Romney didn’t slash Medicare benefits.

It’s all hypocrisy, of course. Remember what the 1995 government shutdown was about: it was Newt Gingrich trying to force Bill Clinton to accept, yes, deep cuts in Medicare. And it’s not just history: Republican plans to balance the budget rely crucially on … deep cuts in Medicare.

Consider the “Roadmap for America’s future” released by Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican on the House budget committee. In the long run, this would convert Medicare to a voucher system and impose sharp cuts in Medicare spending as a percentage of GDP. And even in the next decade, it would involve substantially less Medicare spending than under the Obama administration’s budget. Here’s the head-to-head comparison:


You almost have to admire the audacity: Republicans are denouncing Obama for proposing Medicare cuts, while themselves proposing much deeper Medicare cuts. And they’re getting away with it.

They were asleep at the wheel on 9-11, cut taxes mostly for the wealthy and ran up historic deficits while destroying the economy and lied to us about WMD and "urgent threats" - so its no big deal to conscienceless conservatives to lie about their plans to destroy Medicare.

Great Ideas From Republicans to Undo the Economic Collapse They Caused - Destroy Medicare

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) Joins Other Conservatives in Their Latest Scheme to Shaft The Poor and Middle-Class

A lot of House Republicans are walking away from the Ryan GOP shadow budget. But not Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). She supports privatizing Social Security and abolishing Medicare in favor of a system of insurance vouchers for the elderly, as advocated in the Ryan budget proposal.

That's right, let's let the health-care corporations handle our health care the same way Goldman-Sachs and AIG handled our finances, and Enron handled our energy.

"Independent" Hockey Stick analysis (of climate change) revealed as Republican set-up

The purportedly independent report that Dr. Edward Wegman prepared in 2006 for the Congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce was actually a partisan set-up, according to information revealed today.

Wegman, who had presented himself as an impartial "referee" between two "teams" debating the quality of the so-called Hockey Stick graph was, in fact, coached throughout his review by Republican staffer Peter Spencer. Wegman and his colleagues also worked closely with one of the teams (and especially with retired mining stock promoter Stephen McIntyre) to try to replicate criticism of the Hockey Stick graph, while at the same time foregoing contact with the actual authors of the seminal climate reconstruction.

The Hockey Stick refers to a graph (by Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes) that became a defining image of the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It also became a target for Steve McIntyre and the Guelph University economist Ross McKitrick, who since 2002, at least, has been a paid spokesperson for ExxonMobil-backed think tanks such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and the Fraser Institute.

Why Does Sarah Palin Assume The Average American is as Stupid as She is

Why Does Sarah Palin Assume The Average American is as Stupid as She is

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin lauded the virtues of the Constitution in her Tea Party Convention speech Saturday, but some of her claims appear markedly flawed. Reports over the weekend also challenged her account of recent history on national security and terrorism.

In her speech, Palin made numerous claims related to Obama, the constitution and terrorism.

"The [constitutional] protections provided," Palin said, "we’re going to bestow them on a terrorist who hates our Constitution and wants to destroy our Constitution and our country? This makes no sense because we have a choice in how we’re going to deal with the terrorists."

But a 2008 Supreme Court ruling, Boumediene v. Bush, declared that alleged terrorists who aren't convicted of a crime -- irrespective of their citizenship -- have the constitutional right to have their case heard in federal court.

The case declared unconstitutional some of the Bush administration's decisions to strip rights from those who are designated enemy combatants by the Executive Branch.
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Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said such actions fail to meet "the fundamental procedural protections of habeas corpus" guaranteed in the constitution, as the New York Times reported.

Referring to Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Palin said "[T]here are questions we would have liked this foreign terrorist to answer because he lawyered up and invoked our U.S. Constitutional right to remain silent. Our U.S. Constitutional rights."

"He was questioned for only 50 minutes," she added. "We have a choice in how to do this. The choice was only question him for 50 minutes and then read his Miranda rights."

This too, appears to have been false.

Central to Palin's claim was that this approach is failing as Abdulmutallab has refused to cooperate with authorities. But an FBI official informed Reuters last week that "Abdulmutallab is talking and has been talking since last week providing useful, actionable and current intelligence that we've been actively following up on."

FBI director Robert Mueller added that "Abdulmutallab has provided valuable information" without being subject to harsh techniques, as the liberal watchdog Media Matters first noted.

"He has been cooperating for days," one Obama administration official last week told the New York Times, which confirmed that authorities were extracting important information form the suspect.

In her speech, Palin said, "There are questions that we would have liked answered before he lawyered up, like where exactly were you trained and by whom. You are bragging about all these other terrorists just like you, who are they? When and where will they try to strike next?"

Reports reveal that such information has also been obtained by authorities despite not breaking the law. The Associated Press found that FBI agents interrogated Abdulmutallab in a hospital for "about an hour" with the following result:

The suspect spoke openly, said one official, talking in detail about what he’d done and the planning that went into the attack. Other counterterrorism officials speaking on condition of anonymity said it was during this questioning that he admitted he had been trained and instructed in the plot by al-Qaida operatives in Yemen.

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff delivered the same news:

The agents learned a wealth of information from Abdulmutallab about his connections to Al Qaeda; who he met with in Yemen; where he got the bomb that was sewn into his underwear; and "who trained him in Yemen." Added another official: "We got a lot of leads."

Palin also accused Obama of "politicizing our security" in part by using the word "war" insufficiently. "New terms used like 'overseas contingency operation' instead of the word 'war.' That reflects a world view that is out of touch with the enemy that we face."

However, the Obama administration regularly uses the word "war." Following the Christmas Day bombing, the president declared publicly, "We are at war" -- clarifying, "we are at war with Al-Qaeda." In the State of the Union, the president reportedly said the word seven times.

Palin also appeared to suggest Obama's actions led to North Korea testing nuclear weapons.

"Our president spent a year reaching out to hostile regimes, writing personal letters to dangerous dictators and apologizing for America, and what do we have to show for that?" she said. "North Korea tested nuclear weapons and longer-range ballistic missiles."

But North Korea became recognized as a nuclear nation in October 2006, before Obama was elected president, when it tested its nuclear capabilities, as the New York Times points out.

Rule one of modern conservatism - synonymous with soft fascism - is the truth does not matter. Lying and politicizing everything is standard operating procedure for Republicans. If you hate the truth, you hate America and its ideals. Its clear that Palin is another ultra nationalist that loves money and the sound of her own voice, but despises honor and American traditions of justice.

Republicans Out of Touch with Average American

Steele: ‘Trust Me, After Taxes, A Million Dollars Is Not A Lot Of Money’

Chairman Michael Steele and former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-TN) held a joint appearance Thursday night at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. When the debate turned to President Obama’s plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire on families making over $250,000, Steele “joke[d]” that that wasn’t very much money:

The two often traded jokes, especially when Steele panned President Barack Obama’s long-stated plan to let income tax rates return to higher levels for families making more than $250,000 a year.

“Trust me, after taxes, a million dollars is not a lot of money,” Steele said.

Ford later asked the audience of mostly college students, “Who in here makes a million dollars a year?”

“How many of you want to make a million dollars a year?” Steele quickly responded when no hands were raised.

Of course, to most Americans, $250,000 — let alone a million — is “a lot of money.” The median household income is about $52,000 and only two percent of Americans make $250,000 or more. Fewer than half-a-percent make more than a million dollars. “After taxes,” someone making a million dollars can still expect to keep about $675,000.

Republican Chairman Steele could use a lesson from Abraham Lincoln - "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." Lincoln's First Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1861.

Conservatives Hope to Ride Racism and Eliminationism Back to Power

Glenn Beck breaks down the president's un-American, African name
Glenn Beck has been known to bristle at the suggestion that he might have a problem when it comes to issues of race. His incredulity is matched only by his crippling lack of self-awareness -- he seems to think that a reasoned discussion of race includes calling the first black president a "slavemaster" and a "racist" who is scheming to enact "reparations."

But I'm feeling charitable today, so I'll offer Beck a bit of advice. If you really are that upset at people constantly accusing you of being, let's say, insensitive when it comes to race, don't say things like this, as you did on the radio earlier this morning:

BECK: He chose to use his name, Barack, for a reason. To identify, not with America -- you don't take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical? Really? Searching for something to give him any kind of meaning, just as he was searching later in life for religion.

OK, let's break down the problematic parts of this, just so there isn't any room for confusion. First, the suggestion that certain names, such as the African name Barack, are un-American. Second, the idea that Obama, in embracing his African name, was doing so at the expense of his American identity, as if the two are mutually exclusive (someone relevant to this discussion once talked about the "the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too").

Tea Party opening speaker suggests law that kept blacks be kept from voting be reinstated
Tea Party opening speaker suggests law that kept blacks be kept from voting be reinstated.The opening night speaker at the Tea Party convention suggested a return to a "literacy test" to protect America from presidents like Obama -- a segregation-era method employed by southern US states to keep blacks from voting.

In his speech Thursday to attendees, former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo invoked the loaded pre-civil rights era buzzword, saying that President Barack Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country."

Southern states used literacy tests as part of an effort to deny suffrage to African American voters prior to Johnson-era civil rights laws.

"Prior to passage of the federal Voting Rights Act in 1965, Southern (and some Western) states maintained elaborate voter registration procedures whose primary purpose was to deny the vote to those who were not white," a website for civil rights veterans explains. "In the South, this process was often called the 'literacy test.' In fact, it was much more than a simple test, it was an entire complex system devoted to denying African-Americans (and in some regions, Latinos) the right to vote."

"Because the Freedom Movement was running "Citizenship Schools" to help people learn how to fill out the forms and pass the test, Alabama changed the test 4 times in less than two years (1964-1965)," the site adds. "At the time of the Selma Voting Rights campaign there were actually 100 different tests in use across the state. In theory, each applicant was supposed to be given one at random from a big loose-leaf binder. In real life, some individual tests were easier than others and the registrar made sure that Black applicants got the hardest ones."
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White applicants could be approved even if they didn't pass the test.

"Your application was then reviewed by the three-member Board of Registrars — often in secret at a later date," the site continues. "They voted on whether or not you passed. It was entirely up to the judgment of the Board whether you passed or failed. If you were white and missed every single question they could still pass you if — in their sole judgment — you were 'qualified.' If you were Black and got every one correct, they could still flunk you if they considered you 'unqualified.'"

Tancredo, who is known for his sharp anti-immigrant rhetoric, also attacked what he called the United States' "cult of multiculturalism," and tore into 2008 Republican Presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

"Thank God John McCain lost the election," Tancredo told the Tea Party crowd, citing his positions on government spending and immigration.

"This is our country," he added. "Let's take it back."

Southern voting registrars could employ literacy tests arbitrarily. They included dauntingly difficult questions, aimed at keeping those they didn't want enfranchised from voting.

For example, an Alabama literacy test required would-be voters to know esoteric facts about the US political and legal system (one of the literacy tests can be read here in PDF form).

Among the questions:

"If a person charged with treason denies his guilt, how many persons must testify against him before he can be convicted?"

"If a president does not wish to sign a bill, how many days is he allowed in which to return it to Congress for consideration?"

"If the United States wishes to purchase land for an arsenal and have exclusive legislative authority over it, consent is required from [fill in the blank]."

The answers to the above questions are two, ten and the legislature, respectively.

Tancredo called Obama a "committed socialist ideologue," and referred to him by his full name, Barack Hussein Obama.

ABC News reported that the former Colorado representative's speech "received enthusiastic applause at times," but said the crowd did not fill the ballroom in which the event was held.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R) of Alabama Blackmails Government to Get Pork

Senate Shark Jump Announced

You've seen the reports that Sen. Richard Shelby (R) of Alabama has taken the perhaps unprecedented step of placing holds on ALL of President Obama's nominees until he gets the money for a couple of big earmarked pork barrel projects he feels entitled to back in his home state.

Martha Johnson: GSA Chief Confirmed After 9 Month Senate Hold-Up

The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to confirm Martha N. Johnson as head of the General Services Administration, nearly 10 months after she was first nominated to head the federal agency.

Upon assuming office, Johnson "will become the first permanent Administrator of the General Services Administration in nearly two years."

Earlier in 2009, Johnson was unanimously approved by members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. But a single senator, Republican Kit Bond from Missouri, has used his symbolic 'privilege' to hold up consideration of Johnson's nomination since last summer. The delay was meant to pressure GSA administrators to approve a $175 million federal building project in Kansas City.

Welcome to the Conservative Tea Party - meaner, dumber, more corrupt and even more rabid rightwing than the old conservative party. Why do conservatives hate America.

Smear and Conspiracy are Spelled R-E-P-U-B-L-I-C-A-N

Fox News revives ACORN-funding bogeyman to attack Obama budget

Fox News host Bill Hemmer raised the tired specter of ACORN receiving federal funding to attack Department of Housing and Urban Development funding included in President Obama's 2011 budget proposal. Conservatives in the media have exhaustively cited the possibility of federal money going to ACORN to attack health care reform legislation, the financial bailout bill, and the economic recovery act.

-Obama budget proposal does not direct funding to ACORN

Proposal does not mention ACORN. Media Matters for America searched Obama's 2011 budget proposal. The proposal contains no language specific to ACORN.
Conservatives previously cited ACORN to attack legislation that did not contain language mentioning the group

Media conservatives cited ACORN to demonize health care reform legislation. Media conservatives, including The Weekly Standard and Andrew Breitbart's Big Government, attacked the Senate health care reform bill by citing a general provision in the legislation to raise the possibility that ACORN would receive funding under the bill. Media Matters searched the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and Sen. Harry Reid's manager's amendment. Neither the Senate health care reform bill nor the manager's amendment to the bill contained language mentioning ACORN.

Media claimed Democrats were attempting to direct millions of dollars in government money to ACORN in the financial bailout bill. During debate over the 2008 financial bailout bill, media figures advanced the claim that Democrats sought to direct millions in funding to ACORN. Neither the draft proposal nor the final version of the bill contained any language mentioning ACORN. Those making the false claim were misrepresenting a provision -- later removed -- that would have directed 20 percent of any profits realized on troubled assets purchased under the plan into two previously established funds: the Housing Trust Fund and the Capital Magnet Fund, funds that would have been distributed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the form of block grants to states, which would then award grants to qualified applicants.

Media figures adopted GOP spin that economic recovery act awarded funds to ACORN. During the legislative debate over the 2009 Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act, numerous media figures adopted the GOP spin that the stimulus bill awarded funds to ACORN, despite the fact that no language in the legislation mentioned the group. At one point, conservative radio host Bill Cunningham claimed the legislation gave "up to $4.2 trillion" to ACORN.

Hate-Monger-In-Chief Glenn Beck: America Should Not Be OK With Smearing

I don’t know about you, but I found it pretty darned funny that a guy like Glenn Beck would be complaining about anyone else “tearing people apart without evidence, without any kind of substance, something that they did in their past… I don’t think America should be OK with that.” Beck was talking about President Obama - or was it the Democrats? But what was even funnier was that immediately after saying that, Beck went on to attack Bill Ayers over his past.

-Beck didn’t seem to notice how foolish he looked as he immediately segued from there into doing what he had just complained about. His target of the moment was Bill Ayers, but it could have been Robert Creamer or Van Jones or Anita Dunn, each of whom have been smeared by Beck, torn apart without any substantive evidence, other than something they did or said in the past, for the sake of Beck’s television histrionics.

The Millions of Americans that are unemployed or underemployed will be happy to know that Beck reportedly makes over $3 million dollars a year for......well, for creating fact-less smears. Nice work if you can get it. No honor or integrity required.

Hey America Join The Grass Roots Tea Party Movement

Tea Party Profiteers: How Republican Operatives Are Exploiting Economic Anxiety For Power, Cash

Republican partisans — aided by lobbyists and corporate front groups — are exploiting the legitimate feelings of anger and distrust among many struggling Americans. These operatives and profiteers, many of them experienced public relations professionals, have set up sophisticated social networking portals and online solutions to control the flow of information within tea party organizations. As gatekeepers to ostensibly open forums, these political operatives and profiteers have been able to set the political agenda of the tea parties and hand out marching orders. And tea party profiteers are making millions cashing in on the movement. They are selling tea party support to candidates and policies which continue the legacy of Bush-era unregulated capitalism and corporate bailouts:

– Eric Odom: Odom, who appears regularly on Fox News and on other venues as a spokesman for the tea party movement, is at the center of tea party profiteering. Odom maintains dozens, possibly hundreds of tea party websites and community forums which he controls through a “Ning” technology based social networking platform. Odom’s vast online control of county, state, and issue oriented tea party websites is done through his two for profit consulting companies: American Liberty Alliance and Strategy Activism, LLC. His American Liberty Alliance has served as a hub between disparate tea party groups and right-wing front groups. In a biographical video he posted on YouTube, Odom explained that he has worked for years on local and statewide Republican campaigns developing “stealth type marketing…some say ‘attack sites.’” He boasted that he built “sites behind the scenes, many of them to this day no one today knows I took part in, some of them were actually very effective in defeating the opponent.” While it is unclear exactly who is paying Odom now for his tea party profit ventures, Odom has delicately straddled independent populist rhetoric while proclaiming that his network will work exclusively for the election of Republican candidates this year.

– Allen Fuller: According to Tennessee business records, Odom’s Strategic Activism, LLC business partner is Republican new media consultant Allen Fuller, who also maintains a firm called Flat Creek Public Affairs. Fuller may be the best clue to find out who pays Odom. On his website, Fuller counts Jane Norton, the GOP candidate for Senate in Colorado, as a client, and also receives payments from several other Republican members of Congress. Fuller helps corral tea party support to American Majority, a Republican training organization.

– Glenn Beck: Beck, the most powerful promoter of the tea parties in the media, often rants during his regular programming that investing in gold is the only way to hedge against a supposed deep inflation in the future. He does not disclose, however, that gold companies are his primary sponsors, or that the gold companies he promotes have predatory fees: Goldline, one of Beck’s sponsors, sells gold for 30-35% more than market value. “Here’s the deal, call Goldline, study it out, pray on it,” Beck advises his listeners. Beck has cemented his control over the tea parties by launching his own 9.12 project network of social networking sites — which are hosted by his for profit media company Mercury Radio Arts.

– Tea Party Nation: As a for-profit business, Tea Party Nation organized the Tea Party Convention this year at Nashville’s swank Opryland Gaylord hotel. The convention, set at the “grassroots” ticket price of $550 per person, features a Madison Avenue fashion company selling tea party jewelry and a paid ($120,000) speech by Sarah Palin. Tea Party Nation also maintains a message board.

– Dick Armey: As ThinkProgress has documented, Armey has a long history of organizing conservative grassroots causes in support of his corporate clients. Armey presents himself as a ideologue, who helms his nonprofit FreedomWorks as a mere exercise in his free market beliefs. But while Armey rails against the Wall Street bailout and efforts to rebuild the foundations of the economy, his own lobbying firm represented AIG, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch during the bailouts. Indeed, even his nonprofit still pays him a lobbyist salary of $550,000 per year.

– Tea Party Express: The Tea Party Express bus tour, and affiliated political action committee, has raised funds using tea party messages. The Tea Party Express effort has been a slick public relations gimmick of the Sacramento-based consulting firm Russo, Marsh and Rogers (RMR). RMR has worked on several stealth campaigns for Republican clients, including the underhanded push to recall Gov. Gray Davis (D-CA). In any case, the Tea Party Express, which RMR staffers operate, has proved to be a cash cow for RMR — in 2009 alone, it plunged at least $1,025,559 of money it raised back into RMR.

The profiteers say that the original American revolutionaries cast their tea into the Boston harbor as a simple rejection of taxation, so the modern tea party movement should similarly reject increased financial regulations, health reform, and taxes on the rich. But the history tells a different story. Boston revolutionaries rejected subservience to the East India Company, a British-run international corporation. They cast the tea into the harbor as a symbolic message to say that their taxes should go back into the American community, not subsidizing the profits of London elites and foreign corporations. Now, Republican tea party profiteers are trying to exploit the movement, pushing them to oppose policies which would actually liberate the middle class and crack down on international corporations. Despite the populist rhetoric, the profiteers see the tea party movement as a pool to extract fundraising dollars and volunteers for Republican campaigns. Indeed, RNC Chairman Michael Steele, himself a former lobbyist, has said that he has an “expectation” that tea partiers loyally toe the Republican line.