Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Tuesday Mashup (8/16/11)

  • I give you Bernie Goldberg, of all people, trying to call out the civility police (here)…
    Well, if it wasn’t obvious before it sure ought to be now. The liberal media elite have gone around the bend and over the cliff. The Crazy Train they’ve been riding has finally crashed.

    And it’s all because of those nasty conservative Tea Party Republicans.

    The same liberal journalists who won’t call a real terrorist a terrorist can’t go 10 seconds without calling conservative Republicans terrorists. Or “Wahhabis,” as Chris Mathews described them on MSNBC.

    Or “Hezbollah,” as Tom Friedman described them in the New York Times.

    Or as ‘suicide bombers” as Tina Brown the editor of Newsweek described them on “Morning Joe.”

    And just in case you’re dense and still don’t get it, we can all thank Peter Goodman, formerly of the New York Times and now an editor at the Huffington Post, who didn’t mince words when he wrote: “They are acting like terrorists. Yes, terrorists.”
    Oh yes, such name calling is some impolite, isn’t it (here – and that’s assuming that Goldberg is “shooting straight” in his remarks at Fix Noise today, which is a highly dubious assumption, especially since he doesn't link to anyone).

    And on top of that, former Bushco flak Marc Thiessen tells us the following (here)…
    President Obama is reportedly gearing up to “kill” Mitt Romney in the general election…
    And when you click the link from Thiessen to Politico, you discover the following (the supposed attribution) …
    “Unless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney,” said a prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House.
    Got that? Politico printed a quote that should have been attributed to “a prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House” by name (gee, that narrows it down to how many hundred people, I wonder?), which Thiessen promptly used to claim that Obama is “reportedly” gearing up to “kill” Romney.

    And that’s exactly the same as Goldberg defending the teabaggers from the oh-so-nasty name calling of that elite liberal media (though Goldberg has nothing to say about this).

    And that’s also exactly the same as Sarah Palin’s notorious “crosshairs” map that included the district of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

    Sure it is (and by the way, President Hopey Changey, I think a certain "prominent Democratic strategist" needs a visit to the woodshed...need to tighten up the message discipline a bit).


  • Update 8/17/11: Um, speaking of the Obama campaign, I wonder if anyone bothered to point out to this Ray Sandoval character that the "firebaggers" (huh?) have been pretty much ABSOLUTELY FREAKING RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING? (h/t Atrios).

    I can see that Number 44 is going to do his best to make the 2012 presidential campaign as competitive for the other side as possible.

  • Next, I give you the latest straw man from Bill Huizenga (here)…
    We didn't let the President take a single dollar from Social Security or Medicare benefits, or troop or veterans’ pay.
    Proof? Anywhere in sight? Bueller??

    This is typical for Huizenga who, as noted here (third bullet), took campaign funds from the family of Erik Prince, head of what was once called Blackwater. He also once suggested that US intelligence agents who claimed there were no WMDs in Iraq were terrorist sympathizers. Oh, and Huizenga, along with all of his other Repug pals in the House, voted for that horrific HR 3 bill from Chris Smith that attempted to redefine rape (dear God).

    And here are his latest misadventures (as I continue to say, somebody out there has to elect these clowns).


  • Further, The Daily Tucker haz a sad over the latest wingnut movie escapade to bomb at theaters, this one from a former half-term Alaska governor who quit her job to cash in on her celebrity (here)…
    Conservatives are up in arms that a film celebrating the Navy Seals who killed Osama bin Laden will hit theaters less than a month before the 2012 presidential election.

    Hollywood routinely produces left-of-center content, but a cinematic reminder of the Obama administration’s crowning achievement smacks of an unpaid political ad, a cinematic October surprise.
    Indeed, it’s just so awful when politicians use the arts to further their agenda timed for an election, isn’t it (a debatable claim anyway since it was the Navy Seals who got bin Laden and not Number 44).

    Remember that horrible Citizens United ruling by The Supremes? Anybody remember how that whole thing got started? It was over something called “Hillary: The Movie” produced by the Roger Stone group “Citizens United Not Timid” (get it?). The group created ads to promote the movie, but the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the commercials violated provisions in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (McCain–Feingold) restricting "electioneering communications" 30 days before primaries. So the group appealed the ruling to The Supremes, and the High Court of Hangin’ Judge JR ended up enshrining corporate “person-hood” once and for all, opening up the gusher of corporate cash into our political campaigns that, IMHO, will drown us all one day (absent congressional legislation in response, which I definitely don’t anticipate from the bunch in power at the moment).

    So basically, if I were a conservative, I wouldn’t bitch about how their movies are unpopular (though they are). One of their pieces of tripe has done far too much damage as it is.


  • Also, the following letter appeared in the Bucks County Courier Times yesterday…
    In U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey's recent op-ed, "Overzealous state agency threatens Pa. jobs" (Aug. 8) he maintains that the Environmental Protection Agency goes too far in enforcing the successful Clean Air Act's health and safety standards that protect us from toxics and other pollutants.

    Apparently, Sen. Toomey isn't persuaded by the fact that EPA's clean air standards saved an estimated 160,000 lives last year alone, or that economic studies by the independent Economic Policy Institute and the Office of Management and Budget show that updated clean air standards actually create jobs by spurring clean energy technology investments.

    On the contrary, Sen. Toomey's idea for getting the EPA out of our hair with its life-saving and job-creating programs is to create more bureaucracy and gridlock in Washington, exactly what we don't need. He has introduced a bill to place more roadblocks in front of the EPA each time it issues rules enforcing the Clean Air Act and other environmental laws. That would mean that EPA enforcement standards, which already can take years to put in place and still more years to take effect, would drag on through a regulatory limbo even longer.

    Certainly the federal government must take into account the effects of environmental protections. But the Toomey plan would give industry lobbyists new opportunities to stop or water down steps to protect children, older Americans and communities from dangerous pollution. And it's part of an all-out assault by industry to strangle EPA's ability to enforce laws against polluters.

    To take one current example, Sen. Toomey and his industry allies are opposing new standards to reduce dangerous mercury and air toxics spewing from power plants and other facilities, doing their best to halt or at least drag out the process. Meanwhile, many of the more than 7 million American children suffering from asthma will remain at higher risk for asthma attacks, emergency room visits, or worse because they are breathing in these pollutants.

    Instead of coming up with new schemes to create more gridlock in Washington, Toomey should support the EPA's efforts to protect our children and create more clean energy jobs at the same time.

    State Rep. Steve Santarsiero
    Lower Makefield/Newtown
    Steve is “on the job” once more, and Toomey remains utterly wretched (and to contact our PA-31 state rep, click here).


  • Finally, last Saturday August 13th marked the 50th anniversary of the construction of The Berlin Wall, and in response, George Will gladly took the opportunity to bash President John F. Kennedy over it (here)…
    Fifty years ago, a metaphor became concrete. Beginning on Aug. 13, 1961, along West Berlin’s 27-mile border, the Iron Curtain became tangible in a wall of precast slabs of concrete. It came down 22 years ago, but the story of how it rose, as told in Frederick Kempe’s book “Berlin 1961,” compels an unflattering assessment of John Kennedy. His serial blunders that year made it the most incompetent first year of any presidency.
    As Wikipedia tells us here, the construction of the wall was the culmination of years of Communist brinksmanship on the issue of what to do about east and west Berlin; in 1948, Joseph Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade, preventing food, materials and supplies from arriving in West Berlin (the “Berlin Airlift” followed, in which the U.S. participated with other countries). Stalin lifted the blockade, but movement from east to west Germany continued. In 1955, Stalin and the Soviet Union gave East Germany control over the movement of its population to West Germany, and in 1957, East Germany introduced a new passport law to stem the flow to the west, which actually ended up increasing movement out of East Berlin (including a “brain drain” of middle-class professionals).

    Am I going to tell you that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev didn’t sense weakness on Kennedy’s part from the Bay of Pigs fiasco and see an opportunity to build the wall? I’ll let historians decide that (a group that definitely excludes Will). What I am saying is that it’s typically ridiculous for a pusillanimous little toad like him to suggest that everything was just hunky-dory in East and West Berlin until JFK bungled everything.

    And 1961 was “the most incompetent first year of any presidency”? Really?

    As Wikipedia again tells us here, Kennedy established the Peace Corps on March 1st. Also, Alan Shepard became the first U.S. astronaut launched into space via the Freedom 7 rocket on May 5th (and on May 25th, Kennedy proclaimed our commitment to putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade). And for what it’s worth, Time Magazine named him Person of the Year for 1961.

    See, JFK really doesn’t have the benefit of an echo chamber to come to his defense the same way The Sainted Ronnie R does, so it’s up to filthy, unkempt blogger types such as yours truly to “pick up that mantle” (and speaking of Number 40 and milestones, he signed the first of his ruinous tax cuts into law on August 13, 1981 – just sayin’).
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