Vote Republican. They're More Fun.

Even back in Thomas Jefferson's day he realized the press was not perfect, but also knew a free press was an essential element to an open democracy - a right guaranteed in the 1st Amendment. Srah Palin as severely restricted the press from access to her speaking events. So much for transparency in the Palin world view. Now she has decided that since the press is complaining she'll let some of them in, but they have to pay money to one of her causes - Journalists Must Donate To Anti-Choice Organization In Order To Cover Palin’s Speech

But in order to cover Palin’s speech, the Austin-American Statesman reports that journalists will have to make a contribution to Heroic Media:

Restrictions: Heroic Media will try to prohibit video and audio recordings of Palin’s appearance, and news organizations wishing to cover her speech must buy a ticket, the proceeds of which will go to Heroic Media.

Denying media access has become Palin’s standard operating procedure. After the debacle that was her interview with CBS’ Katie Couric during the 2008 presidential campaign, Palin made sure she wouldn’t step into any embarrassing interviews — often demanding that reporters submit their questions “ahead of time” to guarantee a one-on-one. And as a private citizen, the former Alaska governor requires that any questions asked at her speaking engagements be pre-screened. Just last week at an event in Eugene, OR, media were “not…allowed to ask her questions and take still pictures… [or] videotape or record it in anyway.”

So Palin's idea of patriotism and democracy is right out of the fascist-lite playbook.

Maybe Fox and Sean Hannity - members of the lame-stream-media - need to brush up on their reading comprehension skills, Sean Hannity Misrepresents Arizona Immigration Law While Wrongly Accusing Obama Of Misrepresenting The Law

GOPer Ken Blackwell Talks 'Obama's Power Grab' -- And Jon Stewart Tears Him Down (VIDEO)

Over the course of the three-part interview, Blackwell tried to make claims about President Obama's "power grab," but Stewart wasn't having any of it. He told Blackwell that his claims weren't backed up by, "I guess you'd call them facts," and even burst out laughing when Blackwell tried to say that George W. Bush didn't expand executive power, but Obama has.

Yes America it is time to shift course. To put the nation in reverse according to zealots like Ken.

Tea Party Leader Admits He is Insane

Tea Party leader: Obama hides birth cert. to make us ‘nuts’

During an appearance on the radio show of Fox News’ Alan Colmes, prominent tea party leader Tom Tancredo made it clear he believes President Obama may not be an American citizen, Think Progress reported.

The former GOP congressman responded to questions about a statement he gave to a group of tea partiers: “If his wife says Kenya is his homeland, why don’t we just send him back?”

Tancredo was referring to a speech by Michelle Obama in which she calls Kenya the president's "home country."

The following is a partial transcript from the interview:

COLMES: Do you really believe – you know he was born in Hawaii right?
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TANCREDO: I have absolutely no idea where he was born.

COLMES: You’ve seen he was born in Hawaii; he was in two Hawaiian newspapers within two days of his birth.

TANCREDO: Anybody can put an article in a newspaper. Just show me your birth certificate!

Later in the interview, Tancredo suggested the Obama administration will not release the president's birth certificate as a ploy to cast tea partiers in a negative light.

TANCREDO: Now they very well not want to show it because they want to propagate this whole thing that’s going on about birthers. … They may be doing it for that reason; I don’t know why they don’t want anyone to see it. … They want it propagated because you know –

COLMES: It makes your party look nuts!

TANCREDO: Yeah well maybe that’s why they don’t produce document, I don’t know.

It doesn't look like the "birther" movement will dissipate any time soon. Americans who deny that the president is a natural-born citizen are preparing to march on the capital May 29 to voice their concerns.

Tancredo has spent must of his adult life living off tax payers - a kind of American dream come true for the grandchild of Italian immigrants. President Obama's birth certificate might be one of the world's most viewed documents at this point and one of the most thoroughly debunked urban myths. That Tancredo admits his obsession as are most of his policy prescriptions for a democracy like the U.S. Will Tom and the birthers get the psychiatric help they need? That is the mystery we need to get to the bottom of.

Please Vote Conservative. They're Never Deceptive or Have Conflicts of Interests

Republican Pervert Dick Morris uses Fox News cred to shill for Newsmax financial schemes

Over the past year, Dick Morris has repeatedly used anti-Obama rhetoric and stoked fears about the economy on Fox News, in his latest book, and in videos for the right-wing website Newsmax. Newsmax has used those videos to the promote financial-services products it sells, which the website has pushed by playing on similar anti-Obama fears. Morris has been paid by Newsmax to use his email list to plug such products; he builds his email list through his website, which he often promotes on Fox News.

In this report:

* Newsmax drives sales of its financial products by using anti-Obama rhetoric and stoking fear of hyperinflation.
* Newsmax has paid Morris to use his email list to promote those products.
* Through his email list and in appearances on Newsmax webcasts, Morris has explicitly endorsed Newsmax's financial-services products.
* Morris builds his email list through his website, which is frequently promoted during his Fox News appearances.
* In his Newsmax appearances, on Fox, and in his latest book, Morris has echoed the anti-Obama rhetoric and predictions of hyperinflation Newsmax uses to promote its products.
* Morris has repeatedly used his Fox platform to shill for groups he is affiliated with.

Newsmax uses anti-Obama rhetoric to drive sales of its financial products

As Media Matters for America has detailed, since President Obama's inauguration, right-wing website Newsmax has repeatedly used anti-Obama rhetoric and stoked fear of hyperinflation to drive sales of the financial-services products it offers...

A Conservative web site teamed up with a Republican engaged in shady business practices - yet again. Please America vote more Republicans into office because this country is not nearly as corrupt and hypocritical as it could be.

Mitch McConnell (R-KY) Bought and Paid for by Wall St

McConnell’s Faulty Logic: A Cloture Vote To Begin Senate Debate Actually Means A Vote To End It

Time and again, Republicans have urged Democrats to “slow down” and “start over” in the course of pursuing their agenda. In his role as chief obstructionist, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has used “his extensive knowledge of Senate procedure to slow things down” and has forged unity among his caucus to filibuster the Democrats’ agenda. Today, McConnell will once again try to stop reform.

At 5 pm today, the Senate will hold a cloture vote on a Democratic plan to overhaul regulation of Wall Street. If the Democrats can muster the 60 votes needed to end a Republican filibuster, it would begin a process of commencing a 30 hour debate, filing amendments, and ultimately holding a vote.

This past Sunday, McConnell pledged that his caucus would hang together to filibuster the vote. On the Senate floor earlier today, McConnell offered a backwards-logic explanation for the GOP’s obstruction:

MCCONNELL: A vote for cloture is a vote that says we’re done listening to the American people on this issue. And a vote against ending this debate is a vote for bipartisanship, for working out an iron-clad solution to the problem of Too Big to Fail. A vote against ending this debate tonight is a vote that says it’s no longer enough to tell our constituents to trust us. It’s a vote that says this time, we’ll prove it.



In fact, a vote for cloture simply means that the Senate is going to begin a final debate on the bill. As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said on the floor today, “This afternoon’s vote is a vote merely to begin debate. It’s not the end of the process, just the beginning.” Reid added that the debate would be “broadcast live” on C-Span.

The public is steadfastly on the side of concluding this debate. About two-thirds of respondents in a new Washington Post survey say they support “stricter regulations on the way banks and other financial institutions conduct their business.” Nevertheless, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) affirmed that “41 Republicans right now are going to stand together” to stop the debate from proceeding.

Congradulations to Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) for looking out for people that make millions a year and giving the middle-class the shaft. Yep, vote Republican in 2010 because who else will look out for the wealthy and decadent.

Gosh, There is No Reason Not to Vote Republican in 2010

McConnell (R-KY) made ‘most dishonest argument ever’

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell(R) has said that the financial regulation reform bill would institutionalize bank bailouts. The New York Times' Paul Krugman slammed the top-ranking Senate Republican's rhetoric Sunday, saying it was "possibly the most dishonest argument ever made in the history of politics."

On Fox News Sunday, McConnell threatened that a Republican filibuster is on the horizon this week because of what he called "the partisan bill." He insisted that Democrats are unwilling to work with Republicans on reforms of Wall Street.

"The fifty billion dollar bailout fund needs to come out," insisted McConnell. "We need to have a system in there under which the creditors can expect that they're going to be treated fairly somewhat similar to the bankruptcy laws and we need to have enhanced capital requirements. None of that is currently in the bill that the Majority Leader would try to have us take up on Monday, which came out of committee on a strictly party-line vote."

Pointing to McConnell's distortions of what Democrats intend to do with their bill, Krugman tore apart McConnell's political positioning on ABC Sunday morning.

"Anyone who says we need to be bipartisan should bear in mind that for the last several weeks, Mitch McConnell has been trying to stop reform with possibly the most dishonest argument ever made in the history of politics, which is the claim that having regulation of the banks is actually bailing out the banks," Krugman asserted. "Basically the argument boiled down to saying that what we really need to do to deal with fires is abolish the fire department, because then people will know that they can't let their building burn."
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Krugman warned of the misinformed electorate in a blog post Wednesday, adding "and it’s a lack of understanding that the likes of Mitch McConnell are happy to exploit."

"What we are getting in this bill is a way to have graceful failure of big institutions," Krugman, a Princeton economist and columnist, explained. "We know how to deal with small banks... but we don't have a way of dealing with complex, shadow institutions like Lehman or Citigroup and this bill would give you that. It doesn't deal with 'too big' but it may deal with the failed banks."

Republicans keep saying they are the party of big business and the party of the average American -the party with the split personality or two faces. Time and again when they make their choices they always seem to end up on the side of special interests against the average working American. Heck, the Republican agenda is not even good for most businesses.

Republican Double-Talk Hypocrite of the Week - Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)

After Saying That Big Banks Should Be Made ‘Smaller,’ Cornyn Votes Against Breaking Them Up

Last week, the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim and Sam Stein interviewed several Republican senators about their views on making megabanks that threaten the economy smaller. The bloggers concluded that “Republican senators are beginning to embrace” breaking big banks up, with a number of the legislators endorsing the idea reducing the maximum size of banks.

One senator they talked to was Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX). Cornyn told the Huffington Post that he views Democratic plans as a “perpetual bailout” and prefers making banks “smaller in order to avoid” the problems we saw during the financial crisis:

Last week, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) met with 25 top Wall Street executives in New York City to hear their concerns regarding reform. Both say they oppose the Democratic plan as a perpetual bailout. “By creating a fund, that’s an invitation to Congress to spend that money just as we have in the highway trust fund and the surplus in Social Security,” Cornyn said.

HuffPost asked Cornyn what his alternative solution to the Democratic plan would be. “I think we need to look at the concentration of banking in just a handful of entities that threaten our economy if they go under,” Cornyn said. “They need to be smaller in order to avoid that problem and I would support efforts to move in that direction.”

Yesterday, Cornyn got a chance to put his money where his mouth is. The Senate Budget Committee held a vote on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) amendment to the financial regulatory reform bill that would’ve broken up some of the nation’s largest financial instutitions that are considered “too big too fail.” Cornyn voted against the amendment, joining all of his Republican colleagues on the committee except for Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY).

Cornyn is typical of career Republican politicians. Their values are for sale. Their public policy prescriptions are based on whatever mood they're in. Cornyn's career ambitions have been realized he has spent his entire tenure doing his best to make government run poorly so he can than run on a campaign of fixing the broken government he helped to create. Why do Republicans like Cornyn hate America and average working people so much?

If Conservatives -Tea Baggers Love America So Much How Come They Don't Know Squat About History

The Tea Party's Toxic Take on History
Ignore it at your peril.
By Ron Rosenbaum

You hear them say, for instance, that we live under "tyranny" because one side lost a health care vote in an elected legislative body. And that, in all seriousness, the president is a communist. For many Tea Party members, the word is not just a vile epithet; it's a realistic political description. Check out this clip in which Tea Party "celebrity" spokeswoman Victoria Jackson flatly tells a flummoxed Fox News host, "The president's a communist." When the host (the Fox host!) starts to object, she responds that Glenn Beck has taught her that progressive is a code word for communist. (Time to put that ugly hammer and sickle logo inside the "O" on your I-hate-Obama T.P. protest sign!)

Unless of course Obama is really a "fascist," as some T.P.ers have it, because he's a liberal, and liberals are fascists (as we all know from that magisterial work of history, Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg). So instead of the hammer and sickle, draw a little Hitler mustache on Obama's face on your T.P. hate signs. Or better yet, parade around with a swastika! (The Tea Partiers seem to get a special kick out of this, for some reason.)

Of course Obama is also probably an evil "socialist" which is apparently, in the Tea Party worldview, pretty much the same as a fascist or a communist. (One gets the impression that some T.P.ers have had major, life-changing, "aha!" moments when they first learned that Hitler's party was the National SOCIALIST German Workers Party. Slam dunk!)*

And if Obama's not a socialist fascist communist, he may be—ooh, scary, kids!—a "progressive," which, as Victoria Jackson learned from the erudite Glenn Beck, is really a secret "code word" for communist.

And they believe him! That's the thing. The recent New York Times study of T.P.ers reported that party members are "better educated" than most Americans. But educated in what? Clearly, they—or at least a significant, influential portion of them—are utterly uneducated in history. One can get a college degree without taking a single class in world history and thus still be ripe for the idiot distortions of a Glenn Beck.

Most people with a basic grounding in history find Tea Party ignorance something to laugh about, certainly not something to take seriously. But I would argue that history demonstrates that historical ignorance is dangerous and that it can have tragic consequences, however laughable it may initially seem. And thus the media, liberals, and others are misguided in laughing it off. And educated conservatives are irresponsible in staying silent in the face of these distortions.

The muddled Tea Party version of history is more than wrong and fraudulent. It's offensive. Calling Obama a tyrant, a communist, or a fascist is deeply offensive to all the real victims of tyranny, the real victims of communism and fascism. The tens of millions murdered. It trivializes such suffering inexcusably for the T.P.ers to claim that they are suffering from similar oppression because they might have their taxes raised or be subject to demonic "federal regulation."

The media for the most part has shown itself afraid to challenge the insidious distortions of language and history Tea Partiers promote. In the last few weeks, several news outlets have been propagating the meme that Tea Partiers are "just regular folks." And certainly some are. But if you examined the ideology that shows its face, the one that is apparent in sign carriers and blog commenters and cable spokespersons, you find something disturbing.

Consider this CNN report, which attempts to give a smiley face to the Tea Party's underlying ideology. Even Fox News recognizes Tea Party dogma as a seething cauldron of deranged and vicious lies about history. Look at the guy in the photo in this report and how proud he is of his illiterate swastika sign.

These swastika nuts look ridiculous. But words matter, sometimes in a life-and-death way. Take for instance the Tea Party demonization of "federal regulation" as the instrument of the tyranny that's been imposed on them. I would like every Tea Partier who has denounced federal regulation to write a letter to the widows and children of the coalminers in West Virginia who died because of the failure of "federal regulation" of mine safety.

If conservatives - tea baggers are simply conservatives who want to rebrand themselves so they do not have to take their share of the blame for the economic and social policies of the Bush years - do not know what America is about, the history of democracy, that elections have consequences and darn if sometimes tea nuts do not always get their way, that they obviously do not mind tyranny as long as Republicans are the ones shoving it down our throats, than why should anyone take them seriously.

The guy who told the GOP to brand financial reform a "bailout"? Every word he speaks seems to be a lie

Harry Reid (D-NV) is Running Against a Chickens for Health Care Advocate

These guys just don't get it

We asked Lowden spokesperson Crystal Feldman how this could ever be a workable policy, in an era of costly procedures, tests, pharmaceuticals and provider networks? "Americans are struggling to pay for their health care, and in order to afford coverage we must explore all options available to drive costs down," Feldman told TPMDC in an e-mail.

Feldman continued: "Bartering with your doctor is not a new concept. There have been numerous reports as to how negotiating with your doctor is an option and doctors have gone on the record verifying this. Unfortunately, Harry Reid's failed leadership forces us to take drastic measures. The fact remains that instead of producing a health care solution Americans support, Harry Reid spends his time focusing on attacking his biggest threat to another six years in Washington, Sue Lowden."

You'd think they'd be running for the hills, walking her silly arguments back. Instead now they are attacking Harry Reid because he doesn't support Lowden's 'Chickens for Checkups' health care barter scheme.

Yes there are still doctors that are kind enough to take odd sorts of payments, but we live in a country of over 320 million people. The baby boomer generation is now middle-aged to seniors age. And the best nationwide solution, the best health policy solution Republican candidate Lowden can come up with is to turn back the clock to the days of bleeding patients and attaching leeches to remove "toxins" from the patients body.

RNC Chairman Steele: African-Americans ‘don’t have a reason’ to vote Republican

In candid remarks made before a group of students at DePaul University, RNC Chairman Michael Steele said African-Americans “don’t have a reason” to vote for Republicans because “we haven’t done a very good job of giving you one.” The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Why should an African-American vote Republican?

“You really don’t have a reason to, to be honest — we haven’t done a very good job of really giving you one. True? True,” Republican National Chairman Michael Steele told 200 DePaul University students Tuesday night. […]

“For the last 40-plus years we had a ‘Southern Strategy’ that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South. Well, guess what happened in 1992, folks, ‘Bubba’ went back home to the Democratic Party and voted for Bill Clinton.”

Of course, anytime Democrats make similar arguments, Steele is quick to accuse them of issuing “blind charges of racism, where none exist.” Steele himself claims not to “play the race card,” but in addition to his comments last night, he has said that he has a “slimmer margin for error” because of his race and that white Republicans are “scared” of him.

Maybe Steele deserves some credit for speaking the truth. Tea baggers - who are just a branch of right-wing conservatives who like to pretend they had nothing to do with enabling the financial collapse of 2008 - are under the complete delusion that President Obama is doing more for African-Americans than anyone else. Since that is completely untrue it can only be blamed on the prejudice and wacky perceptions of the people that believe it.

Tea Party Conservatives Do Not Have a Race Problem

Arizona ‘birther’ bill forces Obama to show birth certificate

An Arizona lawmaker fears her state is becoming a "laughing stock" after the state House passed a bill that will force President Barack Obama to present his birth certificate before being certified to run for president in the state.

Phoenix Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema said the bill passed Monday is among a handful of legislative items that are making Arizona "the laughing stock of the nation."

While the bill does not target President Obama by name, requiring all presidential candidates to show proof of US birth, its intention is clear. "The legislation originated from a fringe group that believes President Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and therefore ineligible to be president," reports the Arizona Republic.

The law allows the secretary of state to keep a candidate from registering to run if he or she has "reasonable cause" to believe the candidate doesn't meet the necessary requirements, the Los Angeles Times reports.

"Republicans continue to take Arizona down the wrong track by wasting taxpayers' time on frivolous legislation instead of working on important issues like health care for kids and seniors and education," Sinema said, as quoted at the Republic.

George W. Bush who avoided Vietnam by dodging into the National Guard and than apparently going AWOL has never produced proof that he served out his enlistment. One standard for white conservatives, another standard for Democrats.

Tea Party speaker gay-baits Lindsey Graham
Really, only a gay person (or maybe a Muslim) would be enough of a deviant to disagree with these folks, right?

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has had an uneasy relationship with his party's purists for years. Even in his own home base of South Carolina, the right wing has long thought of Graham as a squish on an array of crucial issues, including campaign finance, immigration and environmental regulation.

There's also, however, always been a nastier undercurrent. For years, unsubstantiated but persistent rumors have swirled about the sexuality of the unmarried Graham. What's unsettling is how some on the right seem eager to connect one complaint about Graham to the other.

At a Tea Party rally in Greenville, S.C., last week, a speaker tried to figure out just what, exactly, is wrong with Graham. "Barney Frank has been more honest and brave than you. At least we know about Barney Frank, nobody’s going to hold it over his head."

He continued, "Look, I’m a tolerant person. I don’t care about your private life, Lindsey. But as our U.S. senator, I need to figure out why you’re trying to sell out your own countrymen, I need to make sure you being gay isn’t it." (Video is at bottom.)

What's interesting here is the thought obviously running through the speaker's head: that something about the personal features of a politician like Barney Frank or Lindsey Graham explains their otherwise disagreeable behavior. The argument isn't that Frank and, supposedly, Graham, are horrible liberal traitors, and gay to boot. It’s that they are, or might be, horrible liberal traitors because they're gay.

When they're not being sneaky racists they're being bizarro world eliminationists. One of the defining characteristic of fascism is eliminationism - the elimination of "those" - "them" - who are different than so called normal people.

Tea Part Conservatives hear voices in their tiny brains -

3. James Von Brunn: The 88-year old shot and killed an African-American guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC last June. Von Brunn, who recently died in prison, had long moved in neo-Nazi circles, and in 1981 he tried to hold hostage an employee of the Federal Reserve at gunpoint. In recent writings he had expressed support for Birtherism, and had praised Sarah Palin.

7. John Gimbel: This California man was charged in October after sending a racist, profanity-filled email that called for the death of President Obama and for the words "Fed shit" to be written on his chest. The email, which can be read here, called for the murders of Michelle Obama and the couple's two children "in front of" the president.

Tea Party Darling Running For NY Governor In Hot Water For Forwarding Racist, Sexually Explicit E-mails

Much like the years 2000 - 2008 conservatives live in denial of their hateful anti-America behavior.

Brave Republicans Stand Up for Wall St Against Ordinary Americans

Deja Vu From Mitch McConnell on Finance Reform: Let's Go Back to the Drawing Board

Steve Benen got this one exactly right. As he noted after Mitch McConnell flew off to have a closed door meeting with the Wall Street elites and Candy Crowley asked him what was said at those meetings "the conservative Kentuckian was evasive -- imagine that -- and instead of answering the questions, he talked about scrapping the legislation altogether".

It's like deja vu all over again -- Democrats tackle a pressing national issue, negotiate with Republicans in good faith, craft a reasonable, middle-of-the-road legislative package that deserves bipartisan support, lobbyists tell Republicans to kill it, and McConnell voices his support for killing the legislation and going "back to the drawing board."

Is it me or does this sound familiar?

No, it's not just you Steve. He's exactly right. The Democrats can scrap the liquidation fund the Republicans are carping about and the Republicans will still find another reason not to support it. They are not negotiating in good faith and no one should take them seriously if they pretend they are. Hell, McConnell couldn't even bother to wipe the smirk off of his face during this interview.

Everyone knows that McConnell is crazy and hates America. He has spent his entire Senate career trying to sabotage good government that works for the people. Look at his voting record there is not a special interest that has not lined McConnell's pockets with cash. The poor guy is an addict. He's addicted to the sound of his own voice and cold hard cash. Sen. Corker Refutes Right-Wing Talking Point: The Resolution Fund Is ‘Anything But A Bailout’

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) took to the Senate floor today to repeat the false assertion that the pending financial reform bill will lead to further taxpayer-funded bailouts. A number of other Republicans — including House Minority Leader John Boehner — have repeated the false right-wing talking point.

The language originates from the advice of pollster Frank Luntz, who has urged Republicans to frame the final product as filled with bank bailouts. Republicans have thus asserted that the proposed resolution fund, negotiated by Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN) and Mark Warner (D-VA), amounts to a “50 billion dollar bailout fund.” The resolution authority, of course, has the opposite purpose: It is designed to eliminate too-big-to-fail institutions, not prop them up. It would raise $50 billion “from the largest financial firms” to provide for the orderly unraveling of big, systemically important institutions in the event it is needed — without forcing taxpayers to cover the losses.

Today on the Senate floor, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) debunked his conservative colleagues’ talking point, saying that the fund “is anything but a bailout”:

CORKER: But this fund that’s been set up is anything but a bailout. It’s been set up to, in essence, provide upfront funding by the industry so that when these companies are seized, there’s money available to make payroll and to wind it down while the pieces are being sold off. Now, a lot of people have said this is a Republican idea. There’s no question that this is something Sheila Bair has proposed. The fdic wants to see a prefund. The treasury would like to see a postfund.

Watch it:

Corker explained that all serious debate over the resolution fund concerns whether to “pre-raise” the money in anticipation of a bank failure, or to require the financial industry to fund resolution after an institution has crashed. Corker called the rhetoric “silly,” pointing out that “either way, you’ve got to have the monies available to shut the firms down” without endangering the entire financial system.

McConnell has also sought to bring the Obama administration into his argument, saying yesterday on CNN’s State of the Union that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich agreed with him that the fund would lead to future “taxpayer funded bailouts.” Reich quickly rebuked McConnell for mischaracterizing his position, writing that “When Mitch McConnell has to misquote me to find evidence he’s telling the truth, he is desperate.”

In any case, McConnell’s qualms about the resolution fund seem little more than a political stunt. TPM reports that even after the Obama administration signaled that it was willing to ditch the offending provision, the Republican leader has remained uncritically opposed to the bill. Echoing his rhetoric during the health care debate, McConnell told CNN’s Candy Crowley yesterday that “[w]e ought to go back to the drawing board.”

McConnell(R-Ky) and John Boehner (r-OH) are both wrong about financial reform. If anything the currrent financial reform/Wall St reform bill is too weak. Americans should be writing the America haters like McConnell and Boehner and tell them we need stronger regulation, not the weak regulation Republicans and their fat cat Wall St friends want.

Stossel Adds to Fox's Ethics Problem

Today, Media Matters for America reported that a fundraising event keynoted by Fox Business host John Stossel is scheduled to go forward as planned, despite the ethical fallout from Sean Hannity's recent Cincinnati Tea Party scandal. Stossel's planned appearance has been criticized by several business news veterans.

"Fox has a chronic ethics problem," said Media Matters President Eric Burns. "And seeing as John Stossel's fundraiser comes after the network promised to rein in their employees, it doesn't seem like a problem they're too interested in solving."

Fox and by extension John Crazy Man Stossel are simply rabid right-wing propagandists for the party of elitest - Republicans

Vote Conservative 2010 and 2012 - Republicans and Corporate America Need Your Help

Health insurers cooking books to game reforms
Insurance companies couldn't defeat reform legislation, so now they're re-working their books to avoid its impacts.

"Some of the largest U.S. health insurers are changing their accounting practices to book administration costs as medical costs in an attempt to circumvent new industry reforms, according to a U.S. Senate panel's report released on Thursday," Reuters reports.

The move appears to be an attempt to avoid the law's stricter standards for medical-loss ratio, implemented as a way of cutting waste. The law requires 80 to 85 percent of every premium dollar, depending on the plan, to be spent on medical costs.

By logging administrative expenses as medical, insurers can retain more of their income as profits.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee noted that WellPoint, Inc., one of the largest insurance companies, "has already 'reclassified' more than half a billion dollars of administrative expenses as medical expenses."
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WellPoint did not deny or affirm the charge when Reuters inquired, and several other insurers declined to comment.

After the law passed, some insurance companies initially considered exploiting a loophole that allowed them to continue denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions until 2014, but eventually buckled under pressure from the White House and agreed not to block efforts to bridge the gap.

Although the stronger regulations stand to cut into insurer profits in an effort to protect consumers from dodgy practices and denial of care, the industry stands to gain in a different way.

The legislation will provide private insurance companies with over 30 million new customers after the subsidies and mandates are implemented in four years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

New Orleans Police: No Evidence Of Political Motivation In Attack On Jindal Aide. What shame the same right-wing bloggers and pundits that lied to America about Iraq are found lying about an attack on two Republicans. Maybe we should be grateful their lies are getting smaller and killing fewer people.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell(R-KY) is fighting the good fight for his Wall St buddies. That is the least he can do. While Mitch might be a disgrace to the state of Kentucky and the U.S. Senate, Mitch does owe the nation's banking special interests some favors for all the money they've sent his way - McConnell’s Arguments on Financial Regulation 'Cynical and Deceptive'

In his weekly address, President Obama called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s mantra that the financial regulatory reform bill would amount to a bailout bill a “cynical and deceptive” argument.

“The leader of the Senate Republicans and the chair of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee met with two dozen top Wall Street executives to talk about how to block progress on this issue,” Obama said. “Lo and behold, when he returned to Washington, the Senate Republican leader came out against the common-sense reforms we’ve proposed. In doing so, he made the cynical and deceptive assertion that reform would somehow enable future bailouts – when he knows that it would do just the opposite.”

After leaving a meeting with the president and other congressional leaders on Wednesday McConnell said he remained unconvinced that the package passed out of the Senate Banking Committee would avoid other bailouts.

"Where we are now, if we are left with the Chairman Dodd bill that came out of the Banking Committee on a straight party line vote, is that it is a bill that actually guarantees future bailouts of Wall Street banks,” McConnell said in the White House driveway following the meeting. “It will lead to endless taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street banks.”

Today, Obama countered, “We’re going to put in place new rules so that big banks and financial institutions will pay for the bad decisions they make – not taxpayers. Simply put, this means no more taxpayer bailouts.”

Republicans Determined to Keep America Vulnerable to Another Financial Collapse

The Fire Next Time

Now, Mr. McConnell surely isn’t sincere; while pretending to oppose bank bailouts, he’s actually doing the bankers’ bidding. But before I get to that, let’s talk about why he’s wrong on substance.

In his speech, Mr. McConnell seemed to be saying that in the future, the U.S. government should just let banks fail. We “must put an end to taxpayer funded bailouts for Wall Street banks.” What’s wrong with that?

The answer is that letting banks fail — as opposed to seizing and restructuring them — is a bad idea for the same reason that it’s a bad idea to stand aside while an urban office building burns. In both cases, the damage has a tendency to spread. In 1930, U.S. officials stood aside as banks failed; the result was the Great Depression. In 2008, they stood aside as Lehman Brothers imploded; within days, credit markets had frozen and we were staring into the economic abyss.

So it’s crucial to avoid disorderly bank collapses, just as it’s crucial to avoid out-of-control urban fires.

Since the 1930s, we’ve had a standard procedure for dealing with failing banks: the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has the right to seize a bank that’s on the brink, protecting its depositors while cleaning out the stockholders. In the crisis of 2008, however, it became clear that this procedure wasn’t up to dealing with complex modern financial institutions like Lehman or Citigroup.

So proposed reform legislation gives regulators “resolution authority,” which basically means giving them the ability to deal with the likes of Lehman in much the same way that the F.D.I.C. deals with conventional banks. Who could object to that?

Well, Mr. McConnell is trying. His talking points come straight out of a memo Frank Luntz, the Republican political consultant, circulated in January on how to oppose financial reform. “Frankly,” wrote Mr. Luntz, “the single best way to kill any legislation is to link it to the Big Bank Bailout.” And Mr. McConnell is following those stage directions.

It’s a truly shameless performance: Mr. McConnell is pretending to stand up for taxpayers against Wall Street while in fact doing just the opposite. In recent weeks, he and other Republican leaders have held meetings with Wall Street executives and lobbyists, in which the G.O.P. and the financial industry have sought to coordinate their political strategy.

And let me assure you, Wall Street isn’t lobbying to prevent future bank bailouts. If anything, it’s trying to ensure that there will be more bailouts. By depriving regulators of the tools they need to seize failing financial firms, financial lobbyists increase the chances that when the next crisis strikes, taxpayers will end up paying a ransom to stockholders and executives as the price of avoiding collapse.

Even more important, however, the financial industry wants to avoid serious regulation; it wants to be left free to engage in the same behavior that created this crisis. It’s worth remembering that between the 1930s and the 1980s, there weren’t any really big financial bailouts, because strong regulation kept most banks out of trouble. It was only with Reagan-era deregulation that big bank disasters re-emerged. In fact, relative to the size of the economy, the taxpayer costs of the savings and loan disaster, which unfolded in the Reagan years, were much higher than anything likely to happen under President Obama.

To understand what’s really at stake right now, watch the looming fight over derivatives, the complex financial instruments Warren Buffett famously described as “financial weapons of mass destruction.” The Obama administration wants tighter regulation of derivatives, while Republicans are opposed. And that tells you everything you need to know.

So don’t be fooled. When Mitch McConnell denounces big bank bailouts, what he’s really trying to do is give the bankers everything they want.

McConnell continues to be an embarrassment to the state of Kentucky and the U.S. Senate. He's going for a twofer - lying about financial reform and fighting for the kind of wild irresponsible behavior that lead to the Great Recession. As of this writing every Republican in the Senate has signed on to a filibuster threat - to keep financial reform to even coming up from debate. McConnell and his herd of Republican sheep know they cannot win on the merits so they're using parlimentary tricks to kill legislation aimed at protecting working Americans.

The drug addict draft dodging decadent king of Republican pundits has been caught lying again - Rush Lies Again: ‘There Were Union Workers’ At Non-Union Mine Explosion. Limbaugh and his mindless America hating followers decided long along that making Limbaugh rich from blowing hot air is more important than what is best for America.

Conservatives hate groups and far right-wing news media have a vial campaign underway filled with spurious lies about President Obama - About those 25 tax increases...

Camp's document does list 25 provisions from 5 pieces of legislation that taken all together, raise $670 billion over ten years. Most of these provisions won't go into effect for years and won't directly affect most of us. As the document itself notes, it is a list of "gross tax increases," not net tax increases, so it's really only a useful source of information for people like, well, Republican politicians and their media tools. It appears to count as a "tax increase" any provision that raises revenue relative to what would have otherwise occurred. And since it doesn't provide any information about provisions that reduce revenue -- such as the small business tax credits and exchange subsidies in the health care reform law or the tax cuts from the stimulus package -- it doesn't tell us much about how Obama is changing the country's tax bill overall. Nor does it attempt to weigh the merits of the revenue-raising provisions, which is something you'd think those concerned about the budget deficit would want to do.

Notably, several of the provisions listed would not be characterized as "tax increases" by most people. For example:

Eliminating the deduction for expense allocable to Medicare Part D subsidy. Camp lists this provision in the health care reform law as a "tax increase" that will raise revenue by $4.5 billion over ten years. The provision eliminates a loophole that allowed companies to take a tax deduction on a tax-free government subsidy. So not only does this not impose a new tax on businesses, it doesn't touch the chunk of taxpayer cash we give tax-free to companies for providing Medicare Part D benefits for their retirees. All it does is say that businesses can't then count that subsidy as an expense and deduct it from their taxable income. Funny I didn't see any signs demanding Congress reinstate corporate "double-dipping" at the tea party rallies.

Making "black liquor" ineligible for cellulosic biofuel producer credit. Camp has this down as a $23.6 billion tax increase over ten years. "Black liquor" is a wood byproduct burned by paper companies to generate electricity. In recent years, papermakers realized that they could get a hold of some taxpayer handouts by mixing diesel fuel into the black liquor, rendering themselves eligible for an alternative fuels tax credit. This provision ensures that papermakers using black liquor do not get tax breaks that were never meant for them. I can almost feel my freedom shrinking.

Codifying economic substance doctrine and imposing penalties for underpayments. This provision raises $4.5 billion over ten years. According to the Tax Policy Center, codifying the "economic substance" doctrine is part of an effort "to address the problem of abusive tax shelters." The measure aims to make it easier for courts to judge when a company is involved in a bogus transaction designed to reduce their tax bill. I think most would dispute the claim that encouraging companies to pay their fair share of taxes amounts to a "tax increase."

There are more examples at the link. Anyone notice a trend here. Republicans cannot win a debate on the facts so use tricks to stop debate. They cannot undo the fact that Democrats cut taxes for most Americans so they lie. Whatever happened to those conservative "values"? Turns out that was just another lie.

Tea Party and Conservatives - The Same Selfish Crazy Brew

The Tea Partiers' Racial Paranoia
Can we stop pretending the anti-Obama movement is a populist, anti-elite uprising?

Salon's Numerologist, David Jarman, nails it today: He combines the widely covered CBS/New York Times poll on the Tea Partiers -- no surprise, they're white, and they think President Obama is doing too much for black people; some surprise, they're wealthier than the average voter -- with a less-covered University of Washington poll that finds they also doubt the hard work, intelligence and trustworthiness of black people.

The Times poll was enlightening: Yes, they're white, older, male and Republican; 56 percent make over $50,000 a year and 12 percent make over $250,000. They're more likely to rely on Social Security and Medicare than the average voter -- and, no surprise, they tend to approve of those two programs. The Times goes on:

More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent think that the administration favors blacks over whites -- compared with 11 percent of the general public.

They are more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people.

As my friend Digby points out, make that "way more likely: 52% of them think that as compared to only 28% of the general public." (Digby delves into much more detail about the poll, here.)

But Jarman also digs into a University of Washington poll released last week that looked at the views of Tea Party supporters in seven battleground states. Not only do they think too much is made of the problems facing black people, they have bigoted views about black people generally. Jarman explains:

People who think that "the U.S. government has done too much to support blacks" were 36 percent more likely to support the Tea Party than those who didn't think so. Among whites who approve of the Tea Party, only 35 percent said they believe blacks are hard-working, only 45 percent believe blacks are intelligent, and just 41 percent believe that they're trustworthy.

And Tea Party supporters don't like it when anyone notices the racists in their midst?

I've written before that I find it galling when the wealthy, white Pat Buchanan (who by the way spent much of his adult life on government health insurance) lectures me about being "condescending" to the Tea Partiers, as though they're a grass-roots uprising of the vulnerable against the elites. That's garbage: They are a well-funded uprising of the elites against the vulnerable. And they'd be nowhere if their mission wasn't largely supported by the top of corporate America (and the GOP shadow government in waiting).

What do you call people that are doing very well in a broken economy caused by primarily the Republican Congress and president they supported from 2000 to 2008. Emotionally stunted pretend patriots comes to mind to describe them. The recent health care reform act was mostly geared toward the middle class - of any race or color - to help them deal with out of control health insurance costs. Maybe the tea party - financed by the same old conservatives - were in such a deep sleep in their mental cave they did not notice or care that Republican polcies were bleeding America dry to make a very few people wealthy.

Conservative Pretty Boy Romney indicates he is prepared to flip-flop on health care, support it in a general election.

Birther Website WND Worries Its Credibility Will Be Hurt If It Doesn’t Get More Seats At Correspondents’ Dinner - World Nut Daily has already hurt its reputation with a daily dose of lies and outlandish conspiracy theories.

Taxes and the Tea Liars

Tax Bills Are LOWER This Year For Most Americans, Despite Rhetoric

You wouldn't know it by the Tax Day rhetoric, but Americans are paying lower taxes this year, even with increases passed by many states to balance their budgets. Don't expect it to last.

Congress cut individuals' federal taxes for this year by about $173 billion shortly after President Barack Obama took office, dwarfing the $28.6 billion in increases by states.

In the next few years, however, many can expect to pay more. Some future increases were enacted as part of Obama's health care overhaul. And former President George W. Bush's tax cuts expire in January. Obama and the Democrats want to renew only some of them, thus raising taxes for individuals making more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000.

As this year's April 15 federal deadline passes, the debate about future tax increases has Republicans in Congress and conservatives across the country portraying Democrats as tax-and-spend liberals even before any new levies are approved. The discussion also is helping frame the congressional elections this fall.

"The fact is in the past year we have had more tax cuts than almost anytime in our nation's history," said Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn. "It's something that people don't realize because of the false rhetoric that is spread throughout this Congress."

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said conservatives didn't see any need to wait before protesting.

"I thought that we were going to have to wait until the tax increases started to see popular unhappiness," Norquist said at a Capitol Hill forum Wednesday. "Last year, people started reacting, the tea parties started organizing, in reaction to spending too much. They didn't wait for the tax increases to come."

The massive economic recovery package enacted last year included about $300 billion in tax cuts over 10 years. About $232 billion was in cuts for individuals, nearly all in the first two years.

The most generous was Obama's Making Work Pay credit, which gives individuals up to $400 and couples up to $800 for 2009 and 2010. The $1,000 child tax credit was expanded to more families, and the working poor can qualify for as much as $5,657 from the Earned Income Tax Credit.
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There were also credits for qualified families who buy new homes or make energy improvements to existing ones, as well as tax breaks to help pay college tuition or buy new cars.

"From investing in small business to buying a home or making it energy efficient, to sending your children to college to buying a car, these tax cuts are helping families and businesses across the country," said Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-Mo.

At the same time, many states raised taxes last year because they are required by state constitutions to balance their budgets, even during a recession. In all, states increased personal income taxes by $11.4 billion, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. They increased sales taxes by $7.2 billion and business taxes by $2 billion.

States also increased a number of other taxes, including levies on alcohol, motor vehicles and tobacco, for an additional $8 billion.

The biggest tax increase in the health care overhaul is limited to individuals making more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000, though other increases would hit lower income taxpayers.

In an economy where real unemployment is close to 12% should we be feeling sorry for households or individuals making more than $200 thousand a year - whose taxes will return to what they were during the Reagan administration.

Why does the Senator from Kentucky hate working Americans and love bankers - McConnell Tries To Dodge Repeated Questions About His Wall Street Fundraising

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been blasting the Senate’s financial regulatory reform bill in recent days, falsely arguing that it “institutionalizes” bailouts for Wall Street. As Think Progress reported, McConnell’s reason for opposing financial reform seems disingenuous in the face of reports that he attended a private fundraiser with hedge fund managers and other Wall Street elites last week.

Maybe its time for Mitch to retire so he can spend more time lounging around with his banker buddies whining about how tough life is for people that make millions a year in unearned wealth.

Fox Pushes Myth You'll Go to Jail for Not Buying Health Insurance

O'Reilly's whopper: "Nobody" on Fox said failing to buy health insurance could result in jail time

Responding to Sen. Tom Coburn's suggestion that Fox News perpetuated the false claim that under the health care reform legislation individuals can be sent to jail for not having health insurance, Bill O'Reilly repeatedly insisted that "nobody" on Fox advanced that assertion. In fact, Fox has relentlessly pushed that falsehood, including on O'Reilly's own show.

On his own Fox show, Beck falsely claimed that "if you don't get into their government health care, there will be jail time." On the November 12, 2009, edition of his Fox News show, Beck claimed that "if you don't get into their government health care, there will be jail time."

On Fox & Friends, Rush Limbaugh falsely claimed the health care bill "puts people in jail" for not having health insurance. On the February 4 edition of Fox & Friends, Limbaugh asserted: "This is not even a health care bill. This is a bill that raises taxes 14 times; puts people in jail, potentially, if they don't have health insurance mandated by the government to buy. This is an avenue to control every aspect of life."

Dick Morris has repeatedly made the false claim. On the November 9, 2009, edition of Fox News' Hannity, Morris asserted: "One of the provisions in the Pelosi bill is you actually can go to jail for not having health insurance.

Thomas Jefferson once claimed that he would rather live with the sins of a free press than the consequences of not having one. That is having a press that acts as a guardian of the truth - watch dogs on behave of the people. Little did Tom know about the modern conservative movement and it's media outlets that have no regard for the truth or respect for the people.

Oklahoma conservatives and tea party, lawmakers plot anti-federal militia

Oklahoma conservatives and tea party, lawmakers plot anti-federal militia

Oklahoma conservatives, lawmakers plot anti federal militiaFrustrated by recent political setbacks, tea party leaders and some conservative members of the Oklahoma Legislature say they would like to create a new volunteer militia to help defend against what they believe are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty.

Tea party movement leaders say they've discussed the idea with several supportive lawmakers and hope to get legislation next year to recognize a new volunteer force. They say the unit would not resemble militia groups that have been raided for allegedly plotting attacks on law enforcement officers.

"Is it scary? It sure is," said tea party leader Al Gerhart of Oklahoma City, who heads an umbrella group of tea party factions called the Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance. "But when do the states stop rolling over for the federal government?"

Thus far, the discussions have been exploratory. Even the proponents say they don't know how an armed force would be organized nor how a state-based militia could block federal mandates. Critics also asserted that the force could inflame extremism, and that the National Guard already provides for the state's military needs.

"Have they heard of the Oklahoma City bombing?" said Joseph Thai, a constitutional law professor at the University of Oklahoma. The state observes the 15th anniversary of the anti-government attack on Monday. Such actions could "throw fuel in the fire of radicals," he said.
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But the militia talks reflect the frustration of some grass roots groups seeking new ways of fighting recent federal initiatives, such as the health reform plan, which requires all citizens to have health insurance. Over the last year, tea party groups across the country have staged rallies and pressured politicians to protest big government and demand reduced public spending.

In strongly conservative states like Oklahoma, some legislators have also discussed further action to fight federal policies, such as state legislation and lawsuits.

State Sen. Randy Brogdon, R-Owasso, a Republican candidate for governor who has appealed for tea party support, said supporters of a state militia have talked to him, and that he believes the citizen unit would be authorized under the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

The founding fathers "were not referring to a turkey shoot or a quail hunt. They really weren't even talking about us having the ability to protect ourselves against each other," Brogdon said. "The Second Amendment deals directly with the right of an individual to keep and bear arms to protect themselves from an overreaching federal government."

Another lawmaker, state Rep. Charles Key, R-Oklahoma City, said he believes there's a good chance of introducing legislation for a state-authorized militia next year.

Tea party leader J.W. Berry of the Tulsa-based OKforTea began soliciting interest in a state militia through his newsletter under the subject "Buy more guns, more bullets."

"It's not a far-right crazy plan or anything like that," Berry said. "This would be done with the full cooperation of the state Legislature."

State militias clearly are constitutionally authorized, but have not been used in recent times, said Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee and an expert on the Second Amendment. "Whether someone should get a militia to go toe-to-toe with the federal government ... now, that strikes me as kind of silly," he said.

Some conservative legislators in Oklahoma say talk of a militia, which would be privately recruited, armed and trained, goes too far.

"If the intent is to create a militia for disaster relief, we have the National Guard," said Sen. Steve Russell, R-Oklahoma City, a retired Army lieutenant colonel. "Anything beyond that purpose should be viewed with great concern and caution."

Democratic Gov. Brad Henry's communications director Paul Sund also discounted the militia discussion, saying the National Guard handles state emergencies and security.

Federal authorities say that radical militia groups have not emerged in Oklahoma, unlike many other states, in part because of the legacy of the Oklahoma City bombing. On April 19, 1995, an anti-government conspiracy led by Army veteran Tim McVeigh exploded a truckbomb outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people.

Last month, FBI agents conducted a raid on the Hutaree militia group in southern Michigan and accused members of plotting to kill law enforcement officers.

When they say "force to get health insurance" that would be just like the force the government uses to make people get a driver's license to drive, forces people to have working tail lights on their car, forces people to keep their grass cut, forces people to wear clothes in public. Yes, the government - empowered by the election process and its legislators from those elections forces people to not run around nude. Laws force people to drive sober. We live in a regulated society. Those nations that do not have regulations are - for the short time they exist - called anarchies. Whether they have the brains to realize it or not that is what conservative tea party nuts are calling for - a heavily armed anarchy - without any social safety net like Medicare, Social Security or Workman's Compensation. Did the Founders really intend that we live in a heartless violent dog eat dog society.

Among the Top Rules of Conservatism - Never Take Responsibility for Anything

No One Is to Blame for Anything

"I was right 70 percent of the time, but I was wrong 30 percent of the time," said Alan Greenspan as he testified last week on Capitol Hill. Greenspan - a k a the Oracle during his 18-year-plus tenure as Fed chairman - could not have more vividly illustrated how and why geniuses of his stature were out to lunch while Wall Street imploded. No doubt he applied his full brain power to that 70-30 calculation. But the big picture eludes him. If the captain of the Titanic followed the Greenspan model, he could claim he was on course at least 70 percent of the time too.

Greenspan was testifying to the commission trying to pry loose the still incomplete story of how the American economy was driven at full speed into its iceberg. He was eager to portray himself as an innocent bystander to forces beyond his control. In his rewriting of history, his clout in Washington was so slight that he was ineffectual at "influencing the Congress." The "roots" of the crisis, he lectured, dated back to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In other words: Wherever the buck stops, you had better believe it's not within several thousand miles of the Oracle. As he has previously said in defending his inability to spot the colossal bubble, "Everybody missed it - academia, the Federal Reserve, all regulators."

That, of course, is not true. In last Sunday's Times, one of those who predicted the bubble's burst - Michael Burry, an investor chronicled in "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis - told in detail of how Greenspan and others in power "either willfully or ignorantly aided and abetted" the reckless boom and the ensuing bust. But Greenspan is nothing if not a representative leader of his time. We live in a culture where accountability and responsibility are forgotten values. When "mistakes are made" they are always made by someone else.

This syndrome is hardly limited to the financial sector. The Vatican hierarchy and its American apologists blame the press, anti-Catholic bigots and "petty gossip" for a decades-long failure to police the church's widespread criminal culture of child molestation. Michael Steele, the G.O.P. chairman, has tried to duck criticism for his blunders by talking about his "slimmer margin" of error as a black man. New York's dynamic Democratic duo of political scandal, David Paterson and Charles Rangel, have both attributed their woes to newspapers like The Times, not their own misbehavior.

Such is our current state of national fecklessness that the gold medal for prompt contrition by anyone on the public stage belongs, by default, to David Letterman. He wasted little time in telling a national audience point blank that he had done "something stupid," hurt those he loved and had a "responsibility" to "try to fix it." In the land of Rod Blagojevich and Tiger Woods, the candid late-night talk show star is king.

Woods's apologetic Masters press conference last week came only after months of stalling, sponsor defections and well-publicized "rehab." Along the way he briefly hired Ari Fleischer, the former Bush press secretary, to help manage his mess. Fleischer is not the only Bush spin artist to re-emerge as a hired damage-control hand in the post-Bush era. Dan Bartlett, a former presidential counselor, is a honcho at Public Strategies, the company recently enlisted by Goldman Sachs to help erase the indelible tattoo of "a great vampire squid" imprinted on its image by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone.

Former Bush propagandists will never lack for work in this climate. It's remarkable how often apologists for Wall Street's self-inflicted calamity mirror the apologists for Washington's self-inflicted calamity of Iraq. In the case of that catastrophic war, its perpetrators and enablers almost always give the same alibi: "Everyone" was misled by the same "bad intelligence" about Saddam Hussein's W.M.D. Hence, no one is to blame and no one could have prevented the rush to war.

That, of course, is no more true than Greenspan's claim that "everyone" was ignorant of the potentially catastrophic dangers in the securitization of subprime mortgages. There were dissenters in the press, intelligence agencies and Congress who did doubt the W.M.D. evidence and asked tough questions akin to those asked by financial apostates like Michael Burry during the housing bubble. But these dissenting voices were either ignored, ridiculed or censored in the feverish rally to war just as voices like Burry's were marginalized in the feverish rally of the Dow.

In the crash's aftermath, those who created, sold and hyped mortgage-backed securities and exotic derivatives ("financial weapons of mass destruction," as Warren Buffett called them) are just as eager to escape accountability as those who peddled Saddam's nonexistent nukes. In an appearance at the 92nd Street Y in New York last month, the former Citigroup guru Robert Rubin floated the same talking points as Greenspan. He described Wall Street's meltdown as "a crisis that virtually nobody saw coming," citing regulators, auditors, analysts and commentators. It seems they were all the passive dupes of AAA ratings from Moody's and Standard & Poor's on toxic subprime assets, just as all those Iraq cheerleaders were innocently victimized by the bad C.I.A. intelligence on Saddam's assets.

No top player in the Bush administration has taken responsibility for his or her role in selling faulty intelligence products without exerting proper due diligence.

By Frank Rich - reprinted here for educational purposes.

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Income Inequality and Like Conservatives – Tea Baggers Against Their Own Best Interests

Pay for Sex Republican Endorses Serial Liar Palin - No That is Not a Joke

David Vitter: "I'll take a TV personality over a community organizer"
The Louisiana Republican, appearing at the SRLC, takes a shot at President Obama -- and endorses Sarah Palin?

It wasn't clear whether Sen. David Vitter, R-La., was going to show up at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference this weekend. He's been out campaigning for reelection, pushing back against a challenge from Democratic Rep. Charlie Melancon, and he wasn't originally scheduled to appear. (Perhaps his recent history hits too close to home for a party trying to pretend its national committee didn't just spend nearly $2,000 at a risqué Hollywood nightclub?)

But Saturday morning, Vitter strolled out to introduce former Sen. Rick Santorum -- and to push back a bit against President Obama. "If that's the choice in 2012, I'll take a TV personality over a community organizer any day," he said.

A Republican Senator that pays for sex endorses Sarah Palin who can't move her lips without lying. Sounds like a circus of perversion more than a political movement capable of helping solve America's problems..

Is America moving toward socialism? Not even close.

Conservative Tea Party Blissfully Racist and Ignorant

Survey finds that racial attitudes influence the tea party movement in battleground states

A new University of Washington survey found that among whites, southerners are 12 percent more likely to support the tea party than whites in other parts of the U.S., and that conservatives are 28 percent more likely than liberals to support the group.

"The tea party is not just about politics and size of government. The data suggests it may also be about race,"said Christopher Parker, a UW assistant professor of political science who directed the survey.

It found that those who are racially resentful, who believe the U.S. government has done too much to support blacks, are 36 percent more likely to support the tea party than those who are not.

Indeed, strong support for the tea party movement results in a 45 percent decline in support for health care reform compared with those who oppose the tea party. "While it's clear that the tea party in one sense is about limited government, it's also clear from the data that people who want limited government don't want certain services for certain kinds of people. Those services include health care,"Parker said.

Not all tea baggers are racists, but it is an attitude that runs deep through the movement. As is loads of strange conspiracy theories - many birthers belong to the tea party - and willful ignorance when it comes to what the recently passed health care reform was supposed to achieve, A majority of Americans still believe the uninsured are doing just fine

It is therefore more than a little dismaying to read, in the latest issue of the journal Health Affairs, that the public still doesn't understand what it means to go without health insurance. (A subscription is required to read the full text.) A team of Harvard researchers (one of whom, Tara Sussman Oakman, is now a program analyst at the department of Health and Human Services) compared poll data from 1999 and 2009 on the question of whether the uninsured were able to get necessary health care. In 1999, 55 percent said they were. In 2009, 58 percent said they were.

This perception is incorrect. The authors of the Health Affairs article point out that a series of reports released between 2001 and 2004 by the Institute of Medicine, a nonprofit health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, clearly established that. People who lack health insurance, one 2002 report found, are more likely to go without cancer screening; do not receive sufficient care for chronic diseases like diabetes to prevent blindness and amputation; do not acquire sufficient medicine to treat diseases like hypertension and HIV infection; and receive insufficient care following a heart attack or other traumatic event.

If these findings sound familiar, that's because they were repeated time and again in press coverage of the health reform bill. One study calculated that nearly 45,000 annual deaths within the adult nonelderly population were associated with a lack of health insurance. Another put it, more conservatively, at 18,000. These estimates are necessarily imprecise, but even Megan McArdle, the Atlantic's libertarian business and economics editor, had to concede at the end of a tendentious March column pooh-poohing such findings ("Myth Diagnosis") that expanded health-insurance coverage "improves outcomes among certain vulnerable subgroups, like infants and patients with HIV."

Anyone who believes the uninsured enjoy sufficient access to health care probably has not been paying much attention to the news.

Define Republican Dissent: Threatening to Kill People Over Dish Detergent and the Census

It is imagine day. Imagine an anti-Bush or anti-Regan pundit on a major network has threatened to start killing during those presidencies. Considering how both those presidents treated dissent - with police and the national guard it is not hard to imagine the pundit would at least been fired immediately. CNN's Erickson suggested he'd pull a "gun" on the "government" last year, too

CNN contributor Erick Erickson has come under widespread criticism for his remark last week that he would "[p]ull out my wife's shotgun" if the government tries to arrest him for not filling out the American Community Survey. It wasn't the first time that Erickson has suggested he would respond to potential problems with the government by pulling out a firearm.

In March 2009, Erickson wrote an angry post about legislation banning "dishwasher detergent made with phosphates" in Washington state. Erickson asked: "At what point do the people tell the politicians to go to hell? At what point do they get off the couch, march down to their state legislator's house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot?"

Right-wing fascist-lite zealots like Erickson have called President Obama everything from the anti-Christ to the reincarnation of Mao. Yet Erickson is not in jail, has not been fired and still receives a six figure salary. Poor Erick has had to suffer some criticism from more moderate and sane Americans.

The tea baggers - simply another rebranding of loony right-wing conservatism - has said that President Obama is a tyrant. That is kind of funny. They call him that at rallies held around the country. Unlike the ultra conservative Nixon administration where protesters were beat up, jailed or shot, What Would Nixon Do

Vote Conservative 2010. Step Backwards America to the Party That Sold Us on a Trillion Dollar Quagmire Called Iraq

Ten Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq

LIE #1: "The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program ... Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." -- President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in Cincinnati.

FACT: This story, leaked to and breathlessly reported by Judith Miller in the New York Times, has turned out to be complete baloney. Department of Energy officials, who monitor nuclear plants, say the tubes could not be used for enriching uranium. One intelligence analyst, who was part of the tubes investigation, angrily told The New Republic: "You had senior American officials like Condoleezza Rice saying the only use of this aluminum really is uranium centrifuges. She said that on television. And that's just a lie."

LIE #2: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." -- President Bush, Jan.28, 2003, in the State of the Union address.

FACT: This whopper was based on a document that the White House already knew to be a forgery thanks to the CIA. Sold to Italian intelligence by some hustler, the document carried the signature of an official who had been out of office for 10 years and referenced a constitution that was no longer in effect. The ex-ambassador who the CIA sent to check out the story is pissed: "They knew the Niger story was a flat-out lie," he told the New Republic, anonymously. "They [the White House] were unpersuasive about aluminum tubes and added this to make their case more strongly."

LIE #3: "We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." -- Vice President Cheney on March 16, 2003 on "Meet the Press."

FACT: There was and is absolutely zero basis for this statement. CIA reports up through 2002 showed no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program.

LIE #4: "[The CIA possesses] solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade." -- CIA Director George Tenet in a written statement released Oct. 7, 2002 and echoed in that evening's speech by President Bush.

FACT: Intelligence agencies knew of tentative contacts between Saddam and al-Qaeda in the early '90s, but found no proof of a continuing relationship. In other words, by tweaking language, Tenet and Bush spun the intelligence180 degrees to say exactly the opposite of what it suggested.

LIE #5: "We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases ... Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints." -- President Bush, Oct. 7.

FACT: No evidence of this has ever been leaked or produced. Colin Powell told the U.N. this alleged training took place in a camp in northern Iraq. To his great embarrassment, the area he indicated was later revealed to be outside Iraq's control and patrolled by Allied war planes.

LIE #6: "We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] for missions targeting the United States." -- President Bush, Oct. 7.

FACT: Said drones can't fly more than 300 miles, and Iraq is 6,000 miles from the U.S. coastline. Furthermore, Iraq's drone-building program wasn't much more advanced than your average model plane enthusiast. And isn't a "manned aerial vehicle" just a scary way to say "plane"?

LIE #7: "We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they're weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established." -- President Bush, Feb. 8, 2003, in a national radio address.

FACT: Despite a massive nationwide search by U.S. and British forces, there are no signs, traces or examples of chemical weapons being deployed in the field, or anywhere else during the war.

LIE #8: "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets." -- Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 5 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council.

FACT: Putting aside the glaring fact that not one drop of this massive stockpile has been found, as previously reported on AlterNet the United States' own intelligence reports show that these stocks -- if they existed -- were well past their use-by date and therefore useless as weapon fodder.

LIE #9: "We know where [Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat." -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, in statements to the press.

FACT: Needless to say, no such weapons were found, not to the east, west, south or north, somewhat or otherwise.

LIE #10: "Yes, we found a biological laboratory in Iraq which the UN prohibited." -- President Bush in remarks in Poland, published internationally June 1, 2003.

FACT: This was reference to the discovery of two modified truck trailers that the CIA claimed were potential mobile biological weapons lab. But British and American experts -- including the State Department's intelligence wing in a report released this week -- have since declared this to be untrue. According to the British, and much to Prime Minister Tony Blair's embarrassment, the trailers are actually exactly what Iraq said they were; facilities to fill weather balloons, sold to them by the British themselves.

So, months after the war, we are once again where we started -- with plenty of rhetoric and absolutely no proof of this "grave danger" for which O.J. Smith died. The Bush administration is now scrambling to place the blame for its lies on faulty intelligence, when in fact the intelligence was fine; it was their abuse of it that was "faulty."

Rather than apologize for leading us to a preemptive war based on impossibly faulty or shamelessly distorted "intelligence" or offering his resignation, our sly madman in the White House is starting to sound more like that other O.J. Like the man who cheerfully played golf while promising to pursue "the real killers," Bush is now vowing to search for "the true extent of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, no matter how long it takes."

On the terrible day of the 9/11 attacks, five hours after a hijacked plane slammed into the Pentagon, retired Gen. Wesley Clark received a strange call from someone (he didn't name names) representing the White House position: "I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein,'" Clark told Meet the Press anchor Tim Russert. "I said, 'But -- I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?' And I never got any evidence.'"

And neither did we.