Anthony Weiner vs. Peter King, round 2

You've heard about Anthony Weiner's awesome rant on the House floor the other day, and how he illustrated the best way to deal with Republicans. He and Republican asshole Peter King went for round 2 in a followup interview on Fox:

Obama's changed tune

Those of us expressing concern that Obama never seems to be willing to take on Republicans should probably consider that the meme just doesn't hold water anymore. Over the past couple of months, the President has been using every opportunity to call out Republicans on their obstructionism. His recent weekly radio and Internet addresses have certainly shown this, as does the one posted today.

Right wingers hate America

Now right wingers are attacking American car companies and American-made cars... because they hate Obama so much.

Their hatred of Obama far, far outweighs their "love" for America.

Here's how to treat Republicans

This man for president.

The system has failed

Our political system is an utter failure when one or both of the primary parties is willing to act this way:

The Republicans battered the Democrats over "delaying" on a small business bill. But now that the bill is finally ready to come to the floor, the Republicans are filibustering it.

Our system of government permits one of the parties to completely disrupt government, and a party is willing to do that, not for the good of the country, but for the good of the one party over the other. No other reason. Our government is all about one party seeking the destruction or obstruction of the other, not the governing of the country.

That our system allows this to occur is one of the primary reasons it is a complete and utter failure.

"So that which you hate the most, you secretly are."

 

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Sherrod will sue Breitbart

Breaking news this morning - Shirley Sherrod will sue that human roach Andrew Breitbart over the edited video he released and the lies he told about her that got her fired.

She needs to sue Fox News too.

Republicans = teabaggers

The Republican Party and the teabagger movement... One and the same.

When Glenn Beck rants, his followers start shooting

DISCLOSE dead?

Stay classy, Joe Lieberman.

Senate Democrats will be one vote down when they consider sweeping campaign finance disclosure legislation this afternoon as Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn) has told party leadership he will miss the vote to attend a friend's funeral.

The senator's absence reduces the caucus's numbers from 59 to 58 voting members, all but assuring that the DICLOSE Act won't pass when it comes up for a cloture vote Tuesday afternoon. The legislation's authors were already having difficulty finding a 60th vote to break a likely Republican filibuster. Without Lieberman, they will need two Republicans to cross party lines as opposed to one. Already two of the three most likely defectors -- Sens. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) -- have said they will oppose the measure.

Restoring honor?

Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and the NRA are planning to hold a "Restoring Honor Rally."

That's kind of like Bristol Palin holding a "Restoring Virginity Rally."

The president addresses Netroots Nation via video

Loved that he uses clips of Rachel Maddow to illustrate his point.

GOP: The Party of Treason

Republicans hate this country so much, they believe that unless voters vote Republican, states should secede.

A Tennessee congressman suggested Friday that states might have to "consider separation from this government" if the federal government does not change its approach.

Republican Rep. Zack Wamp brought up the idea of secession in an interview Friday with Hotline on Call as he encouraged a change at the federal level.

"I hope that the American people will go to the ballot box in 2010 and 2012 so that states are not forced to consider separation from this government," he said.

The level of hatred these people have for this country astounds me. They don't love this country at all, and no one should ever believe them again when they spout their faux-patriotic rhetoric. What they love is their own party, their own agenda. NOT the country.

Olbermann's special comment on the Sherrod affair

Keith Olbermann was inspired to take a break from his vacation to offer his Special Comment on the Shirley Sherrod affair.

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"Breitbarting" -- a verb

Here's an example of "Breitbarting" someone. Let's apply the "Breitbarting" to someone like Glenn Beck and see what happens:

"Breitbarting" someone is taking a clip out of context, or otherwise heavily editing it, to make it appear to be something else entirely, and then getting them fired or their organization shut down over a complete and utter lie you create out of your clipped or heavily edited video "proof" of their wrongdoing.

Right winger/eliminationalist rhetoric is dangerous

The right wing continues to ratchet up the rhetoric, to the point where the only possible conclusion is that they WANT things like this to happen.

A 45-year-old parolee, described by his mother as angry at left-wing politicians, opened fire on California Highway Patrol officers on an Oakland freeway early Sunday and was hit by return fire while wearing body armor, authorities said.

Byron Williams of Groveland (Tuolumne County) was taken to the emergency room at Highland Hospital, where he was in stable condition. Police did not describe his injuries. Two officers suffered minor cuts from flying glass.

[...] the driver was hit numerous times and survived only because he was wearing a bullet-resistant vest.

Williams' mother, Janice Williams of Groveland, said her son had been living next door and taking care of her father's house and land. She said he had been released from prison about 2 1/2 years ago after a felony conviction, which she declined to describe, and had almost completed his parole.

She said her son, who had been a carpenter and a cabinetmaker before his imprisonment, was angry about his unemployment and about "what's happening to our country."

Williams watched the news on television and was upset by "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items," his mother said.

She said she had planned to cook salsa with her son on Sunday and was making preparations when she got a call from a television reporter, looked out the window and saw that her pickup was gone.

She said she then checked the locked safe where she kept her guns, all legally purchased and owned, and found that they were also missing.

Janice Williams said she kept the guns because "eventually, I think we're going to be caught up in a revolution."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/18/BAG71EG92P.DTL#ixzz0u9c8IdML

Good political advice

The fat lame duck hasn't sung just yet

Despite the dire claims of the lame duckedness of President Obama made by every teabagger and right winger with access to a cable news outlet or the Internet, here are some thing to keep in mind about what the polls are showing us:

• President Obama is more popular than George W. Bush in 2006, and Bill Clinton in 1994.
• More voters trust the President and Congressional Democrats to lead the country than trust Republicans to do so.
• On the economy, Democrats lead Republicans in voter trust, and do so by a similar margin to Democrats in 2006 and a larger margin than Republicans in 1994.
• Voters don't just trust Democrats on the economy; they support Democrats' legislative efforts to improve the American economy and to move our country forward in other ways. And voters are more likely to support candidates who back the Democratic agenda.

More here.

Limbaugh logic

On his radio show the other day Rush Limbaugh said, "How come neither of Barack Obama’s top advisors are Mexican? They’re both white guys from Chicago. Is not the President himself discriminating? Where’s all this outreach."

Here's an example of Limbaugh's logic - and how Obama Derangement Syndrome factors in.

Because, according to Limbaugh, Obama's top advisors aren't Mexican, that proves Obama discriminates against non-whites.

Ah, but if they WERE Mexican, why, that would of course prove that Obama hates white people!

See how it works?

It's not about politics. It never has been. It's really about just hating the black man in the White House.

Huh? I thought Obama hated white people

Huh? I thought Obama hated white people. Isn't that what Beck, Limbaugh, and their teabagger echobots keep saying?

Hey, Herr Beck, suss this one out for us:

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a white incumbent who represents a majority black district in Memphis, landed the endorsement of President Barack Obama on Tuesday — and harsh criticism from his black opponent in the primary.

Opponent Willie Herenton called the endorsement a desperate political move by Cohen and said Obama doesn't know the voters in the district.

Obama issued a statement backing Cohen for a third term in the House, calling him a proven leader. Cohen and Herenton, who served 18 years as Memphis' first elected black mayor, face off in the Aug. 5 Democratic primary.

Obama will send you to hell!

THIS charge against Obama is so ridiculous I'm a little surprised it's not a headline on Aravosis' AmericaBlog.

OBAMA IS BLOCKING THE PATH TO SALVATION!

A Republican candidate in Missouri warned Monday that his opponent and the president are blocking the path to salvation.

In an interview on the Gina Loudon radio program, Ed Martin said that President Barack Obama and Rep. Russ Carnahan were keeping people from finding the Lord.

"We're great because we created a place and space where people can be free," said Martin. "And they can choose Christ, they can choose to be faithful. They can worship, and they find their way to the Lord."

"And that's one of the things that's most destructive about the growth of government. It's this taking away that freedom. The freedom -- the ultimate freedom, to find your salvation, to get your salvation," he continued.

"And I think that's one of the things that we have to be very, very aware of that the Obama Administration and Congressman Carnahan are doing to us," he said.

More poll funny business

So what if you ran a poll, and among the responses were "I have a lot of confidence in President Obama," "I have some confidence in President Obama" and "I have no confidence in President Obama," and when you wrote the headline you combined the last two responses and claimed, "60% of Americans lack confidence in Obama!"

Would that be an honest headline?

Nearly 60 percent of American voters say they lack faith in President Barack Obama, according to a public opinion poll published on Tuesday.

The results of the Washington Post/ABC News poll are a reversal of what voters said at the start of Obama's presidency 18 months ago when about 60 percent expressed confidence in his decision making.

Confidence in Obama is at a new low but the poll found that his numbers are still higher than lawmakers of either major party four months ahead of the November congressional elections.

Asked how much confidence they have in Obama to make the right decisions for the country's future, 58 percent of respondents said "just some" or "none."

Did you catch that? The "nearly 60%" figure of people who "lack confidence" in Obama is REALLY a combination of people who have SOME confidence and NONE. That's not an honest reporting of the findings of the poll. It's not an honest headline. SOME CONFIDENCE is NOT "none." The two answers are not the same. So why does the writer of the news story combine the two groups?

But wait, the media is controlled by liberals, ain't it? Huh.

Vitter goes birther

Senator David Vitter, AKA Diaper Boy, who just loves him some hookers, has come out as a birther.

Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana says he supports conservative organizations challenging President Barack Obama's citizenship in court.

Vitter, who is running for re-election, made the comments at a town hall-style event in Metairie, La., on Sunday when a constituent asked what he would do about what the questioner said was Obama's "refusal to produce a valid birth certificate."

Such claims about Obama's birth certificate have been discredited. But with the crowd applauding the question, Vitter responded that although he doesn't personally have legal standing to bring litigation, he supports "conservative legal organizations and others who would bring that to court," according to a video of the event.

Funny how Fox News isn't really talking about ACORN anymore

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Sarah Palin is indoctrinating our kids!

Remember when the President of the United States addressing schoolkids was evil and sinister and bad and wrong and "Obama indoctrinating our childrenz! Gaaaaaa!!!"?

Say hello to Sarah Palin's biography aimed at 9 to 12-year-olds.

Just imagine if Obama wrote a book aimed at kids. Just imagine the howls of fear and rage if that happened.

You might call it Sarah Palin's introduction to the cubs.

A biography of the former Alaska governor and self-described "mama grizzly" is set for release in September by Christian book publisher Zondervan.

"Speaking Up: The Sarah Palin Story," is one in a series of biographies aimed at 9- to 12-year-old readers.

Bill O'Reilly embarrasses Sarah Palin

Must be seen to be believed. We all know that Sarah Palin is woefully unprepared to speak off the cuff about anything substantive, unless she's working from pre-approved talking points, pre-approved questions, and a sympathetic Fox News host, like Bill O'Reilly.

Oops.

Steele speaks

Michael Steele has finally broken his silence.

He made his first public comments since his most recent fiasco in which he was caught on camera calling Afghanistan "Obama’s war," and saying it’s not a war America "actively engaged in" and "didn’t want to prosecute," you know, because 9-11 never happened and Bush didn’t invade them.

And Steele is apparently going to continue being the gift that keeps on giving for Democrats. He’s absolutely refusing to resign as head of the RNC.

Perhaps he’s daring them to fire him.

"Every time something happens, people say 'he should step down,' " Steele said in his first public comments since the controversy.

"The reality is that's not happening, so stop the noise on that. You don't need the distraction. We're focused on winning," he said at an appearance with the Colorado Republican Party. "I ain't going anywhere. I'm here, I'm here. Look, we have too much work to do."

Christianity is afraid of the competition

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Attacks on Census workers have tripled

Attacks on US Census workers have tripled since 2000, the last time a national census was taken. More than 500 incidents have been reported so far, up from a total of 180 in 2000.

So when a Census worker loses his or her life, the blood will be on the hands of Michele Bachmann and those like her who, in their rabid hatred of the black man in the White House, spread wild conspiracy theories in an effort to ratchet up hatred and fear of the current administration.

AmericaBlog: Obama still hates the gays!

Gotta love John Aravosis and AmericaBlog. They admit that President Obama has done more for gays and gay rights than any other president in history, but OBAMA STILL HATES THE GAYS!

For your daily dose of online Obama bashing, you can't beat the one-two punch of AmericaBlog followed up by Drudge.

AmericaBlog sets us straight

If it wasn't for AmericaBlog, there'd be no way to "confirm" the right wing/Limbaugh meme that Obama LOVES the oil spill and hates America.

Suddenly, Drudge ignores the weather

Funny how that now there's a huge record-breaking heat wave on the east coast, Drudge is running NO weather headlines. Every little snowstorm got the big flashing red light from Drudge before, because somehow it was all "proof" that climate change was a hoax.

But now, nothing.

UPDATE: Now Drudge has some heat wave headlines, but they're real small, and there's no big flashing red light.

The cost of ignorance and fear

Elected members of Congress, who should know better, but who have had their brains overridden by their irrational hatred of the black Democrat in the White House, have spewed hatred and fear over every little thing that they can possibly tar Obama with -- like the Census. Never mind that it's done every 10 years as required by the Constitution. The rabid anti-Obama insurgency can turn it into something sinister and fearful, and pin it on Obama.

And this is what happens.

Russell Haas, a former New Jersey police officer, was just doing his job going door-to-door in Hawaii, as a Census worker. A resident refused to accept the forms and told Haas to leave his property. The homeowner, a police officer called his co-workers on the force who seemed unaware of the federal law allowing Census workers to request participation.

When police arrived, instead of asking the resident to accept the forms as required by federal law, the officers crumpled the papers into Haas’ chest and handcuffed him, Haas said. The department hasn’t released the name of the officer who told Haas to leave his property.

Haas said he told officers that it was his duty to leave the Census forms with the resident, and that he would leave as soon as he did it.

The officers were enforcing state law and had not been trained on the federal Census law, Hawaii County Police Maj. Sam Thomas said.

Of course, it could have been worse. The fearful, ignorant homeowner could have just shot the "intruder."

If and when that ever happens, and a census worker dies as a result, the blood will be on Michele Bachmann's, and idiots like her, hands.

Ken Burns' The Civil War

I'm rewatching Ken Burns' brilliant documentary on the Civil War. I'm quite taken aback by how eerily similar all the rhetoric from the slave-holding south matches the rhetoric of today's teabaggers... The anti-government, anti-president, anti-union sentiments almost use the very same words now as then.

Michael Steele resignation watch

Well, here it is, early Saturday morning, and it looks like Michael Steele survived the Friday evening news dump. He's still there, though Liz Cheney has joined Bill Kristol and other conservatives in calling for his resignation.

Another prominent neoconservative has called for RNC Chairman Michael Steele to resign in the wake of his calling the Afghanistan war a largely un-winnable conflict of President Obama's choosing.

In a statement provided to the Huffington Post Friday night, Liz Cheney, an influential figure within conservative foreign policy circles and an obviously vocal critic of the president, endorsed a similar call for Steele's resignation from The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol.

"RNC Chairman Michael Steele's comments about the war in Afghanistan were deeply disappointing and wrong," Cheney's statement read. "The chairman of the Republican party must be unwavering in his support for American victory in the war on terror -- a victory that cannot be accomplished if we do not prevail in Afghanistan. I endorse fully Bill Kristol's letter to Chairman Steele. It is time for Chairman Steele to step down."

Cheney and Kristol are, so far, the highest-profile figures to call for Steele's resignation. No elected Republicans have weighed in on the matter, in part because Congress has largely checked out for the 4th of July recess.

Steele has since clarified his controversial remarks, urging a firm commitment of U.S. military force to Afghanistan on behalf of the president. His hold on the chairmanship, meanwhile, seems relatively secure, so long as other committee members refuse to call for his resignation. (Katon Dawson, the South Carolina Republican who was Steele's primary opponent for the RNC post, has been the one institutional Republican to call for the chairman's resignation.)

But Kristol and Cheney's remarks are significant, in so much as they represent real fissures developing within the broader GOP, and likely foreshadow more establishment figures making calls for Steele to step down.

From the "Duh!" department

Teabaggers are conservative Republicans. Duh.

Gallup:

There is significant overlap between Americans who identify as supporters of the Tea Party movement and those who identify as conservative Republicans. Their similar ideological makeup and views suggest that the Tea Party movement is more a rebranding of core Republicanism than a new or distinct entity on the American political scene.

Conservative Republicans outnumber moderate/liberal Republicans in the general population by about a 2-to-1 margin; among Tea Party supporters, the ratio is well more than 3 to 1. More generally, almost 8 out of 10 Tea Party supporters are Republicans, compared with 44% of all national adults.

Resign?

The big question is will Michael Steele resign – or be forced to resign – before the holiday weekend is out? Today would be a perfect day to bury the news in: the Friday before a long holiday weekend.

Some GOP and conservative leaders want to lower the boom on him today after his jaw-dropping statements seeming to blame President Obama for starting the war in Afghanistan, as if it wasn’t President Bush and as if 9-11 had never happened.

The recovery continues... slowly

Jaw dropping mendacity

This is incredible. It's just so over the top that it can hardly be believed. Either this is a symptom of outright insanity, or they have become so debilitated by their Obama Derangement Syndrome that they don't care how blatant or easily-disproved the lies are, just so long as they tell the lie.

Michael Steele blames Obama for starting the war in Afghanistan.

No, I'm not making that up.

"Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama's choosing. This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in."...

"It was the president who was trying to be cute by half by flipping a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan. Well, if he's such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that's the one thing you don't do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right, because everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed. And there are reasons for that. There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan."

Here's the video, so you don't think that I'm engaging in satire:

Al Franken is just a comedian, right, GOP?

Republicans dismiss Senator Al Franken as just a comedian at their own peril. Seems to me he's one of the smartest people in Congress right now.

Teabaggers will be targeting Lindsey Graham

Teabaggers with itchy trigger fingers, just waiting to start their armed insurrection against the government of the United States, and already having a withering hatred of Republican Senator Lindsey Graham because he isn't fascist enough, will be painting a big target on him now.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has earned the ire of Tea Party groups for his penchant for negotiating with Democrats, predicted this week the movement will "die out."

Graham, who has partnered with Democrats on immigration reform and energy and climate legislation, made the observation in a New York Times Magazine profile titled "Lindsey Graham, This Year's Maverick" to be published this Sunday:

“Everything I’m doing now in terms of talking about climate, talking about immigration, talking about Gitmo is completely opposite of where the Tea Party movement’s at,” Graham said as Cato drove him to the city of Greenwood, where he was to give a commencement address at Lander University later that morning. On four occasions, Graham met with Tea Party groups. The first, in his Senate office, was “very, very contentious,” he recalled. During a later meeting, in Charleston, Graham said he challenged them: “ ‘What do you want to do? You take back your country — and do what with it?’ . . . Everybody went from being kind of hostile to just dead silent.”

In a previous conversation, Graham told me: “The problem with the Tea Party, I think it’s just unsustainable because they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country. It will die out.” Now he said, in a tone of casual lament: “We don’t have a lot of Reagan-type leaders in our party. Remember Ronald Reagan Democrats? I want a Republican that can attract Democrats.” Chortling, he added, “Ronald Reagan would have a hard time getting elected as a Republican today.”

June employment numbers

We're heading in the right direction, just very, very slowly. And there's still a long way to go. For June, unemployment drops to 9.5%, net job loss, but 83,000 private sector jobs added.

The United States added just 83,000 private-sector jobs in June, a dishearteningly low number that could add to the growing number of economists who warn that the economic recovery has slowed to the point that it cannot generate enough job growth.

Over all, the nation lost 125,000 jobs, according to the monthly snapshot of the job market released by the Labor Department on Friday. Most of the lost jobs came as temporary workers hired by the federal government for the 2010 Census exited their jobs. The unemployment rate, based on a different survey, declined to 9.5 percent in June from the previous 9.7 percent. This decline came only because the nation’s labor force shrank by 652,000 jobs.

Just as last month’s government job report appeared deceptively robust, swollen by 411,000 workers hired by the federal government to help with the Census, so the June report appears deceptively anemic, as the government shed many of those same temporary census workers.

And signs of strength could be spotted. Although quite weak by historic standards, the 83,000 private-sector jobs created in June more than doubled the count in May. And in the first six months of last year, the nation lost 3.7 million private-sector jobs; during the first six months of this year it gained 590,000.

Police reopen the Gore case

Police have explained why they reopened the Al Gore case, where he's accused of a drunken sex attack.

Granted, Al Gore is one of the stiffest politicians alive, but I don't think in quite that way.

My favorite paragraph in the story is this one:

Detectives investigated the claims in 2006 and 2009 but decided not to pursue the case amid a lack of cooperation and erratic behavior by the accuser.

"Erratic behavior" on the part of the accuser? I can only imagine.

At any rate, Al Gore as a raging sex beast is just not an image I want in my head.

Nazi Tourette's

Right wingers are still suffering from Nazi Tourette's.

Video: Drudge makes wild Nazi accusation

from msnbc.com: Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Vice President Joe Biden warned Democrats in a mass e-mail about the campaign to come saying, “As things heat up, you can expect House Democrats will be hit with a GOP blitzkrieg of vicious Swift-Boat style attack ads.” Blogger Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report mentioned the e-mail on his site, with the headline “Biden Compares Republicans to Nazis.” (Countdown)

The best of presidents, the worst of presidents

It's one thing for media pundits to weigh in about who was the best president or who was the worst. But when you ask 238 actual presidential scholars, it's worth noting what they say.

President Obama hasn't even finished his first term, and he came in 15th. Not bad.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is tops.

The worst of all, in modern times? No surprise here. George W. Bush.

See the whole list here.

In the overall ranking, Obama rated two places below Clinton, who was 13th best, and three better than Reagan, who is ranked as the 18th best.

Franklin D. Roosevelt again earned the top spot, as he has every time since the poll was first conducted in 1982. He and the Mount Rushmore presidents — Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson — have consistently been the top five presidents in the poll’s findings.

Obama’s 15th ranking is slightly higher than other presidents who have taken office since the poll started nearly 30 years ago. Most start out at about number 20, said Siena statistics professor and poll director Douglas Lonnstrom.

[...]

Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, was ranked at number 23 in 2002 — the last time Siena’s presidential expert poll was conducted — but has since dropped to number 39, qualifying him as one of the five worst presidents. Bush came in at number 42 — second to last — on issues such as handling the U.S. economy, foreign policy accomplishments and intelligence. (Warren G. Harding was rated the least intelligent president).

Bush joins Harding, Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce, all of whom have consistently ranked as the worst presidents since the poll started, in the bottom five.