The Nuts Are Ripe. Vote Republican.

Angle Again Refuses To Disavow Claims About ‘Domestic Enemies’ In Congress And ‘Second Amendment Remedies’

Among the many radical statements that Nevada GOP Senate nominee Sharron Angle has made, two that stand out are her agreement that there are “domestic enemies” in Congress, and her seeming endorsement of armed insurrection, saying “Second Amendment remedies” may be necessary if “Congress keeps going the way it is.”

As ThinkProgress has noted, Angle has refused to distance herself from either of these claims. In an interview with a Nevada radio host last month, Angle twice refused to directly respond to her “enemies” claim, saying only that Democratic policies have “definitely hurt our country.” When confronted with the “Second Amendment remedies” statement in June, Angle refused to comment, and her spokesperson eventually blocked the reporter posing the question from asking any more questions, calling him “‘an idiot’ and another term that can’t be repeated.”

In two recent interviews, Angle yet again refused to disavow her dangerous comments.

Angle does think the government has an important role to play in people's lives. If your wife, sister or mother is raped Angle thinks the government should step in to prevent pregnancies resulting from rape from being terminated.On the other hand Angle does not believe differences in political opinion should be solved at the ballot box, but by shooting one's political opponents. Which means she has a lot in common with communist dictator Josef Stalin.

Joe Miller To Nation's Babies: 'Absolutely' Social Security Will Be Gone By The Time You're Old (VIDEO)

Senate nominee Joe Miller (R-AK) thinks Social Security won't last, and believes privatizing the entitlement program might be the only way to save it.

In an interview with John King late last week on CNN, Miller said there "has got to be a move outside of the system," and said he'd want to see the federal government "transfer power back to the states so the states can take out the mantles of the programs if they so desire."

Miler, 43, said he does not expect to see "much" of what he's owed for Social Security when he retires. "Because the government has stolen from me," he said.

King pushed Miller, who won a surprise primary victory to unseat Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) last month, to explain exactly what he meant.

Like your average conservative Miller is not above telling the most egregious lies to get elected - he's already established himself as more wacky and irresponsible than George ( there are WMD in Iraq Bush). Social Security is in good shape and only needs some slight adjustments to be there for retirees for a hundred years. Millions of Americans - seniors and the disabled rely on S. Security. Social Security is not a black hole. People use the money to pay rent, buy groceries and even gifts for their grand children. All Social Security funds eventually find their way into the pockets of business and employees of those businesses. Why does Joe Miller, a conservative Republican, want to hurt seniors and business. Why does Miller hate America.

Fox calls for repeal of the 20th century

Since President Obama's election, Fox personalities have expressed opposition to or called for the repeal of virtually every progressive achievement of the 20th century, including Social Security, Medicare, the Americans with Disabilities Act, portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the 16th and 17th Amendments to the Constitution.

Fox is pro greed, pro corporate crime, pro trashing the 4th Amendment, but they are against progress. Fox - the official propaganda channel of the anti-American conservative movement.

Vote Republican. Going in Reverse Will Be More Fun

Vote Republican. Going in Reverse Will Be More Fun

The August unemployment numbers are ugly, yet again. Nearly 30 million Americans are still jobless or forced into part-time jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics official unemployment rate is 9.6%. It's borader and more telling jobless rate (U6) of 16.7% confirms that we're stuck in our own version of the Great Depression. We'll need more than 22 million new jobs to bring us back to full-employment. Happy Labor Day.

To get out of this quagmire we'll have to face up to two fundamental facts:

1. We really are in the midst of a horrific jobs crisis. All the happy talk about the economy being on the road to recovery is just plain old denial. We'll never find jobs for all the people who desperately need them until we recognize that this employment crisis poses a clear and present danger to our republic. Modern capitalist societies require full employment. When we don't have it for long periods of time, chaos ensues. What's missing in Washington is a sense of urgency. Denial is dangerous -- and an insult to the unemployed.

2. We must face up to the real causes of this mess. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans are succumbing to a wrong-headed narrative that has been pushed into our heads:

    "We Americans sank ourselves in debt. We consumed more than we produced. We bought homes we couldn't afford and used them as ATMs. Of course Wall Street did its part by offering us mortgages they knew we couldn't really afford. The government also contributed mightily by pushing Fannie and Freddie, the giant housing agencies, to underwrite "politically correct" loans to low-income residents who shouldn't have been buying homes at all. In short, we all are to blame."

From a flawed narrative always comes a flawed policy prescription:

    "The era of excess is over. We need to cut back on spending and borrowing. We need to reduce government debt by raising the Social Security retirement age and cutting social programs We've got to streamline our public sector by laying off public employees and cutting back their lavish pensions. And all workers will have to adjust to an era of intense foreign competition: We've got to reduce our wage and benefit demands if our companies are going to compete globally. We have to live within our means."

In short, we gorged ourselves until the economy crashed. Now we've got to tighten our belts and accept less to get it going again. It's simple and logical and.....dead wrong.

Collective guilt is always seductive. It may even be programmed into our genes. It's possible that prehistoric homo sapiens survived by sharing blame in difficult times. But that soothing instinct does not serve us well today. We need to know the truth behind this crisis if we're going to come close to solving it.

For starters, "we" didn't create this mess. Wall Street did, with the help of politicians who pushed through financial deregulation and an increasingly regressive tax structure that put outrageous sums of money in the hands of a few. Freed from regulations and flooded with money, Wall Street bankers went crazy. And before long, our economy crashed.

It really is that simple. Starting in the late 1970s our country embarked on a grand real-time experiment to "unleash" the economy from government rules and oversight. The theory was that to end the era of "stagflation," we had to cut taxes on the super-rich, freeing them to lead a gargantuan investment boom that would of course lift all boats. At the same time, the financial sector was liberated from its New Deal-era shackles. Yes, those constraints had prevented a financial crash for more than 40 years. But now, argued the best and the brightest, the new world order required a more nimble financial sector. Naturally, the markets could police themselves.

In retrospect it seems like a very bad joke.

Actually, the plan did work beautifully for the top one percent of us. In fact, these excessively wealthy people laughed all the way to the bank. America's distribution of income, which had been reasonably equitable during the post WWII era, flew apart. In 1970 the top 100 CEOs earned about $45 for every dollar earned by the average worker. By 2008 it was $1,081 to one.

With so much wealth in hand, the super-rich literally ran out of tangible goods and service industries to invest in. There simply was too much capital seeking too few real investments. And what a honey pot that proved to be for Wall Street's financial engineers! Freed from any limits on constructing complex new financial products, hedge funds and too-big-to-fail banks and investment houses created an alphabet soup of new securities with the sky-high yields the super-rich craved. The rating agencies abetted the crime by blessing these flimsy products with AA and AAA ratings.

Wall Street built this flim-flam of finance out of junk debt -- like sub-prime mortgages -- which it could pool, slice, and resell for enormous profits. In fact, selling these bogus securities was the most profitable enterprise in the history of Wall Street. Wall Street wrapped credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations into pretty packages so that they could literally sell the same underlying junk assets again and again. It was through these marvelous feats of financial engineering that a $300 billion sub-prime crisis turned into a multi-trillion dollar catastrophe. (Check out The Looting of America for all the gory details.) And that's how, the big bankers -- not us -- pumped up the biggest housing bubble in history. Wall Street didn't need Fannie or Freddie or low-income homebuyers. It just needed deregulation, a lot of super-rich people with money to burn, and junk debt it could spin into AAA gold.

The whole scheme worked just fine as long as the underlying collateral (our homes) appreciated year after year. But as soon as housing prices peaked, it was game over. The upside-down pyramid of debt and junk financial instruments came crashing down. The entire credit system froze, tearing a gaping hole in the real economy. Eight million jobs were destroyed in a matter of months.

The cause of the crash is no mystery. The Great Depression happened the same way: a skewed distribution of income combined with a deregulated financial sector created a big bubble, and it burst. The only way to break the cycle is to attack those fundamental causes -- we need to move money from the very top of the income ladder to the middle and the bottom, and we need to tie Wall Street up in regulatory knots.

Through steep progressive taxes on the super-wealthy, fair income taxes on hedge funds and transaction fees on Wall Street's proprietary trading, we can keep that bubble from reinflating -- and in the process raise the money we need to put America back to work. With the revenue we collect, we can hire millions of people to weatherize homes and buildings and rebuild our infrastructure. Instead of laying off teachers we can hire more, and provide them with better training and support. We can expand universities and colleges too, and allow people to go to college for free, which will improve our peoples' skills -- and keep young people off the unemployment rolls.

All of that sounds it it requires some thoughtful consideration, which right-wing conservatives don't do. It all sounds like it would require some work and patience, but Republicans have taught America that being lazy and crazy pays off. Republicans have taught America that one should never apologize and admit wrong, but instead to double down on the proto-fascism that Republicans pass off as patriotism.

Republicans cannot win the war of ideas so no wonder they're buying votes - Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina: Why Ex-Tech CEOs Make Dangerous Politicians

Social Security Commission Seems to Hate Your Grandchildren and Veterans

Social Security Commission Seems to Hate Your Grandchildren and Veterans

The President's Deficit Commission is designed to be as anti-democratic and un-transparent as possible.  Its work is done in total secrecy.  It is filled with behind-the-scenes political and corporate operatives who steadfastly refuse to talk to the public about what they're doing.  Its recommendations will be released in December, right after the election, to ensure that its proposals are shielded from public anger.  And the House has passed a non-binding resolution calling for an up-or-down/no-amendments vote on the Commission's recommendations, long considered the key tactic to ensuring its enactment.  The whole point of the Commission is that the steps which Washington wants to take -- particularly cuts in popular social programs, such as Social Security -- can occur only if they are removed as far as possible from democratic accountability.  As the economist James Galbraith put it when testifying before the Commission in July:

    Your proceedings are clouded by illegitimacy. . . . First, most of your meetings are secret, apart from two open sessions before this one, which were plainly for show. There is no justification for secret meetings on deficit reduction. No secrets of any kind are involved. . . .

    Second, that some members of the commission are proceeding from fixed, predetermined agendas. Third, that the purpose of the secrecy is to defer public discussion of cuts in Social Security and Medicare until after the 2010 elections. You could easily dispel these suspicions by publishing video transcripts of all of your meetings on the Internet, and by holding all future meetings in public . . .

    Conflicts of interest constitute the fourth major problem. The fact that the Commission has accepted support from Peter G. Peterson, a man who has for decades conducted a relentless campaign to cut Social Security and Medicare, raises the most serious questions.

That's why Commission co-chair Alan Simpson -- with his blunt contempt for Social Security and and other benefit programs (such as aid to disabled veterans) and his acknowledged eagerness to slash them -- has done the country a serious favor.  His recent outbursts have unmasked this Commission and shed light on its true character.  Unlike his fellow Commission members, who imperiously dismiss public inquiries into what they're doing as though they're annoying and inappropriate, Simpson -- to his genuine credit -- has been aggressively engaging critics, making it impossible to ignore what the Commission is really up to.  

In June, he walked out of a Commission meeting and proceeded to engage in an amazingly informative, 8-minute colloquy streaming in real time on the front page of FDL, making unambiguously clear that the Commission is working to cut Social Security benefits.  And over the last several weeks, he has used increasingly flamboyant rhetoric to attack both defenders of Social Security and the program itself, as well as even attacking wounded veterans for failing to sacrifice enough by giving up some of their benefits.  Whatever one thinks of Simpson's remarks, I prefer his public, engaged candor to the extreme, arrogant secrecy of his fellow Members.

Simpson is a millionaire who has not done an honest days work in his life. Social Security is not in trouble. Some relatively minor adjustments would shore up Social Security for a hundred years. Like many conservative millionaires Simpson and other commission members are out of touch with average American seniors and the disabled. he has no business on a commission which is supposed to be unbiased. he has already decided those collected Social Security are a burden on society.

Some recommended links: Obama’s enemies have painted him as an alien threat. Can he fight the flight from facts?

Fox gets the opinion of a neo-conservative who lied about a Saddam - 911connection to bash President Obama's stellar national security record

Discredited Conservatives Sought Out by Media to Recycle Iraq Lies

 Discredited Conservatives Sought Out by Media to Recycle Iraq Lies

Following President Obama's speech on the end of combat operations in Iraq, media outlets hosted discredited Bush administration officials Karl Rove, Stephen Hadley, and Ari Fleischer to respond, despite the fact that the three were at the forefront of the campaign of misinformation used to sell the war.


Rove led WH group that "promoted" view that Saddam had WMDs "and was seeking more"

White House Iraq Group was formed to "set [messaging] strategy" for going to war with Iraq. The Washington Post reported in 2003 (accessed via Nexis), that the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) was formed in August 2002 "to set strategy for each stage of the confrontation with Baghdad. A senior official who participated in its work called it 'an internal working group, like many formed for priority issues, to make sure each part of the White House was fulfilling its responsibilities.' " Part of WHIG's mission, according to the Post, was to decide "what to demand of the United Nations in the president's Sept. 12 [2002] address to the General Assembly, when to take the issue to Congress, and how to frame the conflict with Iraq in the midterm election campaign that began in earnest after Labor Day." Rove was a regular participant in this group.

WHIG promoted view that Saddam "had weapons of mass destruction and was seeking more." The Los Angeles Times reported on August 25, 2005, (accessed via Nexis) that WHIG "promoted the view that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was seeking more":

    The group consisted of Rove, Libby, White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, and Mary Matalin, Cheney's media advisor. All are believed to have been questioned in the leak case; papers and e-mails about the group were subpoenaed.

    Before the war, this Iraq group promoted the view that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was seeking more. In September 2002, the White House embraced a British report asserting that "Iraq has sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The Washington Post further reported that WHIG "assigned Communications Director James R. Wilkinson to prepare a white paper for public release, describing the 'grave and gathering danger' of Iraq's allegedly 'reconstituted' nuclear program." From the October 30, 2005, article (accessed via Nexis):

    By summer 2002, the White House Iraq Group assigned Communications Director James R. Wilkinson to prepare a white paper for public release, describing the "grave and gathering danger" of Iraq's allegedly "reconstituted" nuclear weapons program. Wilkinson gave prominent place to the claim that Iraq "sought uranium oxide, an essential ingredient in the enrichment process, from Africa." That claim, along with repeated use of the "mushroom cloud" image by top officials beginning in September, became the emotional heart of the case against Iraq.

Rove repeatedly politicized national security issues, including the war in Iraq, and actively encouraged GOP to campaign on the issue. Think Progress has documented Rove's repeated politicization of the Iraq war and his encouragement that Republicans campaign on the issue in 2002, which included (emphasis in original):

    In January 2002, Rove told conservatives, "Americans trust the Republicans to do a better job of keeping our communities and our families safe...We can also go to the country on this issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America."

    [...]

    In June 2002, Rove was giving PowerPoint presentations candidates advising them to "focus on the war" in their fall campaigns.

    In September 2002, Time reported that when friends asked whether Bush planned to invade Iraq, Rove was been [sic] known to reply, "Let me put it this way: If you want to see Baghdad, you'd better visit soon."

In addition, according to an April 5, 2003, The New York Times article (accessed via Nexis), Rove worked "busily ... to shape perceptions of Mr. Bush as a wartime leader and to prepare for the re-election campaign that will start as soon as the war ends. The Times quoted Rove as saying, "The president is leading the coalition of the willing, and is determined that Iraq will be disarmed of its weapons of mass destruction and that the cruel dictator's regime will be ended." From the Times:

    The White House portrays Karl Rove, President Bush's most influential political adviser, as playing no role in military decisions that are shaping the Bush presidency.

    But more than two weeks after the war began, Mr. Rove is busily working to shape perceptions of Mr. Bush as a wartime leader and to prepare for the re-election campaign that will start as soon as the war ends.

    Tonight, Mr. Rove traveled here to tend to the Republican troops at the Texas Night fund-raising celebration of the Kent County Republican Committee.

    "The president is leading the coalition of the willing, and is determined that Iraq will be disarmed of its weapons of mass destruction and that the cruel dictator's regime will be ended," Mr. Rove declared after taking the stage to chants of "U.S.A.!" in a cavernous hanger filled with the local party faithful wearing Texas-style cowboy boots, hats and bandanas.

    Beyond courting Republicans at party events, Mr. Rove has in recent days been counseling Congressional Republicans and conservative groups on how to advance their domestic agenda even while attention is on Iraq.

    This week, he held forth at a lunch with conservative commentators and journalists. Some participants had backed the administration on Iraq when it faced criticism that the war plan provided insufficient force and that it had been overly optimistic about Iraqi resistance.

Hadley took responsibility for infamous "16 words" in Bush's State of the Union address

Hadley reportedly accepted responsibility for the infamous "16 words" incident, in which Bush claimed, "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." On January 28, 2003, as part of his State of the Union address, President Bush made the now-infamous claim that "[t]he British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," a claim that was highly disputed and which turned out to be false. In 2003, then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley reportedly accepted responsibility for the line appearing in Bush's address, despite having received two memos and a phone call from CIA Director George Tenet three months earlier raising objections to its inclusion in prior speeches. From a July 2003 FoxNews.com article:

    Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley in a rare on-the-record session with reporters, said that he had received two memos from the CIA and a phone call from agency Director George Tenet last October raising objections to an allegation that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium ore from Africa to use in building nuclear weapons.

    As a result, Hadley said the offending passage was excised from a speech on Iraq the president gave in Cincinnati last Oct. 7. But Hadley suggested that details from the memos and phone call had slipped from his attention as the State of the Union was being put together.

The false claim was credited as one of the bases for shifting public support for the war. As a July 2003 New York Times analysis noted:

    The speeches worked. Public opposition to the war, never fierce, began to melt, polls show, and by mid-March, when hostilities began, more than 60 percent agreed that ousting Mr. Hussein was worth spilling American blood.

    Today, those 16 words haunt the administration. They are the best-remembered flourish in a portrait of Iraq that today seems unrecognizable. They are a leading rationale for a war that has resulted in the death of 224 Americans. And they are either unsubstantiated or based on a lie.

Hadley was also a part of the White House Iraq Group. According to a 2003 Washington Post report, Hadley was a "regular participant" in WHIG meetings. From The Washington Post:

    The group met weekly in the Situation Room. Among the regular participants were Karl Rove, the president's senior political adviser; communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio; and policy advisers led by Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, along with I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.

Fleischer repeatedly hyped the nonexistent threat of WMD to pitch war

As press secretary, Fleischer was responsible for pitching the Iraq war, which he often did by hyping the nonexistent threat of weapons of mass destruction. Ari Fleischer was the White House press secretary from January 2001 to July 2003. As press secretary, Fleischer was responsible for a number of false or misleading claims regarding Iraq and Saddam Hussein, including:

    * "I think you have always heard, and you continue to hear from officials, a measure of high confidence that, indeed, the weapons of mass destruction will be found." [4/10/03]

    * "Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly ... all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes." [3/21/03]

    * "We know for a fact that there are weapons there." [1/9/03]

    * "Saddam Hussein does not exactly have a track record of telling the world the truth. So he, on December 8th, has to indicate whether or not he has weapons. Let's see what he says. If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world." [12/2/02]

    * "[G]iven the chance to throw off a brutal dictator like Saddam Hussein, people will rejoice." [3/21/03]

    * "[W]hen you take a look at the level of violence inside of Iraq, it is impossible to argue anything other than violence has, indeed, come down as a result of America's military operations." [6/25/03]

    * "There is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly. ... And all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes." [3/21/03]

Despite their history, media turns to Hadley, Fleischer and Rove to respond to Obama's speech

Kilmeade hosts Hadley to discuss whether "the president is finally acknowledging the previous administration was...on the right track in the middle east overall." On the September 1 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, Brian Kilmeade hosted two Bush administration officials, Margaret O'Sullivan and Hadley, to discuss whether "the president is finally acknowledging the previous administration was right - was on the right track in the Middle East overall."

MSNBC's Morning Joe hosts Fleischer to defend Bush and compare invading Iraq to invading Nazi Germany.  On September 1, MSNBC's Morning Joe hosted Fleischer to defend Bush for invading Iraq, and Fleischer compared Iraq to the invasion of Nazi Germany:

    FLEISCHER: Probably the most profound meeting I ever sat on at the White House was a meeting with Elie Weisel. Just President Bush, Elie Wiesel, Condi Rice was there and myself. And the president asked Elie Wiesel - Nobel Peace Prize winner, Holocaust survivor - should he remove Saddam [Hussein]. Wiesel said yes, and then he added, "If only the world had listened to Winston Churchill in 1938 or 1939, World War II and the Holocaust could have been avoided. And I thought to myself, if the world had listened to Churchill in '38, people probably would've said "you exaggerated the threat of Hitler. You know, who says there was a World War coming?" We'll never know what we averted by getting rid of Saddam and how many lives were saved as a result of removing the threat of Saddam Hussein.

Rove: "This was not a well-delivered speech." On September 1, Fox News' On the Record with Greta van Sustern hosted Rove to attack Obama's Iraq speech, saying: "[T]his was not a well-delivered speech."  Rove called Obama's mention of Bush "an attempt at graciousness" that "didn't succeed," and he criticized Obama for not taking a "confident" tone that showed "a celebration of what has happened" in Iraq "to this point."

The problem was Fleisher, Rove, Rice Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney lied or exaggerated the threat like bed wetting little wussies. Iraq=Nazi Germany - no rational intelligent person could make that equivalence. The same wacky conservative have since compared Obama's presidency the greatest threat to freedom since Nazi Germany. These insane analogies make it difficult for serious patriotic Americans to take anything a conservative says seriously - Republican are the party of Chicken-Little - the sky is always falling because of some imagined or highly exaggerated threat. What did invading Iraq accomplish,

* The U.S. occupation of Iraq continues and the reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq can at best be called only a rebranded occupation. While the number of U.S. troops in Iraq will be reduced from a high of 165,000, there will still be 50,000 troops left behind, some 75,000 contractors, five huge "enduring bases" and an Embassy the size of Vatican City.
    * The U.S. military's overthrow of the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein did not lead to a better life for Iraqis-just the opposite. It resulted in the further destruction of basic infrastructure-electricity, water, sewage-that continues to this day. The U.S. dropped more tons of bombs on Iraq than in all of WWII, destroying Iraq's electrical, water and sewage systems. Iraq's health care and higher education systems, once the best in the entire region, have been decimated. The U.S. war on Iraq unleashed a wave of violence that has left over one million Iraqis dead and four million displaced, as well as ethnic rivalries that continue to plague the nation. We have seriously wounded millions of Iraqis, creating a lifetime of suffering and economic hardship for them, their communities and the entire nation as it struggles to rebuild. Life expectancy for Iraqis fell from 71 years in 1996 to 67 years in 2007 due to the war and destruction of the healthcare system. The U.S. use of weapons such as depleted uranium and white phosphorous has taken a severe toll, with the cancer rate in Fallujah, for example, now worse than that of Hiroshima.
    * The majority of the refugees and internally displaced persons created by the US intervention have been abandoned. Of the nearly 4 million refugees, many are now living in increasingly desperate circumstances in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and around the world. As undocumented refugees, most are not allowed to work and are forced to take extremely low paying, illegal jobs ($3/day) or rely on the UN and charity to survive. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has documented a spike in the sex trafficking of Iraqi women.
    * Iraq still does not have a functioning government. Many months after the March 7 elections, there is still a political vacuum and violence that is killing roughly 300 civilians a month. There is no functioning democracy in place and little sign there will be one in the near future.
    * The Iraq War has left a terrible toll on the U.S. troops. More than one million American service members have deployed in the Iraq War effort. Over 4,400 U.S. troops have been killed and tens of thousands severely injured. More than one in four U.S. troops have come home from the Iraq war with health problems that require medical or mental health treatment. PTSD rates in the military have skyrocketed. In 2009, a record number of 245 soldiers committed suicide.
    * The war has drained our treasury. As of August 2010, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $750 billion on the Iraq War effort. Counting the cost of lifetime care of wounded vets and the interest payments on the money we borrowed to pay for this war, the real cost will be in the trillions. This misappropriation of funds has contributed to the economic crises we are experiencing, including the lack of funds for our schools, healthcare, infrastructure and investments in clean, green jobs.
    * The U.S. officials who got us into this disastrous war on the basis of lies have not been held accountable. Not George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld. No one. Neither have the Bush administration lawyers who authorized torture, including Jay Bybee and John Yoo. The "think tanks," journalists and pundits who perpetuated the lies have not been fired-most are today cheerleading for the war in Afghanistan.

What happened to guy that masterminded 9-11, Osama Bun Laden? He is still hiding out in some cave in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Not one of the Iraq war cheerleaders has apologized to any of the families of the troops killed in Iraq fir lying their loved ones into an expensive tragic disaster.

Republican Wing-Nuts Versus Republican Wing-nut - Fox's Muslim Connection

Republican Wing-nut versus Republican Wing-nut - Fox's Muslim Connection

Although not all opposition to the building of an Islamic community center near the former site of the World Trade Center grows out of anti-Muslim extremism, some of the most fanatical opinions of the project have received sympathetic coverage from Fox News.

As a result, commentators and humorists like Comedy Central's Jon Stewart have been able to have fun with the fact that the second-largest shareholder in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. -- the parent company of Fox News -- is a Saudi prince who is known for donating to Islamic causes and has given over $300,000 to a project sponsored by the imam behind the community center.

"Is Fox News a terrorist command center?'" Stewart asked mockingly after outlining the connections.

 Many ground zero mosque opponents hate Fox News too.From Fox's point of view, however, the association may be no laughing matter. Dave Neiwert recently reported at Crooks and Liars that when a Fox affiliate sent a reporter out to "ambush" various minor figures connected with the funding of the community center, the name of Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal was conspicuously absent from the story.

Fox might have reason to be sensitive about its Al-Waleed connection. It has already been getting hammered for it over the past five years by some of the same fervent anti-Muslims who are most deeply involved in the uproar over the "Ground Zero Mosque."
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Al-Waleed's investment in News Corp. dates to back to at least 1997, when Time magazine did a lengthy profile on him and noted, "Alwaleed told TIME that he now owns about 5% of News Corp., the global media conglomerate run by Rupert Murdoch, making him the second largest individual holder, behind Murdoch."

It was not until 2005, however, that he appears to have begun using his influence with Murdoch in an attempt to counter the increasingly anti-Muslim tone of much American news coverage.

On December 5, 2005, Middle East Online published an article citing remarks made by Al-Waleed during a panel discussion at a conference in Dubai. In the course of discussing prospects for a peace deal between Israel and the Arabs, he had complained that the US media were "in general ... pro-Israel" and suggested that Arabs needed to be more proactive in countering that slant.

    He said that during last month's street protests in France, the US television network Fox -- owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in which Al-Walid himself has shares -- ran a banner saying: "Muslim riots."

    "I picked up the phone and called Murdoch... (and told him) these are not Muslim riots, these are riots out of poverty," he said.

    "Within 30 minutes, the title was changed from Muslim riots to civil riots."

The next day, Robert Spencer -- the conservative blogger who, in partnership with Pamela Geller, launched the "Stop the 911 Mosque!" offensive last spring -- quoted Al-Waleed's remarks at his Jihad Watch website under the heading, "Saudi Prince to Murdoch: jump. Murdoch to Prince: How high?"

Al-Waleed's boast was not the only example of a possible pro-Arab bias by Fox News around that time. In February 2006, the News Hounds website noted that Fox News hosts and analysts had been devoting a great deal of air time to promoting the controversial United Arab Emirates port deal and suggested that it could be because Al-Waleed appeared to have a financial interest in seeing the deal go through.

It was Al-Waleed's own remarks, however, that rankled the most and have been remembered the longest. In December 2008, Spencer accused Fox of being "in the tank" after it ran a series of articles about Israel "deadly Gaza airstrikes" without mentioning Palestinian rocket attacks against Israel -- and he reprinted the December 2005 item on Al-Waleed to prove his point.

Spencer is not the only one. Last February, Think Progress ran an item titled "Conservative Activists Rebel Against Fox News: Saudi Ownership Is 'Really Dangerous For America,'" which noted that Joseph Farah, the publisher of WorldNetDaily, had cited the same 2005 incident when he blasted Fox in a speech delivered at a conservative conference.

Think Progress spoke on the same occasion with Brigitte Gabriel, who has also been deeply involved in agitating against the "Ground Zero Mosque" She took the opportunity to describe a recent interview of Al-Waleed by Fox's Neil Cavuto as a "darling high school reunion" and to suggest that "Cavuto is interviewing him like a buddy-buddy because he is the boss."

Fox loves Muslims. Fox hates Muslims. The Right loves Fox. The Right hates Fox. What a wicked web they weave. Anything for money and power one assumes.

Conservative Republicans Are Sensible and Truthful

Anti-Bailout Tea Party Group Puts Millions In Bailed-Out Bank

One of the driving forces behind the Tea Party movement is its opposition to the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), which Congress passed at the height of the financial crisis and President Bush signed into law in October 2008. In fact, the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, which heads the Tea Party Express, lists one of its overarching principles as “opposition to bailouts.” They deride bailouts as “dangerous,” “quasi-socialism,” and “immoral.”

Bank of America has received $45 billion from the federal government, making it one of the largest recipients of TARP money. It is no surprise that the Tea Party Express has derided companies that took bailout money, even singling out Bank of America by name at a Pennsylvania rally last year. What is surprising is that for all its anti-TARP vitriol, the Tea Party Express holds all its funding in the bailed-out bank.

According to FEC records, the Tea Party Express’s parent organization, the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, keeps its funds exclusively in a Bank of America branch in Corona, CA. Lest you think Bank of America was their only option in the area, a rudimentary Google Map search found over a half-dozen other banks in Corona alone that have not received TARP money. If the Tea Party Express truly believes that bailouts are dangerous and immoral, why is the group putting millions of dollars into a bailed-out bank?

Remember kids always check your tea for odd looking substances before drinking or you could end up a burned out tea bagger too.

Schundler: Christie Calling Me A Liar Is 'The Last Straw'

In an e-mail and statement provided to reporters this afternoon, former New Jersey Education Commissioner Bret Schundler (R) defended himself against charges by Gov. Chris Christie (R) that Schundler deliberately misled the governor over the events leading up to the state's loss of a $400 million grant. Although he would have been able to accept being fired over the error that cost the state money, Schundler said he was unwilling to accept any further character assassination.

"I will not accept being defamed by the Governor for something he knows I did not do," he wrote. "The Governor called me a liar this week. That was the last straw."

Christie was supposed to be one of the new saviors of wacky far Right conservatism - it seems they have a new savior every month - now Christie has screwed up and is trying to lay blame on an employee. Sounds a lot like that old GOP savior George Bush who was never accountable for any mistakes.



Condé Nast Portfolio listed California Senatorial Candidate Carly Fiorina as one of 'The 20 Worst American CEOs of All Time.'

Carly Fiorina is the Republican candidate for U.S. Senator in California, a position that requires consummate executive and political skills. Fiorina regularly tells voters in the Bear State that she is a seasoned business executive who knows how to be an effective decision maker.

Yet, a sentence in her Wikipedia profile notes why this is hypocrisy: “In 2005, the Hewlett-Packard board forced Fiorina to resign.” Ah, but it gets better – or worse depending upon whether you were a Hewlett-Packard stockholder: “When Fiorina became CEO in July, 1999, HP's stock price was $52 per share, and when she left 5 1/2 years later in February, 2005, it was $21 per share—a loss of over 60% of the stock's value.”

And the coup de grace: “The company's stock jumped on news of Fiorina's departure."

California is the world's fifth largest economy. If she succeeds in buying herself a senate seat Carly will no doubt bring her wonderful CEO skills with her. Something for Californians and the rest of the country to look forward to.

Sarah Palin the Sound and the Fury

Even as Sarah Palin’s public voice grows louder, she has become increasingly secretive, walling herself off from old friends and associates, and attempting to enforce silence from those around her. Following the former Alaska governor’s road show, the author delves into the surreal new world Palin now inhabits—a place of fear, anger, and illusion, which has swallowed up the engaging, small-town hockey mom and her family—and the sadness she has left in her wake.

Not that any new or old revelations matter. Palin is laughing all the way to the bank with her new found Politiceleb status. Like many conservatives she has found it remarkably easy selling lies to the gullible rubes that hang on her every word.

How Will Health Care Reform Effect Me?

Immediate Effects and How Will Health Care Reform Effect Me?

* Prohibit pre-existing condition exclusions for children in all new plans;
    * Provide immediate access to insurance for uninsured Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition through a temporary high-risk pool;
    * Prohibit dropping people from coverage when they get sick in all individual plans;
    * Lower seniors prescription drug prices by beginning to close the donut hole;
    * Offer tax credits to small businesses to purchase coverage;
    * Eliminate lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on benefits in all plans;
    * Require plans to cover an enrollee’s dependent children until age 26;
    * Require new plans to cover preventive services and immunizations without cost-sharing;
    * Ensure consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to appeal new insurance plan decisions;
    * Require premium rebates to enrollees from insurers with high administrative expenditures and require public disclosure of the percent of premiums applied to overhead costs.

By enacting these provisions right away, and others over time, we will be able to lower costs for everyone and give all Americans and small businesses more control over their health care choices.

More here - Health Reform Bill Summary: The Top 18 Immediate Effects. Why do extremists right-wing conservatives talk about the "evils" of health care reform in vague generalities? because if they have to talk about repealing specific parts of the bill and why repeal is justified they have no substantial arguments to make. For years ignorance has been a right-wing conservative's best friend. They hope the American people continue to make that true.