Fascism And Communism, All While We Have Fox News

If Obama was truly a fascist or communist, there wouldn't be Fox News or Politico or the millions of conservative websites and blogs out there. There wouldn't be a Republican Party.

Bill O'Reilly goes around saying he is the #1 show for 100 months with enormous ratings, yet we have a liberal media bias. Are your the dominant voice you brag about or not?

Stalin killed about 40 million of his own people, Mao killed about 60 million. The talking point is dead.

If you believe the country is center-right: What are you afraid of? You think the entire country is going to flip? That's a rational fear.

Reagan Records To Be Released

250,000 pages cleared for release. Bringing change to Washington.

President Barack Obama is ordering the release of nearly a quarter of a million pages of records from the Reagan White House that were kept from the public during a lengthy review by President George W. Bush.

The Reagan documents - which include presidential briefing papers, speech writing research materials and declassified foreign policy records -- are expected to be released Monday.

George W. Bush dragged his feet? You must be kidding. He's such an over-achiever.

This is convenient:

"Representatives of former President Reagan objected to the release of those documents and were backed up in almost all instances by lawyers for President Bush"

Funny how the conservatives see releasing 20+ year old documents as an attack on Reagan. Is the truth going to destroy the Reagan legacy? What are you afraid of? Selling arms to the Ayatollahs, death squads in Latin America, astrologers in the White House?

Source: Politico

America Has To Pay For Its Lifestyle

There has been voluminous research done in the political science field that shows that the more successful a people become the more they demand from their government in terms of services. Consequently, the more prosperous America becomes (in terms of decades, if not centuries, in this case) the higher gross governmental spending will increase.

Given that governmental spending will continue to increase (as a percentage of total GDP), taxes must also scale upwards. It's not popular, but it's reality.

So when you look at the unsustainable tax cuts for the rich, coupled with 8 years of Bush deficit spending, you have to let them expire.

So says economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the fiscal conservative who shilled for the McCain campaign despite knowing the continuation of the Bush-era tax cuts were harmful. He now thinks they should be allowed to expire on Dec. 31, 2010:

"If you ask: 'Who pays the taxes?', it's the first step toward not having the answer be: 'Our kids.'"

As proud as we are, America has crumbling infrastructure, obscene disparity of wealth, unaffordable health care and bleak employment prospects because, since Reagan, we have been reluctant to tax appropriately to fund the benefits citizens expect/demand/require.

The Reagan and Bush disasters have all just borrowed and spent and put the burden of the ultimate bill on someone else. It's not like they cut taxes and managed to balance anything. They have just written trillions in IOUs to the next generation.

If we are going to live like Americans, it's time we are going to have to pay for it through taxes like Americans.

Source: Political Wire

GOP Gets Dose Of Reality On Stimulus

The three, dare we say elitist, Republican Governors who tried to deny stimulus money, Mark Sanford, Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin, have all backtracked. Reality has caught up with them.

"But what began with a bang is ending with something closer to a whimper. All three of those governors have been forced to scale back their expectations, to varying degree, as the push of conservative philosophy gave way to the pull of political reality."

"All three found that praise from the conservative movement in Washington meant nothing to furious state legislators of both parties. And in the end, along with other conservative Republican governors, the three submitted letters in recent days asking to be eligible for federal funds."

Trying to one-up your GOP comrades is not the same as taking care of your constituents. Your intellectual race to the bottom is OK with me, just don't hold education funds and unemployment benefits back as you sit in your Governor's mansion.

Source: Politico

The Squirrelly Nature Of Conservatives

Spreading democracy is the pinnacle for Conservatives.
It represents freedom.
Democracies rely on each other to champion those freedoms.
Democracy is used to justify our way of life.
Unless certain democracies enjoy our democratically elected President.
Then the Conservatives get squirrelly and dismissive.
They pretend our standing throughout those countries does not matter.
Somehow those democracies they used to admire are now inferior.
Make up your mind. Have an opinion. Stick with it.

Obama Commencement Follies Make Me Laugh

Notre Dame invites President Obama to give the commencement and get an honorary degree. The founding Holy Cross priests are upset because Obama upholds the laws of the land including legal abortion and stem cell research.

Here's two points I found funny.

First, George W. Bush gave the commencement a few years ago as sitting President. The guy who starts wars and kills innocent women and children, the guy who instituted the torture-era in America, the guy who is a reborn and thinks Catholics are all going to Hell, a reborn who thinks the Pope is a joke, he is not in conflict with the Catholic church?

Second, a few days before ND, Obama is giving the commencement at Arizona State University, but they are denying him the honorary degree.

"It's our practice to recognize an individual for his body of work, somebody who's been in their position for a long time," Sharon Keeler, an ASU spokeswoman, told The Associated Press. "His body of work is yet to come. That's why we're not recognizing him with a degree at the beginning of his presidency."

Really, ASU? Not sure of his body of work? First black President was a gimme I guess. Come back when you've done something with yourself, Barack.

I think you need a Arizona address and a heartbeat to get in to ASU. They are the mental equivalent of a Girls Gone Bad DVD which, come to think of it, probably features quite a few ASU grads.

Source: MSNBC

Limbaugh's Self-Imposed Road To Irrelevance

A dittohead takes on Rush Limbaugh. A remarkable clip.

The caller, a Republican veteran, takes on Rush about torture, says Rush is brainwashed. Rush goes apoplectic and sounds like an asshole as he tries to minimize the sane caller. The Fat Man is doubling down, ostracising his audience, attacking his base as he stumbles off the cliff.

The Nation's Chris Hayes added,

"I don't think there’s an iota shame in Limbaugh or in Limbaughism. There’s a large part of the conservative base that doesn’t feel it has anything to apologize for."

Keith Olbermann points out if you miss one word of the Limbaugh catechism, you are disowned forever, out of the movement that is the Republican party. More and more "dittoheads" will miss one word and Rush will be left the lone madman. Like I care.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Source: Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Limbaugh: Fighting A Mindset He'll Never Beat

Coincidence they are the only 2 Governors to turn down stimulus money?

Rush Limbaugh was asked yesterday on Fox News to name his favorite "up-and-coming Republicans." The right-wing host responded, "I -- I like the kind of things I am hearing out of Governor [Mark] Sanford from South Carolina. I have always admired Governor [Sarah] Palin."

Millionaire Governors turning down money for education and unemployment. GOP Brain Trust current balance is at zero.

Limbaugh went on, saying Obama, et al, has to be stopped:

"You know, it's - it is a very special historical time. We're not -- we're not really to go - to be too vocal about opposing this, which I don't subscribe to at all. I mean, liberalism is liberalism, and it is to be defeated and to be opposed every time it's -- it -- it pops up. And, so I -- I have -- I'm the de -- you know, if I am a leader, then it's de facto, because the elected Republican leadership hasn't yet decided to speak out."

So if the liberalism takes care of veterans and their families after they have served, you have to oppose that? That's great logic.

Also, defeating liberalism is inane. You don't defeat it. It's a mindset in flux. It's not set in stone. It has many points of view and looks to evolve to solve problems. You don't get that, Rush. Just like you have not evolved over the years, you have the same tired views that have all amounted to nothing, and you have to preach to your own choir.

Yes, you have ratings, but they are all out of touch like you. No real influence on where America is heading. But as long as you have a perceived foe, you'll cater your facts and your idiot listeners will follow. Any pessimist can call himself a prophet. Try being correct for a change.

Your dittoheads will wise up before you do.

Source: HuffPo

Gay Marriage Is Here, The Predictions Are In

The people at the Map Scroll turned what Nate Silver, the man behind fivethirtyeight.com, has worked on and created a model predicting when various states would legalize gay marriage. Alaska in 2009?

The main variables were:

"The year in which [an amendment to ban same-sex marriage] was voted upon; the percentage of adults in 2008 Gallup tracking surveys who said that religion was an important part of their daily lives; and the percentage of white evangelicals in the state."

The South living up to the tremendously low expectations we have in them.



Source: fivethirtyeight.com

A Black Swan-proof World

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, has 10 principles for a Black Swan-proof world.

Check the link below. He has a practical description of each step. He feels the world needs to get back to a balanced approach, no more too big to fail. More like the biological world:

"A world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks and companies are born and die every day without making the news."

Source: FT

Rick Sanchez: Fox News Exploiting Gun Ban Myths

CNN's Rick Sanchez slams Fox News for stirring up and exploiting the gun ban myth. You have to see the clips of the gun-toting militia types a few minutes in. Scary. And Fox knows how to incite them. Why is it called Fox News? Where is the news? Call it Fox Hype.

The single-issue right wingers are desperate to push this narrative, that somehow they can extrapolate out of nothing that Obama wants to take ALL their guns. And from that zero-evidence claim on guns, they unashamedly jump to their fear du jour, he is a socialist. There's no A and no B, but they have arrived at C with the mental deftness of a small kitchen appliance.



Source: HuffPo

Bush The War Criminal, cont.

The War Crimes of the Bush Administration. No more empirical doubt. "Playing dumb", although a lifelong affliction for Bush, will no longer hold up.

Via the Daily Beast regarding the Red Cross report:

Note in particular the report’s date, February 14, 2007—Valentine’s Day. On that date, the U.S. government was put on notice about the allegations of CIA torture. (The ICRC also wrote to the U.S. governments about the issue of disappearances at several points in 2003-2006.)

Under international law—the Geneva Conventions, the Convention against Torture, and basic precepts of customary international law—the United States has a positive obligation to investigate and prosecute persons alleged to have committed torture and other violations of the laws of war. As of Valentine’s Day 2007, and possibly earlier, the U.S. government was obligated to investigate and prosecute the abuses detailed in the report. The United States’ failure to do so is a recurring breach of international law.

Via Andrew Sullivan:

"The refusal to investigate serious Red Cross allegations of unequivocal torture by the US government is itself a breach of the Geneva Conventions. Which means to say that the president has no neutral ground on which to stand in order to ignore or move on from the war crimes he inherited. If Obama does not at a minimum release all the relevant documents regarding the torture program of his predecessors, he will be an accomplice to it. This really is a place where there can be no middle ground if the US is to remain in Geneva and under the rule of law."

It's time for Leon Panetta and the CIA to man up.

Source: Daily Beast

US In On Iran Nuclear Talks With China, Russia, EU

Pragmatism has returned:

The U.S. plans to join talks with Iran involving Russia, China and its main European allies in an effort to advance a diplomatic effort to prevent the development of an Iranian nuclear bomb, the State Department said.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood said the U.S. wants to “seriously engage” Iran to break the “logjam” in the dispute. European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana is set to request the new round of talks with Iran that will include France and Britain -- both of which are also permanent members of the United Nations Security Council -- and Germany.

The U.S. “will be at the table from now on,” Wood said.

Riddle me this, conservatives: why would we not want to be at the table? Why was not engaging Iran with the rest of UN Security Council such a badge of honor during the Bush years?

via http://d-day.blogspot.com/:

"Remember that Ahmadinejad is in the midst of a political campaign, one in which his chief rival is pushing from the left, as it were, and arguing for increased freedoms. My point is that Ahmadinejad wouldn't take the position of engagement at this time if he didn't think it politically popular in his country."

Source: Bloomberg

Barack-nophobia

The once-domineering "Why Do You Hate America?" Bush crowd is now in mortal fear of Obama. The Hannitys and Becks of the world think Obama will simultaneously be a pussy and owned by the inferior Europeans, while at the same time, rule the democracy of America like a tyrant. Who do they cite to back them up? The brain trust Michele Bachmann.

Just because you disagree, does not make it tyrannical. Jon Stewart summed it up this way:

"Now, you're in the minority, its supposed to taste like a shit taco".

Pretty funny video, check it.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Baracknophobia - Obey
comedycentral.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

66% Approval

President Obama's approval rating hits 66% in the latest NYT/CBS poll. His highest since taking the office. Confidence is trending up in the economy, the European trip went well, the "surprise" trip to Iraq and picking the NCAA champ Tar Heels, all in one week.

What about the other side:

By contrast, just 31 percent of respondents said they had a favorable view of the Republican Party, the lowest in the 25 years the question has been asked in New York Times/CBS News polls.

Ouch.

Still very tough times ahead of us. But what a difference having a bright guy at the top. The trust level is growing. Now bring on the big issues.

Source: NYT

Red Cross Reports Labels Torture Program "Inhuman"

The Red Cross, the most credible and respected human rights watchdog in the world, call the Bush-era CIA torture programs "inhuman". It is broad, meticulous evidence of pre-meditated, illegal, and immoral war crimes that were then subject to cover-up and lies at the highest levels.

"Medical officers who oversaw interrogations of terrorism suspects in CIA secret prisons committed gross violations of medical ethics and in some cases essentially participated in torture, the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a confidential report that labeled the CIA program 'inhuman'."

Paging John Yoo.

You can download the report here.

Source: WaPo

Barack In Iraq

Barack in Iraq! The Commander In Chief "surprise" visits the troops. Feel the camaraderie. Commanding General Ray Odierno made the intro.



h/t Oliver Willis

Republican Saved By Democrat

Sen. Ted Stevens' conviction is dropped by Attorney General Eric Holder. A Democratic AG is dropping the investigation and conviction on a Republican Senator.

While Stevens' seven felony counts of lying on Senate financial disclosure forms to conceal hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and home renovations from a wealthy oil contractor are not in question, it's the "outrageous" behavior of the prosecutors including recent admission that they "failed to turn over notes of a crucial interview in which a witness contradicted a statement he made later under oath at trial".

And those hellbent prosecutors and Department of Justice officials, the worst in 25 years according to Judge Sullivan, that are singled out in the government corruption charges in this case? They were Republicans. Remember this was all in the time of the scandalous and incompetent Bush Justice Department. Think Alberto Gonzales. Alaska was a Republican state, too.

Republicans broke the laws to indict another Republican, they even scheduled the case right before the 2008 elections, only to have a Democrat in the new Administration rule that the case was flawed.

Stevens better thank Obama for coming in and appointing Holder, someone with integrity and respect for Rule of Law. If McCain was in, he'd still be fighting the same lunatics in the DoJ.

Source: Yahoo

Let It Go, Norm Coleman

Follow your party's attitude towards Gore in 2000. Let it go.

You lost. Al Franken won. No matter how many times you re-count. Unlike Gore who had more votes and needed the Supreme Court to hand the presidency to Bush, you have nothing to cling to.

It's April, this happened in November. Dragging this on is sad for Minnesota. Time to move on, Norm.

The Real Bush Legacy

How quickly the partisan Republicans and conservatives forget.

The biggest jumps by far in state power and debt occurred under Bush, a president they worshiped and worked hard to re-elect. But now we are rushing to socialism?

Via Andrew Sullivan:

"There were no tea-parties to protest the $32 trillion Medicare prescription drug benefit. There was no Randian rumbling as Bush took over local schools. There was no defense of the Constitution as Bush and Cheney secretly suspended the fourth and first amendments."

Now that a moderate Democrat like Obama is cleaning up the mess of the last 8 years, now the GOP cocoon have these principles?

Bush will be the albatross the GOP will continue to deny, but the public gets it. A recent NYT poll had 33% of the public blaming the economic crisis on the Bush administration, far more than anyone else. Wall Street is a distant runner-up, with 21%. Only two percent blame Obama.

Source: Andrew Sullivan

Eminem's New Track, "We Made You"

Eminem's new track, "We Made You". The song was made for video with all its pop culture references. Not the cleanest track, so be be warned. NSFW.

I like the end where the wig falls off Brett Michael's head.

UPDATE: Video not available. Sorry.

South Africa's Image Problem Grows

Just as our country seems to be pulling itself together after years of deliberate division by its polarizing political leaders, South Africa is poised to divide the country over criminal charges being dropped against the almost certain next President, Charles Zuma.

For South Africa, a nascent democracy that has prided itself as a model practitioner of the rule of law, Monday’s announcement leaves a peculiar aftertaste. The allegations in the Zuma case had been seen by many as a sign of rot at the top, and now the dismissal of the charges stems not from proof of innocence but from evidence of chicanery within the government.

“This is the culmination of the campaign of the dodgy characters in the A.N.C. to reduce this country to a banana republic,” said Bantu Holomisa, the leader of an opposition party, the United Democratic Movement.

Mr. Zuma was charged with 12 counts of fraud, two more of corruption and one each of money laundering and racketeering. Sounds like he could be a Senator from Alaska no problem.

With the 2010 World Cup being held in South Africa, the world is watching more than ever. The A.N.C. on Nelson Mandela seems to be such a memory and Zimbabwean neighbor to the North Robert Mugabe's actions almost fiction he is so evil, what is going on down there?

So much for Obama's uplifting "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" by Stevie Wonder. After the announcement, hundreds of A.N.C. members began celebrating in downtown Johannesburg, dancing in jubilation and singing Mr. Zuma’s trademark anthem, “Bring Me My Machine Gun.”

Source: NYT

Baby Steps In The Recovery Spotted

The days of Republicans branding their own ineptitude with their nine most feared words "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" are over. Strange that a political party can suck, then say because they suck you should fear the bad job they do, but they should be the party to be in power so they can continue sucking.

Well, some good news is coming in from home and abroad regarding some of the moves made by our new Government when they are lead by competency and not ideology:

Asian stocks rose for a fourth day, led by banks and carmakers, after the yen weakened to a five- month low and U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said policies to unfreeze credit markets are working.

If the GOP whinges about how ineffective government is, what can they say when it starts working for the people? Irrelevance is a bitch.

Source: Bloomberg

People With Guns Kill People

This little bit of info from the Pittsburgh slaying of 3 police officers makes me think the Right Wing talking points and the literal call to arms by some of the radical right like Glenn Beck are having an effect:

A man opened fire on officers during a domestic disturbance call Saturday morning, killing three of them, a police official said. Friends said he recently had been upset about losing his job and that he feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns. [...]

Friends identified the suspect as Richard Poplawski, 23, but police would not immediately confirm his name. The gunman was arrested after a four-hour standoff, police said. [...]

Edward Perkovic said Poplawski, his best friend, feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon."

Idiot people do idiot things but they don't need any help. How many shootings have there been in the past fews days? There should be a call for calm, but they take this tense opportunity to scare their listeners to get ratings. Sad.

And even if there were laws that addressed gun control, and even if those laws seemed unfair hypothetically, you still can't justify killing anyone. In the US, 30,000 dead, 60,000 injured from gunshots in 2004. If judged by our attitudes towards guns, we are a sick society.

There is blood on the hands of those stirring up these rumors. What Beck and company are doing is tantamount to yelling 'Fire' in a crowded theater.

Source: Washington Monthly