Ruh roh. Looks like ACORN may be getting $100 from my wingnut friend Joe C. We made a wager (I don’t forget these things – someone still owes me a bottle of bourbon from the 2008 Presidential…cough…Keeler…cough). The wager came after I made fun of those on the right getting lathered up by an article taking comments out of context to indicate (they thought) that Obama was leaving open the option of not running for re-election.
President Barack Obama’s top advisers are quietly laying the groundwork for the 2012 reelection campaign, which is likely to be run out of Chicago and managed by White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, according to Democrats familiar with the discussions.
“The White House’s ‘plan’ consists of an 11-page outline, which has not been scored by the Congressional Budget Office or posted online as legislative text. So they want to reorganize one-sixth of the United States’ economy with a document shorter than a comic book, and they’re complaining that they can’t find our plan on their own website? C’mon,”
You’ll note John says in the above video that Republicans have “better ideas” and that they’d be “talking about them over the next week”? Was this it? Seriously? A one page bullet point list that surely wasn’t “scored by the CBO”? LOL
These are improvements that incorporate Republican provisions you idiot. What an embarrassment this asshat of a clown Boehner is to the state of Ohio. Disingenuous little orange bastard.
I think if the GOP wants spotters on the ground that they should pick less conspicuous folks. That meat-head is instantly recognizable. Of course, if Matt really is starting to lean left, then we should welcome him with open arms. Sometimes your most fervent critic can end up being your biggest fan. It looks like Rich may indeed have a new big fan.
Of course, it’s not the only time Naugle was spotted at a Democratic event. This post is pretty much one big excuse for me to post this again:
Again, apparently completely unaware of the concept of irony, Sarah Palin gives a speech in which she criticizes President Obama for using a teleprompter and reads crib notes off her hand! LOL
So.
Great.
Sarah Palin is a blogging gift that keeps on giving. I can’t wait to get to interview more supporters. My guess is the next craze will be to get Sarah to sign the palms of supporter’s hands. They, like her, are completely and totally unaware in general.
PS: My other choice for headline was “Sarah Palin gives Nashville a handjob”
I was shocked to find this claim by Republican John Kasich in a recent article at CNN:
“I think I was in the Tea Party before there was a Tea Party.”
Yes. You read that right. John Kasich invented the Tea Party. Not just the recent tea party phenomenon. You know, the mouth breathing, knuckle dragging wingnut sychophant party that descended upon us this summer. No. John Kasich invented THE “Tea Party™”. The original one.
I was very doubtful until I found this archival footage of the actual Boston Tea Party:
It is tough to tell at first, so we had our crime lab digitally enhance it. I think this show pretty clearly that John Kasich did indeed invent the Tea Party™:
Michele Bachmann is asked why she elicits so much outrage and loathing among liberals:
“I don’t know. I’m a lovable little fuzz ball! I have no idea what they would have to fear. I guess you would have to ask them; they would have the better answer to your question. I am doing my job. That’s what I was elected to do. I don’t fear the left, and maybe that’s part of the loathing that they feel toward me. I’m not afraid to speak out on conservative positions and on issues. We’re a deep-blue state, we’re a strong liberal, Democrat state.”
We don’t fear you, Michele. We mock you because you’re batshit crazy.
While having a belated Thanksgiving dinner over the weekend at my in-laws’ house my mother in law told me a friend had seen the Palin bus behind their house parked behind a Target. The day before the Columbus signing.
It seems now that Palin hasn’t been on the bus, except for short hops between local airports and hotels and book-signing sites. Instead, as first reported by the Alaskan blog Palingates, she’s apparently been aboard UJT750, the Gulfstream American twin-jet that she first boarded at Westchester County airport shortly after noon on November 18, bound for Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the first stop on her tour.
So when Tim and I went to check out things the day after filming some book tour campers and saw the big bus pull up just before signing time in front of the Border’s, Palin most likely wasn’t even on it. She certainly hasn’t been on it the entire time on any kind of “bus tour” of the heartland. That trip from a Target down the street to Border’s must have been tough!
The sycophants get duped again! Boy, she sure has a great con going on and supporters are probably none the wiser. In fact, I KNOW they are none the wiser. I was there!
After Tim published the last video from the all-night Palin book signing camp-out in Dublin Ohio, people began to ask us if we had more footage. But of course!
When we originally went out to see what was happening at the Border’s bookstore in suburban Columbus Ohio where people were camping out to be the first in line for a Sarah Palin book signing event, we had no idea what we’d be in for. It’s always this way. What was apparent right away was that these people were literally dug in for the long haul on their support of George W. Bush and unapologetic for having helped elect him and his disastrous administration.
When Tim came up with his “you can’t have it back because you fucked it up” line, it seemed to fit so well that not even those who were being told they fucked up our country seemed to object. They only did so once they began to realize what they were being accused of and they then searched in vain to find justifications for their past support of Bush and current support of the even more vapid Sarah Palin.
One such chap was someone we dubbed “duct tape dude”, a kid who had put duct tape over the McCain in his McCain-Palin tee shirt and replaced it with “2012″. Actually admitting in public that he wanted Sarah Palin to be our President in 2012. Game on:
You could probably have figured this out by now. The more liberal economist is saying the stimulus was not big enough and another infusion will be needed to get the economy fully on track. The more conservative economist is saying the stimulus has been a disaster and is not working, proving that big government is bad.
The snipping is all well and good. Those less likely to inject politics into the mix admit the stimulus is working to, um, stimulate the economy despite it’s failings:
But with roughly a quarter of the stimulus money out the door after nine months, the accumulation of hard data and real-life experience has allowed more dispassionate analysts to reach a consensus that the stimulus package, messy as it is, is working.
Jobs savings and creation are on track. The recession didn’t turn into a depression. By all accounts we are beginning the slow – and painful – turnaround. Government spending did indeed prevent the Republican fueled economy from eating itself. The policies of 8 years of Bush are going to take some time to fix. You don’t turn such things around in 100 days, much less a year in office. As we pointed out in our recent Palin book signing camp out video, those who voted for George W. Bush fucked up the country and they can’t have it back…at least until we fix it.
One of the nice young fellas in the video (the one who duct taped over McCain on his McCain-Palin tee – duct tape boy we’ll call him) got into an extended argument with us about the cost of the stimulus being greater than the Iraq war. Again, the stimulus cost $787 billion. Cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars so far? $915 billion.
Now, if you want to argue the relative importance of such spending of taxpayer money, I’m all ears. I, for one, would much rather like to spend it on jobs for American families than bombs for Iraq. Especially when you consider the payback. Iraq and Afghanistan will most likely fall back into old patterns of rogue nations and failed states. The cost benefit analysis of such a fools errand in Iraq has always been highly questionable, even at the start.
The interesting thing about the stimulus is that a concession to Republicans took $70 billion of the impact out (emphasis mine):
Even the $787 billion price tag overstates the plan’s stimulus value given changes made in Congress, economists say. Nearly a tenth of the package, $70 billion, comes from a provision adjusting the alternative minimum tax so it does not hit middle-income taxpayers this year. That routine fix, which would do nothing to stimulate the economy, was added in part to seek Republican votes. But to keep the package’s overall cost down, provisions that would stimulate the economy — like aid to revenue-starved states and infrastructure projects — got less as a result.
Hey wingnuts. Want your country back? You can’t have it. You fucked it up. You might get it back just in time to fuck it up again after we fix it.
Consider this my blood curdling scream or whatever. Tom Blumer, our favorite wingnut lunatic faux financial blogger hailing from the southwest corner of the state, has what he thinks is a compelling post up that claims he’s settled once and for all the issue of whether Fox News is fair and balanced or not. He claims they are and he can prove it. Surprise!
Aside: I once called Tom a motherfucker to make a rhetorical point. One he has not been able to defend as yet. He took it personally having thought I was actually calling him names and hasn’t forgiven me, despite my continued reminders that it was a rhetorical point. Tom can be kinda thick that way.
Anyway, so Tom’s big evidence that settles the fair and balanced question? An article in Forbes by S. Robert Lichter. Yes the initial as first name was your first clue. Blumer, surely knowing he’d get called out, even points out that SourceWatch lists Lichter and his organization that conducted the “study” (CMPA) as being far from unbiased. Founded in the mid-80s, CMPA got it’s original seed money from solicitations by Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson. Since founding, the organization has been very secretive about it’s funding, which should raise several warning flags (as Sarah Palin would call them).
It’s very clear that right-wing foundations and organizations are who are funding CMPA’s work. The list of organizations that CMPA funders fund reads like a who’s who of wingnuttery: AEI, PNAC, Heritage Foundation, Hudson Institute. Politically, attacks on PBS in 1992 and the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004 should tell you pretty much where they stand. Tom can dismiss using the work of SourceWatch as “paranoia”, but I’d argue the only paranoia is his in hoping readers won’t connect the dots. Normally when there are this many dots to connect Tom is bizzy in the basement trying to figure out who the terrorist is.
Lichter does give fair disclosure in his article that he once worked for Fox News (warning flag!). He doesn’t, oddly, give fair disclosure that he is the freaking President of the organization that did the study! It’s mentioned in his bio at the end of the article, but not disclosed as he pimps the CMPA study. This is something Blumer would jump all over if he had his media accountability hat on. He tends to take that off when he’s going wingnut.
There are a few things wrong with this “study”. First, it only compares ABC, NBC, and CBS evening news program to the first 30 minutes of Fox News’ Special Report. Ever hear of Fox News Special Report with Brett Baier?
Exactly.
To compare a small fraction of the content on the “Fox News Channel” and then claim that “Fox News” is fair and balanced is a complete joke. It ignores the fact that the shows that every HAS heard of like Beck, O’Reilly, and Hannity are what gives the network it’s decidedly conservative bias. How do you ignore 90% of a channels programming in your “analysis” and go on to claim to have generated conclusions about bias? Seriously. It’s laughable on it’s face. Not only that, but it gives Fox huge cover – and as a former employee Lichter may well know this – to toss softballs for 30 minutes a day in order to be consider fair and balanced overall.
It’s a total sham. Add it all up and you get a wingnut funded media monitoring organization providing cover to a wingnut media outlet. And as Eric Boehlert at Media Matters points out, Lichter actually even concedes that Fox News is more biased against Obama in it’s “straight news” coverage. Any thinking person wouldn’t need Media Matters to tell them Fox News is not legit, but they do it any way.
Game. Set. Match.
Newsbusters ahoy! Boo Hoo. Ouch.
PS: Whenever BizzyBlog Boy Wonder Tom Blumer says things like “Using a methodology that would be difficult to refute” you already know how easy it’s going to be to refute.
She’s right. How can we prevent another Oklahoma City Bombing if we don’t screen for right-wing crazies who believe wacky conspiracy theories, are loudly anti-federal government and who belong to secessionist organizations.
One of the great thing about being more engaged in the blogosphere again is finding good stuff others are doing. Back in the day that was probably the most fun for me. OK, a close second to banging on wingnuts. Hehe.
Some weeks ago I argued that the vituperative criticism of Obama from the right was not, as some suggested, driven by racism but was the result of the right wing being nuts. Not nuts in the sense that they disagree with me, but nuts in that they increasingly subscribe to paranoid fantasies untethered to the real world as anyone else perceives it.
The entire post is worth the read and Pho even sites scientific evidence of the descent into la-la land. His conclusion is something that many of us have been pointing out for quite some time. Namely, when it comes to the GOP and rightwing whackos, “all their base are belong to them”:
The hardcore right described in the report comprise the grassroots foot soldiers of the Republican party. They are the ones who do things like run party moderate out of elections — and the party. As such, the crazies in the Republican party have real influence on one of the only two real parties in our democracy.
Scott references a previous post in which he posits that it’s not racism but severe partisan politics that is driving the right further from reality and affecting the Republican Party in negative ways. I happen to think they are not mutually exclusive. They are both racist and crazy. In fact, you could possibly even argue that deep seated racism – the kind that manifests itself in sock puppets and dead monkey cartoons – is the very thing that is causing them to lose touch with reality.
The funniest part of this for me is when I first read it at HuffPo they included Murdoch’s quote as “On the racist thing, that caused a [unintelligible],” Murdoch said in an interview with his Sky News Australia over the weekend.”
“Unintelligible?”, I thought. I bet I can figure it out. I’ve watched this damned video at least 10 times now and I have no fucking clue what the hell Rupert is saying there. That caused a what??? LOL
