Friday Mashup (10/21/11)

(Videos for tonight are questionable, by the way.)

No, that sleazy weasel Eric Cantor didn’t bail on his speech at Penn’s Wharton Business School here because he’s a gutless worm afraid of criticism. Of course not. It’s all the fault of those damned “Occupy” protesters in Philadelphia, isn’t it (here)?

(And of course, why the U of P would think that Cantor is someone who could actually impart anything not totally self-serving in a speech is another matter.)

And it looks like there’s more bad polling data for Number 44 based on this (he’s only at 41 percent approval, apparently...that would have been a stratospheric number for Dubya before he was done, but that's a whole other tale to tell).

Well, according to this, he leads potential Repug presidential candidate Willard Mitt Romney by 4 points and the rest of that motley bunch by substantial margins. Also, when it comes to jobs and the economy, I would say that this shows that President Obama is on the right track (and I thought this was a humorous take on all of this…if the presidential vote had occurred in 2007 instead of 2008, it would have paired Hillary Clinton against Rudy 9iu11ani).

Next (and in keeping with the whole “Obama job approval” thing), Repug political consultant David Gergen tells us the following (here)…

…in America, we are speeding toward the 2012 presidential elections, and talk quickly turns to the political considerations here. President Obama appeared Thursday afternoon in the White House Rose Garden to celebrate this "momentous day in the history of Libya" and to declare that "one of the world's longest dictators is no more."

As Obama pledged his support to Libya's future, many in the crowd and watching at home surely began to wonder about the president's own future. It is a much-discussed irony that a president elected largely around domestic concerns has gone on to amass some sterling foreign policy bona fides, while his approval on matters stateside sinks deeper and deeper. But what impact, if any, will his string of overseas successes have on his standing -- and re-election prospects -- here at home?

The first, most obvious answer is: not much.

Maybe, but it should be noted that Obama got a “bounce” of sorts after he authorized the mission to take out bin Laden (as noted here).

However, I think we should also reconsider the support given to Gaddafi (I guess that’s how you spell this dude’s name at long last) by our prior ruling cabal; this tells us of the U.S. business lobby that helped to keep him in power full of the usual right-wing suspects.

Also, anyone remember the lie about how Obama was getting us into Libya to help al Qaeda (from the usual gang of idiots, as noted here)? It should also be pointed out that Obama also approved funding for an organization run by one of Gaddafi’s sons, which drove the wingnuts typically bonkers (even though Dubya did the same thing, as noted here – also, as long as I’m talking about Fix Noise and Libya, I should bring back this golden oldie once more).

(In addition to all of this, I should note that at least Gergen didn't say that Obama's support on Libya had "crumbled" - and by the way, speaking of foreign policy, kudos to the president for this also.)

Continuing, it looks like Lisa Simeone from that supposedly “liberal” network NPR got bounced because she participated in an “Occupy Wall Street” event (here).

To highlight the total absurdity of Simeone losing her job in this manner compared to the relentless promotion of the Teahadists by The Roger Ailes Propaganda Machine (for which no one at that network has been so much as even disciplined in any way at all), I give you the following here from Eric Boehlert of Media Matters.

Finally, it looks like out Repug PA-08 U.S. House rep haz a sad (here)…

In Kate Fratti’s column last Thursday, she characterized a small-business owner here in Bucks County as an “extortionist” based on a conversation I had with the Courier Times editorial board two weeks ago. This misguided and misinformed accusation not only misrepresents the story I recounted in our meeting, but also the intentions and desires of Bucks County job creators.

The example I cited during our meeting was of a local manufacturer who has been in business for over 40 years, during which time his work has included some defense contracting. During the first 10 months of my term in Congress, I have visited dozens of local small businesses and met with the owners of countless more.

I’ll spare you the rest of Mikey’s boilerplate here – just the usual pabulum of “making government live within its means,” “uncertainty,” blah blah blah. However, I would say that he’s being particularly thin-skinned here, especially since Fratti actually included some quotes from the “job creators” Mikey professes to love for the opposing point of view in her column (something which Mikey, in typical fashion, doesn’t provide here – and by the way, I think it’s an “amateur hour” move by the newspaper not to link back to Fratti’s column in the online version of Fitzpatrick’s screed today).

For once, I would actually like to read about Fitzpatrick meeting with individuals at job fairs to hear their side of the story instead (and of course, Mikey professes ignorance on what the “Occupy Wall Street” movement is supposed to be all about – he can read this for starters).

As far as the bit about supposedly “burdensome” government regulations, I would actually like to hear which regulations Fitzpatrick and these supposed job creators are referring to (and on that subject, I thought this was typical for TV’s most notorious propaganda outfit). And if Fitzpatrick thinks that it is impossible for those zany Teahadists to oppose job creation just to hurt Obama, he should read this. And for good measure, he should read this to find out just how much he is on the wrong side when it comes to economic matters (yes, the charts show how the Senate voted, but they might as well show how House Republicans did also).

The majority of the voters in PA-08, in their eternal, dunderheaded stupidity, chose to send him to Washington last November and send Patrick Murphy home. And Fitzpatrick has done absolutely nothing since to show that he was worthy of the office.

I’ve asked it before, I’ll ask it again, and I’ll expect to ask it plenty more times before Fitzpatrick is finally gone, but ask it I must…

Where are the jobs, Mikey??!!

Thursday Mashup (10/20/11)

There’s really not a lot that’s noteworthy in last week’s Area Votes in Congress (here), aside from the fact that the ruling U.S. House Repugs continue to avoid the heavy lifting of legislation that’s actually meaningful; I suspected that Mikey The Beloved voted for that horrible Joe Pitts “Let’s Let Women Die Instead Of Providing A Life-Saving Abortion If It Is Medically Necessary” Act, and he did (here) – also, the House Repugs passed a bill to try and nullify EPA rulemaking (a typically stupid and utterly non-job creating maneuver…more on the EPA shortly), and Pitts was the only Repug in our local delegation to vote against trade adjustment assistance for workers who lost their jobs due to offshoring (figures).

On the Senate side, “No Corporate Tax” Pat Toomey opposed the Obama jobs bill and trade penalties against our “good friends” the Chinese, the only member of our local U.S. Senate delegation to do so in both cases (once again, take a bow, all you life forms who voted for this pirate last year).

Next, even though he’s at a new location, it’s still “same old, same old” for Former Laura Bush employee Andrew Malcolm (here)…

This just in from Harry Reid's planet:

The Democrat believes, "It's very clear that private sector jobs are doing just fine."

This from the five-term senator from Nevada, where current unemployment is 13.4%. Nevada, the state with the nation's highest foreclosure rate.

Malcolm also makes some demented remark here about how the Obama jobs bill couldn’t be presented until Number 44 returned from his “island vacation,” or something.

I will admit that the term “just fine” is relative, but the following should be noted from here in response…

Since (the Recovery Act was signed into law), the private sector has seen a net gain of 1.4 million jobs; if public-sector employment had just held steady, without any hiring or firing, the economy would have grown by about 2 million jobs over this period. Instead, budget cuts have eliminated 572,000 government workers on net.

And on the subject of public sector jobs, I give you the following recent history lesson, for Malcolm’s benefit also (ask Man Tan Boehner about life on his “planet” also while you’re at it). And if you’re looking for some bona-fide outrage on the issue of jobs, I think that’s called for in response to this latest nonsense from the Teahadists.

Continuing, this little item from The Daily Tucker tells us that the “Occupy Wall Street” movement is “dead ending” while those zany completely not racist (supposedly) teabaggers “march on.”

Gee, that really doesn’t jibe with these numbers, does it?

Further, I give you the following from The Hill (here)…

Every election has its villain, typically a movement, person or institution that becomes a whipping post for politicians eager to energize political campaign contributors or voters … and sometimes both.

But in the increasingly polarized world of American politics, the same target for opprobrium that works so well in the early going of a presidential season hard-core party regulars can backfire spectacularly as election day draws nearer. This happens because candidates must reach beyond their base to appeal to independents and members of the other party who can be persuaded to switch sides.

Our polling indicates that one such “double-edge sword” issue already has surfaced in the 2012 election. While some presidential candidates are attacking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and generally anything that is “green,” it is increasingly apparent that there is a huge divide among voters that will sharply limit the effectiveness of this tactic.

Uh, yeah, I would say so – as noted here…

Over at Washington Monthly, Steve Benen writes:

The very existence of the EPA has never been a partisan issue until now — Nixon created the agency four decades ago — and my fear is Republican activists will loathe the office simply because their national candidates tell them to.

Kevin Drum responds:

I’m pretty sure this is wrong. Sure, Bachmann is (surprise!) more extreme than most, but the EPA has been #1 with a bullet on the corporate hate hit parade for a very long time.

I think they are both right.

Drum is right that heavily polluting industries and their interest groups like the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Farm Bureau have had it in for the EPA for years. But Benen is also right that the idea of weakening the EPA hasn’t been pushed by candidates or been paid much attention to by voters until relatively recently.

One explanation for that is the fact that, as Drum writes, “environmental protection has always polled pretty well in the abstract.” While presidents like Reagan and George W. Bush clearly had animosity for the EPA and its mission, they realized such a position was a political loser and decided to undermine the agency by, for the most part*, selecting corrupt and/or incompetent people to run it.

And attacking the environment is also part of the template created by The Sainted Ronnie R, of course; as this tells us…

Although it has been pointed out that Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) had been pretty solid on the environment as governor of California, he seemed to take a turn for the worse once he got to the White House. "The Reagan administration adopted an extraordinarily aggressive policy of issuing leases for oil, gas and coal development on tens of millions of acres of national lands -- more than any other administration in history, including the current one," the Wilderness Society's David Alberswerth has reported.

Perhaps setting the tone for much of his policy, Reagan famously (and bizarrely) said "trees cause more pollution than automobiles do," and that if "you've seen one tree you've seen them all." As president Reagan shocked greens by hiring the notorious James Watt and Anne Gorsuch for the heads of the Department of Interior and the EPA. The industry-friendly appointees worked tirelessly to roll back environmental regulations, from the Clean Air Act to the Clean Water Act. In the administration's first year, there was a 79 percent decline in the number of enforcement cases filed from regional offices to EPA headquarters, and a 69 percent decline in the number of cases filed from the EPA to the Department of Justice.

Reagan's Superfund director, Rita Lavelle, was sent to jail after a Congressional investigation into alleged corruption (called "Sewergate"). Lavelle returned to prison in 2005 after being accused of fraud in a case of faked environmental cleanup in the private sector.

Reagan also rolled back Carter's CAFE standards for car gas mileage, slashed funding for renewable energy (sending the burgeoning industry into a freefall it still hasn't recovered from), signed an executive order that forces unworkable evacuation plans on communities surrounding nuclear power plants, and unceremoniously ripped the solar panels off the White House. Reagan may have been a nice man, but he drove us right back into oil addiction, some say setting the stage for years of global conflict and indirect funding of terrorism.

I don’t know how “nice” The Sainted Ronnie R really was (this may shed some more light on that), but if he’d really been someone who cared about doing the right thing, he would not have included such self-righteous ideologues in his cabinet, particularly in the EPA (and more on James Watt is here, by the way, the guy who notoriously claimed that the “electorate” is composed of “liberals and Americans,” and that fans of The Beach Boys were “riff raff”…oh, and he also was responsible for horrific environmental exploitation in strip mining, wilderness devastation and despoilment due to offshore oil exploration).

It should also be noted that, as much as this is partly a history lesson, it’s also a candidate for the “past is prologue” file; as noted here, Repug U.S. Senators “Diaper Dave” Vitter and Jim Inhofe, along with U.S. House nematode Darrell Issa, accused John Holdren, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, of “scientific misconduct” (as if those three nitwits would be in a position to judge)…

The lawmakers also questioned an EPA assessment on the dangers posed by formaldehyde -- the National Research Council earlier this year claimed the assessment did not adequately back up some of its claims, including claims that the chemical causes leukemia and respiratory tract cancers.

Memo to Issa, Inhofe and Vitter; you think formaldehyde isn’t a big deal? Fine. Try living in a post-Katrina FEMA trailer for a few months and let me know how that works for you (here).

Finally, the formerly Moonie Times is here to tell us who the big winner was of the recent Republican presidential candidates’ beauty pageant (here)…

The unavoidable takeaway from the debate is that the GOP’s field of candidates looks worse today than during the very first debate on May 5. Conservatives and independents desperate for change in the White House already were worrying that none of the current crop of challengers was capable of beating President Obama next year. Tuesday’s fracas in Las Vegas didn’t help as the competitors dropped their gloves and leveled sucker punches at each other, notably at the erstwhile leaders in the polls. Blood was drawn from Mitt Romney, Herman Cain showed a few unprotected weak spots, and Rick Perry was left limping badly after the melee. Washington insiders - even those who support him - are disappointed with all the Texas governor’s debate performances so far and are starting to whisper that he doesn’t look strong enough for a bruising, prime-time national campaign.

The longer the pre-primary season drags on without any frontrunner rising above the rest of the pack, the greater the opportunity becomes for a candidate in the middle of the rankings to surge late, create a brief, timely wave of excitement and run away with the nomination. The familiar face getting the most attention behind the scenes now is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. There’s a consensus that he has come off as both the smartest and most solid over the course of all the debates thus far. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin - one of the most popular conservative political celebrities not in the race - raised eyebrows by announcing her opinion that Mr. Gingrich won Tuesday night’s standoff.

Can you feel the Newt-mentum, people??!!

In response, I give you that noted political pundit J.D. Mullane of the Bucks County Courier Times (here)…

It was sad to see Newt Gingrich, once a titan of conservative politics, reduced to a pale, chubby figure on stage at a Bucks County Moose Lodge, pleading for cash.

“I will tell you flatly,” he said, “I need all the money you can give.”

Gingrich’s hapless campaign swung through Doylestown on Tuesday. The ex-Speaker of the House aims to be Republican nominee for president. Fat chance.

Gingrich, 68, has an uneasy relationship with the party’s conservative foot soldiers, whose checkbooks he attempted to conjure with road-tested applause lines about illegal immigration, liberal activist judges and “the elite media.”

But grumblings about “Mr. Newt,” as he is sometimes affectionately called by the Republican faithful, surrounded him, even among the stalwarts in the standing-room-only crowd of Kitchen Table Patriots of Bucks County.

His three marriages. His $500,000 line of credit at Tiffany’s. His flip-floppery on controlling pollution through the controversial “cap and trade” scheme. Gingrich has been a global warmist since the 1980s, and was still a man-made climate change enthusiast as recently as 2008. Not now, though.

Oh, and check this out…

Most unforgettable, if not unforgivable, is the 2008 TV commercial on global warming he made with former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a liberal much loathed by the right.

In the ad, Gingrich and Pelosi sit together on a couch, awkwardly reading scripted lines.

“We don’t always see eye to eye, do we Newt?” Pelosi says.

“No,” Newt says, “But we do agree our country must take action to address climate change.”

It is so infamous that if a conservative says, “Newt on the couch with Pelosi,” every conservative within earshot knows what it means. It’ll ruin your day, if not keep you from writing a campaign check.

God, providing aid and comfort to that America-hating shrew Nancy The Li-Bu-ruul? How iconoclastic can you get?

And by the way, Baby Newton Leroy, any word on that space-based air traffic control system (here)?

More Wednesday PM Stuff

(Feeling a bit charitable today, so…)

Yes, I know there’s a lot of nutty stuff going on right now with the Repug presidential candidates, but still, let’s not lose sight of how evil the Koch Brothers really are…



…and with this in mind (speaking of above), I give you the following in response (I cannot imagine that I will ever vote for a Republican again, and yes, I actually have done so...and in a good way, the vid below is a response to this).

Wednesday PM Stuff

Probably no other posting today…

Looks like the Repugs want to revisit the supposedly good old days of no financial regulation, pre-Enron (pre-everything, if they had their way, of course – yep, more “Republican-land” mythology)…

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

…and I’m glad to see that Occupy Wall Street has chosen this as their next step (wonder if “No Corporate Tax” Pat Toomey thinks this is “cogent” enough)…



…and Toomey and his playmates should try doing the right thing, for a change, on the Obama jobs bill in the Senate (and that goes for the “ConservaDem” turncoats also - here)…



…and isn’t this a charming little ditty?

Wednesday AM Stuff

Happy belated 85th birthday to Chuck Berry...



...and given this item, I think the title of the following tune only is appropriate (from someone who definitely was an acolyte of sorts when it came to Berry - and yes, I know the song was about Paul...oh, and it looks like someone else doesn't think much of Cain's sense of humor).

Tuesday Mashup (10/18/11)

To begin, let’s take a trip back in time, shall we (here, from last April)…

Tea Party Republican Tom Corbett continues his scorched earth campaign as governor of Pennsylvania. He is gutting education and public services while handing out over $300 million in new tax cuts for corporations. He also takes organized hypocrisy to astonishing new heights. An article in the Philadelphia Inquirer lays out Corbett's faux fiscal conservativism in exquisite detail.

As new taxes go, a levy on natural-gas drilling in Pennsylvania would seem like a pretty easy political sell. Two-thirds of the state's voters support the idea, several polls indicate. Politicians are desperate for money to plug a $4 billion budget gap and prevent deep cuts in the state college system and other programs.

And with that in mind, I give you this from March…

With only a partial picture of the impact of Gov. Tom Corbett's proposed budget, the Pennsbury School District is already facing the loss of between $4.9 million and $6.7 million in state subsidies.

The bad news was delivered by district CEO Dr. Paul Long at a special meeting Thursday night of the Pennsbury School Board. As stark as the financial picture is, the numbers reflect no increase in teachers' salaries. The governor's proposed budget cuts affect school districts across the state, Long said.

In a brief presentation before the board, Long contrasted the cost of basic education - $15,143,000 - for the 2010-2011 school year with Corbett's proposal of $13,755,206, a loss to the district of $1,388,396. Also kicked out completely in the governor's charts are $876,385 in block grants and the state's $750,000 contribution to charter schools within the district.

If Corbett's budget stands, Pennsbury will have to find a way to make up the lost funds.

…

Board President Gene Dolnick expressed concern because of the possible impact on increasingly expensive programs such as charter schools and special education classes. He also said that the specter of vouchers, which would give district parents a choice on which schools to send their kids, could break the bank.

"I hope we are not witnessing the destruction of the public school system on the backs of our taxpayers," Dolnick said.

So what has Pennsbury done in response? From here…

…the district is also endorsing a controversial new measure in order to raise funds: selling advertisements in its schools. Three weeks ago, the district’s 16 public schools installed advertisements. Overall, there will be 218 ads district-wide.

These ads “must relate to health, education, nutrition, or student safety, and may not directly endorse products,” but some of them are sponsored by private companies and advertise products like Post-It Notes. The district hopes it can raise $425,000 annually with the ads.

You know, I really am surprised – this is no time for “half-measures,” people. How about making the students wear shirts with Nike swooshes, caps with the Coors Beer logo or sweater vests with the Apple logo (as a tribute to Steve Jobs, of course)?

Hey, at least Corbett didn’t tell Pennsbury to drill for its own natural gas (here – removing my tongue from my cheek now…what else can I say besides this being another example of Corbett’s pathetic non-governance?).

Also, did you know that the ruling Repugs in the U.S. House have already passed about a dozen “jobs” bills, according to California rep (and supposed “young gun”) Kevin McCarthy, as noted here?

Of course, we’re talking about the Repugs, so their “jobs” bills don’t create any actual, real, you know…jobs. But if you’re looking for still more stinking tax cuts, getting rid of those pesky, burdensome big gumint regulations (and by the way, don’t ask which ones, or else that’s a “gotcha” question) and passing “free” trade deals, then brother, do Boehner, Cantor and their pals have a deal for you!

Meanwhile, in the world of reality, 4 of the 6 ideas receiving popular support as noted here come from President Obama and the Democrats (and as noted here, business leaders in this country called for infrastructure spending at this “roundtable” or whatever where Obama participated recently, which, as noted here, is opposed by that sleazy weasel Cantor and his pals, including McCarthy).

Continuing, I give you the following (here)…

Congressional Republicans on Monday called for the immediate repeal of a major component of the 2010 healthcare reform law as the issue blew up in the administration’s face.

OK, I have a problem right away with this - to begin, this development wasn’t a total surprise, unfortunately; HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius warned this might happen to the CLASS Act, which was crafted by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), since apparently it could not pay for itself. As noted here…

The CLASS Act is a voluntary, federally administered, consumer-financed insurance plan. The CLASS plan provides a cash benefit after a five year vestment period that can be used in multiple ways to allow an individual to stay in his or her home.

Oh, and before everyone rejoices too much about the demise of the CLASS Plan, please take note of the fact that it was supported by the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) last February, as noted in the linked article.

Returning to the Hill piece (which reads like it was largely written by GOP.gov), I give you the following from BoBo’s one-time man crush (here, second bullet)…

Rep. Charles Boustany Jr. (R-La.), the House sponsor of legislation to repeal the program, told The Hill that he is “pushing” Republican leaders “personally” to bring up his bill shortly after the House returns from recess next week. The only Democrat who has co-sponsored Boustany’s legislation is Rep. Daniel Lipinski (Ill.), who voted against healthcare reform last year.

The bill’s Senate sponsor, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), also took to the floor to urge quick action.

“Hopefully we can kill this thing once and for all so it doesn’t become a drain on our children and grandchildren,” Thune said.

In response, I give you the following from K.O. in August 2009…

…the insurance industry owns the Republican Party. Not exclusively. Pharma owns part of it, too. Hospitals and HMO's, another part. Nursing homes — they have a share. You name a Republican, any Republican, and he is literally brought to you by... campaign donations from the Health Sector. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota? You gave the Republican rebuttal to the President's weekly address day before yesterday. You said the Democrats' plan was for…

"…government run health care that would disrupt our current system, and force millions of Americans who currently enjoy their employer-based coverage into a new health care plan run by government bureaucrats."

That's a bald-faced lie, Senator. And you're a bald-faced liar, whose bald face is covered by…your own health care plan run by government bureaucrats. Nobody would be forced into anything; and the Public Insurance Option is no more a disruption than letting the government sell you water, and not just Poland Spring and Sparkletts. But, as corrupt hypocrites go, Senator, at least you're well paid. What was that one statement worth to you in contributions from the Health Sector, Sen. Thune?

Five thousand dollars? Ten? We know what you are, Sir, we're arguing about the price. What about your other quote? "We can accomplish health care reform while keeping patients and their doctors in charge, not bureaucrats and politicians." Wow, Senator — this illustrates how desperate you and the other Republicans are, right? Because Sen. Thune, if you really think "bureaucrats and politicians" need to get out of the way of "patients and their doctors," then you support a woman patient's right to get an abortion, and you supported Michael Schiavo's right to take his wife off life support, and you oppose "bureaucrats and politicians" getting in the way, and we'll just mark you down on the pro-choice list. That's a rare misstep for you Sen. Thune. No twelve-thousand dollar payoff for that statement! I am not being hyperbolic, am I, Senator? On the money?

Sen. Thune has thus far received from the Health Sector, campaign contributions — and all these numbers tonight are from "The Center For Responsive Politics" — campaign contributions amounting to $1,206,176. So much for Sen. Thune.

So much, indeed.

And staying with “the world’s greatest deliberative body,” I give you this…

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said Monday that he doesn’t expect the Occupy Wall Street protest movement to last long unless it becomes more coherent.

“I’m not sure this movement is going to last if it doesn’t have some reasonably clear and cogent purpose and message and so far I haven’t seen that,” Toomey told Pennsylvania’s WKOK news radio. “For the most part there just doesn’t seem to be a coherent message.”

Oh, I don’t know – this seems pretty “clear and cogent” and “coherent” to me.

But what else can you expect from someone as out of touch as Toomey, as noted here, here and here (and who was responsible for this video)?

Finally, this appeared yesterday in the Philadelphia Daily News by Richard Aregood, in which he pays tribute to his editor, who apparently has a conservative point of view…

EDITORS, despite what writers say about them, are every journalist's best friends.

They save us, as much as they can, from making total fools of ourselves while at the same time making sure we stay grammatical and have facts to back up even our wildest assertions.

Michael Schefer has been my editor since I began writing this column. I've come to value his brains and collegiality, which have made me look smarter than I really am. He has accepted a buyout and will be leaving the Daily News. It's a big loss for the Daily News and for me.

I suppose, but Aregood basically uses this column as an excuse to say that Will Bunch and Sean Hannity are the same, only they represent opposing points of view (which is apparently OK with Aregood, since he knows where both are “coming from”). Bunch has an affiliation with Media Matters, and Hannity with Fix Noise, of course. And that makes everything just peachy.

Really? Try reading this and let me know the next time (or the first time) Bunch panders in such a shameless, utterly-fact-free manner, would you please?

Apparently, Aregood (as noted in his bio) is the Charles R. Johnson Professor of Journalism at the University of North Dakota. Still, it seems that he can’t see the difference between a journalist whose sometimes strident point of view is rooted firmly in fact-based reporting and a bought-and-paid-for Ken doll employed to sit in front of a camera and propagate Republican Party talking points.

Referencing his column once more, I would say that Aregood’s “journalistic GPS” needs some time in the shop for maintenance.

Sunday Stuff

So how exactly did it go yesterday at Occupy Montreal? Glad you asked (here)...



...and here's something that's both kind of gothic and futuristic at the same time - probably a couple of weeks early with this one.

Saturday Stuff

Here's a piece from RT where a reporter actually takes time to speak with someone involved in the "Occupy" protest in the UK today...



...and here is a report from our media which starts out with the presumption that the protests will automatically be violent (nice - I think there was trouble in Italy, though...more here and here)...



(By the way, more here - and to get an idea again of how the news organizations with initials for names are treating this, I went to ABC's site and all I could find was a supposedly humorous slide show of "unusual" signs at the protest in Zuccotti Park, as if this is nothing but a sideshow novelty act...memo to Diane Sawyer; please pass the sweet and sour shrimp while "the help" decides to get on with the messy business of standing up to the steamroller driven by your corporate puppet masters.)

...and turning to something altogether different, today is the 60th anniversary of the premiere of "I Love Lucy" on CBS (good luck trying to show a bit like this now; sorry about the Russian subtitles - not that that's bad, I know - but this is a really good quality vid).

Friday Stuff

Hat tip to profmarcus for this – powerful stuff (amazing that our “leaders” believe they can lecture the whole world while apparently failing to see what is plainly apparent in front of everyone’s eyes but their own)…



…and New York City’s “finest” keeps giving us videos such as these (this clip doesn’t have the guy getting run over, which follows)…



…Yetta Kurland, the attorney for Ari Douglas, the lawyer observing OWS (who allegedly allowed himself to be run over by a moped – please), talks to Keith…



…and leave it to Matt Taibbi to have good ideas on demands the OWS people can make right now (here)…



…and happy 65th birthday to Justin Hayward of The Moody Blues (I believe the song title requires no further explanation).

Friday Mashup (10/14/11)

Kind of "quick and dirty" a bit today (couldn't track down last week's "Area Votes in Congress" writeup from the Philadelphia Inquirer - still looking)...

According to Fix Noise, apparently celebrities like Kanye West, Alec Baldwin and Russell Simmons are “hypocrites” for supporting the “99 Percent” movement (here).

At least the Dems are actually honest about their endorsements, unlike this crowd (paging Chuck Norris, Kelsey Grammer, Adam Sandler, Dennis Miller, etc.).

Continuing, somebody named Arthur Herman at Rupert Murdoch’s New York Vanity Press (the tabloid, I mean) accused President Obama of a supposed plan to fly to Japan and apologize for Hiroshima here (oh, but it was in a Wikileaks cable!).

Uh, no.

Further, former Bushie Carlos Gutierrez whined as follows yesterday (here)…

As Secretary of Commerce, I had the privilege to help forge new trade agreements for our country with allies in Asia and Latin America. I saw first hand the enormous challenges of building trading relationships and the enormous benefits that accrue to all sides when we succeed in opening our economies to each other’s goods and services.

But since leaving office, I have known the frustration of watching so much of America’s progress on opening markets squandered by a president who sees trade policy as either a political game or an afterthought. Unlike President Obama, Mitt Romney recognizes the importance of trade to our economic future, and I believe he has the combination of business experience, leadership, and conservative principles to put our economy back on the path of growth and job creation.

It’s truly hilarious that this was published on the day that Congress passed three “free” trade agreements that the Obama White House approves, since it will supposedly “put people back to work,” a piece of fact-free punditry from Jim Abrams of the AP (here), who should know better but apparently doesn’t (no room for the Obama jobs bill though, as far as those House miscreants are concerned – and in my opinion for what it’s worth, this was “snuck out the back door” in terms of corporate media reporting while the odious Joe Pitts “Let’s Let Pregnant Mothers Die Instead Of Giving Them A Life-Saving Abortion If They Need One” bill got the majority of the coverage.

As far as the South Korea deal goes, the following should be noted from here…

…the studies by the United States International Trade Commission found that the deals would cost jobs in some industries, especially the textile industry.

Highland Industries, a Greensboro, N.C., company that employs 680 people at two factories, manufactures a kind of fabric that is used to reinforce the roof coverings on commercial buildings like big-box stores. The massive rolls of fabric can be 12 feet wide and 5,000 yards long.

South Korean companies sell similar material at prices 15 to 20 percent below Highland’s. Bret Kelley, a Highland executive, said the company was able to compete on speed and customer service, but he said that could change if the trade agreement passed because the tariff reductions would allow South Korean companies to lower prices by another 10 percent.

“We’re quick and nimble, and we forge strong relationships, but what we’re selling is a commoditized product,” Mr. Kelley said. “Those companies will start looking away for savings of 25 and 30 percent.”

Textile industry executives are particularly incensed that for some products the deal requires the United States to end tariffs more quickly than South Korea.

The administration says there are only about two dozen such cases, and that the deal on the whole favors American companies. South Korea must eliminate tariffs immediately on 98 percent of the roughly 1,500 listed products in the textiles and apparel categories, and complete the process within five years. The United States would eliminate tariffs immediately on 87 percent of listed products, and complete the process within 10 years.

…

But many in the textile industry say the promise of a level playing field offers little comfort, because a deal between a larger economy and a smaller one inherently favors companies in the smaller country, which gain access to the larger market. South Korea’s annual consumption of goods and services is less than one-tenth the size of America’s.

“There’s not a market for our products there,” Mr. Kelley said. “We don’t have an opportunity.”

Turning to Panama, I give you the following here from Dylan Ratigan…

Panama is too small as an economy to really impact jobs in the United States; the real value of the FTA is strategic and has to do with American geopolitical aims. For the business community, Panama is a great place to hide their money.

Panama is the second largest tax haven in the world, according to a secret State Department memo released by Wikileaks. There’s a deep irony in the US relationship with Panama. The country’s cooperation in the war on drugs is considered pivotal, with the State Department arguing that Panama is more important to the US than we are to Panama (see this cable). One third of all ships are flagged in Panama, and Panama lets the US board those ships to search for drugs. But for some reason, Panama’s position as a haven for drug money is not a particular concern.

In order to move the Panama FTA, Panama decided to sign a tax information sharing treaty with the US, but most experts think this is somewhat toothless in terms of preventing tax evasion and corporate secrecy. The evidence for this are the legions of law firms that are willing to aid wealthy Americans in avoiding taxes by using the Panamanian corporate structure.

And as far as Columbia is concerned, Gutierrez said here about four years ago that “labor violence was no longer a problem” in the country, even though Dem Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio brought evidence in response to Gutierrez’s attention indicating that “Colombia remains the most dangerous country in the world in which to be a labor leader” (and I haven’t found any evidence showing that that situation has changed one bit).

Want to know the priorities of the employers pushing for these scams (to which no Democrat should ever associate him or herself)? Check this out.

Finally, Christine Flowers of the Philadelphia Daily News criticized Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West for responding to Herman Cain’s claim that racism no longer exists in America, or something (here, with a backgrounder from the reality-based point of view here...I will admit that the "crack pipe" reference to Cain may have been a bit "over the top," though it pales when compared to typical wingnut attack language).

Life is short and I really don’t have the time to respond to Flowers as I should (pathetic that this woman still draws a paycheck for concocting this bilious crap). Instead, I’ll merely link to Bill Maher below, who refutes Flowers on this better than I could (courtesy of HBO).

 

Thursday Stuff

I asked it once before here and I'll ask it again - why does Joe Pitts hate America?

You know, in a really sick, twisted way, I'm actually glad the House did this. If this doesn't shine a spotlight on the human mistake that is the PA-16 Repug U.S. House Rep (and those life forms who continue to send him back to Capitol Hill), nothing will (here...and I don't know yet how Mikey The Beloved voted on this obscenity, but I'll find out)...



...I also thought former activist and current CA state assemblyman Tom Hayden had some interesting thoughts on the "Occupy" movement last night...



..."Worst Persons" (Billo decides to take on Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West over "OWS" - bad idea; Moon Unit Bachmann can't remember whether or not she works for the government, which I'm sure is news to her constituents; but Florida State Legislator Brad Drake and this meat sack named Curry Todd, a Tennessee state politician, share "Worst" honors, and I'll let K.O. tell you why...and yes, a bad word slipped out, which to me is far from the worst offense here)...



...and happy 70th birthday to Paul Simon (I always liked this tune and video).

Wednesday Stuff

Gee, I can't wait to see how Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times manages to spin this into another "Sharks vs. Jets" column - as far as I'm concerned, if you're not one of the "pay no price, bear no burden" 1 percent of the top earners in this country and you vote for a Republican on the national level, you're a goddamn idiot...

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

Update 1 10/13/11: Yep, I would say this explains it (h/t Atrios).

Update 2 10/13/11: More here.

...and "Jesus Christ, Superstar" debuted in Broadway on this day 40 years ago (or, as somebody said, if you actually remember the '60s, then you didn't live through it - the decade when this came out was full of what used to be called "variety shows," and I would say that this reflects that influence).

Wednesday Mashup (10/12/11)

To begin, I give you wankery from across the pond courtesy of James Delingpole (here)…

One of the worst aspects of living in these apocalyptic times is that whenever you look around the world, wondering where you might escape to, you begin to realise that everywhere else is just as bad if not worse.

Take Australia, an island built on fossil fuel with an economy dependent on fossil fuel. What would be the maddest economic policy a place like that could pursue as the world tips deeper into recession? Why, to introduce a carbon tax, of course. Which, for reasons just explained above, means a tax on absobloodylutely everything. Which is exactly what Julia Gillard's Coalition (why is it that word always makes me want to reach for my Browning?) has just gone and done, obviously.

…

Here, for example, is its Chief Scientist Ian Chubb in action:

"With respect to this cooling stuff, I have seen the claim, but the evidence that I have seen is that the last decade has been the warmest decade that we have ever had on this planet, so I do not know what this cooling stuff means.”

Let's just run that one by you again, in case you thought you'd been overdoing the Cane toad juice. The man who came up with that scientifically inaccurate, historically ignorant, Greenpeace-like enviro-hysteria drivel is AUSTRALIA'S CHIEF SCIENTIST.

In response, I give you the following (here)…

I have come to Australia to see what a global-warming future holds for this most vulnerable of nations, and Mother Nature has been happy to oblige: Over the course of just a few weeks, the continent has been hit by a record heat wave, a crippling drought, bush fires, floods that swamped an area the size of France and Germany combined, even a plague of locusts. "In many ways, it is a disaster of biblical proportions," Andrew Fraser, the Queensland state treasurer, told reporters. He was talking about the floods in his region, but the sense that Australia – which maintains one of the highest per-capita carbon footprints on the planet – has summoned up the wrath of the climate gods is everywhere. "Australia is the canary in the coal mine," says David Karoly, a top climate researcher at the University of Melbourne. "What is happening in Australia now is similar to what we can expect to see in other places in the future."

As (Hurricane) Yasi bears down on the coast, the massive storm seems to embody the not-quite-conscious fears of Australians that their country may be doomed by global warming. This year's disasters, in fact, are only the latest installment in an ongoing series of climate-related crises. In 2009, wildfires in Australia torched more than a million acres and killed 173 people. The Murray-Darling Basin, which serves as the country's breadbasket, has suffered a dec¬ades-long drought, and what water is left is becoming increasingly salty and unusable, raising the question of whether Australia, long a major food exporter, will be able to feed itself in the coming dec¬ades. The oceans are getting warmer and more acidic, leading to the all-but-certain death of the Great Barrier Reef within 40 years. Homes along the Gold Coast are being swept away, koala bears face extinction in the wild, and farmers, their crops shriveled by drought, are shooting themselves in despair.

With Yasi approaching fast, disaster preparations are fully under way. At the airport, the Australian Defense Force is racing to load emergency supplies into Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters. Entire cities have shut down, their streets nearly empty as I drive north, toward the center of the storm, through sugar plantations and ranch land. Dead kangaroos sprawl by the side of the road, the victims of motorists fleeing the storm.

As noted here, Delingpole once said, "I feel a bit of an imposter talking about the science. I'm kind of -- I'm not a scientist, you may be aware. ... I leave the science stuff to you guys and I think it's good that we stick to our jobs."

Which I suppose begs the following question: aside from being a bought-and-paid-for shill by the climate change denial industry, exactly what is Delingpole’s job anyway?

Continuing, I give you Trying To Construct And Inflate Beyond All Reason Yet Another Supposed Obama Administration “Scandal” 101; your instructor is Matthew Boyle of The Daily Tucker (here)…

As failed solar panel manufacturer Solyndra rides through the investigative ringer in Congress, revelations of another politically-connected company that received what appears to be a less-than-virtuous $1.2 billion loan guarantee are surfacing.

The company, SunPower, received its $1.2 billion loan guarantee in September, immediately before the program’s deadline.

SunPower isn’t as financially sound as the public was led to believe when it secured a loan guarantee twice the size of Solyndra’s $535 million loan. Just this week — less than a month after taxpayers landed on the hook for SunPower’s $1.2 billion loan guarantee — company executives announced that they expect to lower their 2011 earnings projections.

The company also carries $820 million in debt, which is $20 million more than its market capitalization.

Still waiting to find out what the supposed “scandal” is here (and Boyle continues to stack the proverbial deck by reminding us how much of this is taxpayer-funded – it would be nice to see more of that concerning our monstrous defense budget)…

“There is great cause for alarm over political influence contaminating the DOE loan guarantee program,” (Repug House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations chairman Rep. Cliff Stearns) told The Daily Caller. “The documents that the White House dumped last Friday reveal a disturbing prevalence of wealthy donors and bundlers littered throughout the loan guarantee process, with direct access to the President’s West Wing inner circle.”

Stearns adds that, because “billions of taxpayers dollars are at stake” in the loan guarantee process, the committee has doubled down on information requests from Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

And how is that different exactly from Departments of Energy in prior administrations?

Last October, President Barack Obama’s Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and California Democratic Rep. George Miller toured SunPower’s plant in California. Both touted the company. Miller said SunPower was an example for “renewable energy” production and “America’s future economic growth.”

But, Miller failed to mention how his son, George Miller IV, is SunPower’s top lobbyist in California. Miller’s son was pushing for the $1.2 billion loan guarantee taxpayers are on the hook for now. Miller is a powerful Democratic congressman, and currently serves as the ranking minority member of the House Education and Workforce Committee.

Ummm…still looking for illegality here, people (and I think they are too).

Less than a month after SunPower received the conditional commitment from the Obama administration, a French oil giant, Total S.A., bought majority ownership — 60 percent — of the company. SunPower investors backed the move. A Total S.A. executive told the New York Times the company believed in solar energy, and its move was an attempt to capitalize on it.

“We believe the winners in the solar industry will be fully integrated, financially solid, advanced technology and worldwide,” Total Gas & Power President Philippe Boisseau said. “SunPower has the technology. We already have some of the technology, but we’ve also got the market and the finance. It’s a full industrial combination.”

The Obama administration — which says it was continuing to vet SunPower after it granted the company a conditional commitment for the $1.2 billion loan guarantee — saw the company as promising and continued to move forward.

Then, right before the Obama administration signed the deal giving SunPower its $1.2 billion loan guarantee, SunPower and Total S.A. sold the project — which taxpayers are now responsible for — to NRG Energy, Inc. The loan guarantee still went through, despite the sudden pullout from Total S.A.

Mere weeks before finalizing the deal with the Department of Energy, SunPower announced it was opening a new facility in Mexicali, Mexico — instead of another one in the United States — in order to manufacture solar panels there too.

Sooo…are we now supposed to prosecute every U.S. company that moves its operations to Mexico?

Oh, and Boyle throws in this little tidbit at the very end…

President George W. Bush’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission head Pat Wood II is a member of SunPower’s board of directors.

In response, I give you this on Solyndra, which tells us that “the loan, which was originally pushed by the Bush administration, was 1.3% of the DOE portfolio.” We also learn the following…

The typical conservative-outlet story follows a template of Glenn-Beckian accusations that someone “connected to” Obama has “ties” to something. When you hear the phrasing “has ties to” you should understand this as code-speak for “has nothing to do with but can be made to appear to have some sinister involvement if you twist the wording a certain way.”

But wait, there’s more…

FOX News has been promoting this “scandal” story heavily. (It should be noted here that Fox’s parent company News Corp’s 2nd-largest shareholder is oil billionaire Saudi Prince al-Waleed - an “oil interest” if ever there was one.)

And for the grownup perspective on this, I would ask that you read the following (from here)…

Beginning in early 2009, the Obama administration's use of stimulus money under the Department of Energy's loan guarantee program went not just to help out a handful of businesses, but to jump-start a market. Funds doled out under the stimulus have gone, or are going to, a portfolio of renewables. The complete list of 32 "section 1705" (stimulus-funded) loan guarantees, available on the DOE website, is more than half solar -- it includes four solar manufacturing companies (including Solyndra) and 15 solar generation plants, along with assorted wind, geothermal, and biofuel businesses.

Demand for solar panels rose, partially as a result of this and other government policies. United States solar firms achieved a positive trade flow of $1.9 billion in 2010, mostly on photovoltaic components. Of that, the United States imported $1.4 billion from China, and exported between $1.7 and $2 billion, says a solar industry report [PDF, p. 18].

China's reaction to that trade surplus? Since January 2011, the Chinese government has dumped $30 billion into support for its solar industry. China now dominates solar manufacturing, with 70 percent of the global solar-panel market, and, as Agence France-Presse reports, it is "almost solely focused on exports, with as much as 95 percent of production sold overseas, according to some estimates"...

The U.S. market responded to the flood of cheap solar panels: Solar is booming. The U.S. solar market doubled last year, and it’s expected to double again this year, even though many states are reducing their subsidies. How many other industries are growing that fast in this economy?

But of course, as far as the wingnuts are concerned, why should they do anything to promote actual job growth in this country when there are cheap propaganda points to be scored against the Democrats?

Further, BoBo opined as follows in the New York Times yesterday (here).

President Obama promises not to raise taxes on the bottom 98 percent. The Occupy-types celebrate the bottom 99 percent. Republicans promise not to raise taxes on the bottom 100 percent.

As much as I’d like to expound on the idiocy of that lie, I will choose not to do so and only link here in response; the evidence presented to the contrary is damning enough.

Also, I give you another conservative fever dream from James Jay Carafano (here, about an alleged Iranian plot against a Saudi U.S. envoy that was recently broken up)…

Somebody in the Iranian government backed a planned terrorist attack in America’s back yard? No surprise there. Tehran didn’t earn a reputation as the world’s premier state sponsor of terrorism for nothing.

Nor is it terribly shocking to hear that the plot was intended to be carried out on US soil. America these days must appear an open target for the likes of Iran.

This summer, President Obama revealed his new and improved strategy for combating terrorism. Pop quiz: What did it say about Iran? Almost nothing. Despite its record, Tehran merited just one mention in 19 pages.

This wasn’t an oversight. The White House didn’t forget to say something substantial about state-sponsored terrorism. It’s just that talking about states that foster and fund the slaughter of innocents is much too inconvenient a truth for the administration.

Oh, ha ha, get it? “Inconvenient Truth,” the Al Gore movie – and Obama is a Democrat too. Big yuks…

To begin, this tells us that former Bushco U.N. representative “Blow ‘Em Up” Bolton also blamed Obama for not attacking Iran, ignoring Bolton’s own “inconvenient truth” that Number 43 nixed such a disastrous enterprise also (Dubya didn’t get much right, but he “found the nut” on that one).

The post from Think Progress also tells us that Bolton’s old boss nixed the sale of “bunker busting” bombs to Israel, the type of which could be used against Iran (another good move, shockingly enough). Unfortunately, that supposed Iran-loving current White House occupant chose not to honor that precedent (here).

On top of that, I give you the following from here…

Something strange is happening in Washington. In August, the Obama administration is expected to announce whether it will keep the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an exiled Iranian group that killed American civilians and officials in the 1970s, on its foreign terrorist organisations (FTO) list.

Known for its cult-like behavior, the MEK (also known as the People's Mujahedin of Iran, PMOI or MKO) fought alongside Saddam Hussein's regime against its own country during the bloody Iran-Iraq war. This is one reason why it has almost no Iranian support, even if it refers to itself as the "most popular resistance group inside Iran" on its official website. It does, however, enjoy the backing of several US heavyweights with high national security credentials.

George W. Bush's attorney general Michael Mukasey has described MEK members as "courageous freedom fighters". President Barack Obama's former national security advisor, General James L. Jones, gave a speech at a MEK conference dominated by non-Iranians. Their events have also been attended by former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge, former NATO supreme commander Wesley Clark and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.

The al Jazeera post also tells us that “In 1979, the MEK also supported the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran.” And further…

..in January, law professor David Cole wrote that Mukasey, Giuliani, (former DHS head Tom) Ridge and (former Bushie) Frances Fragos Townsend could have committed a crime simply by vocally supporting the MEK's cause in Paris. While proving liability is again the issue, the Patriot Act's material support law makes it a felony to support an FTO by engaging "in public advocacy to challenge a group's 'terrorist' designation or even to encourage peaceful avenues for redress of grievances," wrote Cole.

…

MEK supporters' talk of facilitating "democratic change" in Iran through a group that does not have support there recalls memories of the UK-US engineered coup against the government of Mohammad Mossaddegh, who is still revered by Iranians as their first and only democratically-elected prime minister. What resulted was decades of authoritarian rule, from a pro-US but repressive and deeply unpopular monarchy, to a clerical establishment that enforces Iranian independence from foreign control through equally repressive means. This was the US' "blowback", and as the late Chalmers Johnson noted, the term was first used by the CIA in an after-action report about Mossaddegh's 1953 overthrow.

In her book on US-Iran relations, (US foreign policy analyst Barbara) Slavin reports that in 2003 the Iranians offered to exchange some key members of Al Qaeda who had fled from Afghanistan for members of the MEK based at Camp Ashraf in Iraq. Some figures in the Bush administration supported this, but Slavin notes that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said that the deal was blocked by neoconservatives Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith, who thought that the MEK could be used as a force against Iran. A comprehensive peace offer by Iran was likewise scuttled by the neoconservatives in 2003, thereby discrediting the moderates in Iran and facilitating the ascent of the hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

(By the way, I don’t have an update at the moment on MEK’s status on the FTO list.)

So it looks like the MEK has been playing both sides of the aisle, as they say. And it also looks like, in the event that this country attempts military action for real against Iran (makes me hope that our supposed military geniuses brush up on the British Battle of Dunkirk in WWII), MEK would collect the spoils, all in the name of The Now And Forever You Godless Kenyan Marxist Socialist Lovin’ Commie Lu-bu-ruul Global War On Terra! Terra! Terra!

Oh, and by the way, as noted here, Carafano has never let facts get in the way of documenting his delusions, which you can probably attribute to an advanced case of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Finally, it seems that “Goodhair” Perry had another tough night at the Repug Presidential Candidates’ Beauty Pageant (here).

And that makes me recall this particularly preposterous recent opinion column…

…The Washington Post officially hit rock bottom and removed all pretense of being an unbiased newspaper with a truly disgusting front-page story on Texas governor Rick Perry which worked overtime to paint him as a racist by twisting a series of clouded, unrelated, and anonymous partial memories about something which was flat-out totally unrelated to Perry. They sent a team of reporters (one hopes they are using as many reporters to investigate “Fast and Furious” and Solyndra) to Texas and then breathlessly “reported ” -- using over 3,200 words -- that there was a rock on some property once leased by the Perry family which had an offensive word written on it.

The Post acknowledges that the painted rock was there years before Rick Perry walked the land and that he had nothing to do with it being there. Governor Perry then stated that right after his family leased that parcel of land in the early 1980’s and as soon as they saw the rock with the offending word, that his father painted over it immediately.

I know most people know what I’m talking about here, so I won’t add anything else about that (besides, I have bigger issues with Perry than the name on a block in front of a ranch).

To wit, I give you the following (here, in which the feds say Perry’s redistricting plan in TX is discriminatory, and a federal judge apparently agrees).

Also, as noted here…

Duane Buck is one of four men scheduled to die by lethal injection in Texas, where Perry is governor, over the next eight days – an exceptional rate even in this execution-happy state. At Buck's sentencing hearing, the jury that set his punishment was informed by a psychologist that black people had a higher rate of violent behaviour, a statement used by the prosecution as its key argument against giving him an alternative penalty of life imprisonment.

Fortunately, Buck’s execution was halted (and this tells us about Vidor, TX, which had a reputation as a “sundown town,” as in, no blacks on the street after…). And here is still more information on racist names used across southeast Texas.

I don’t know if Rick Perry is a racist or not. Is Texas a racist state? I’ll let you, dear reader, be the judge (and I learned that we in our illustrious commonwealth don’t have room to throw stones about that from the 2008 presidential election).

Did the Washington Post play a game of “gotcha” with Perry on the whole “N-head rock” thing? Yeah, I guess, but as somebody said, politics ain’t beanbag (see John Kerry, 2004). And a supposed “liberal smear” doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the fact that Perry, due to his appalling lack of qualifications (to say nothing of the rest of that motley bunch), has no business campaigning for the most important job in the world.

Tuesday Stuff

(By the way, for those of you keeping score at home, I changed the pithy little quote in the header to something more in the spirit of the "Occupy" protests, not because I'm upset with Joan Ryan for any reason whatsoever. Her great quote came from a column about the Terri Schiavo circus six years ago, and though I'd love to be wrong, I'm not holding out a lot of hope for "thoughtful and rigorous debate" around here.)

The testimony of Anita Hill in the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court then-nominee Clarence Thomas took place 20 years ago today, prompting this item from Cenk Uygur from a related news story earlier this year (Saturday Night Live did a parody of the hearings that I thought was hilarious, back when I still watched the show - my take on Thomas, for what it was worth, was that he had no business even being considered before we even got to Anita Hill)...



...and I think this is an appropriate little selection (I once heard RT do a great cover of this one).

Monday Stuff

Consider this my contribution to help this video (I hope) go "viral" (here...from the "menagerie of malcontents," as a Detroit TV station referred to them)...



...and now for something completely different, as a gang of Brits once said as I recall; RIP Roger Williams.



Update: From the "past is prologue," department, I give you this from Gil Scott-Heron once more (who we lost this year)...ties in a bit to the "Occupy" protests as far as I'm concerned (even though the references are dated, of course...might be just me I guess).



Update 10/11/11: Nice work, Beantown bastards (and in Seattle too).

Monday Mashup (10/10/11)

(Just some random thoughts – I’m getting really fed up with the deification of Steve Jobs now that he’s dead, and I’m more than a little disgusted with the same treatment given to Christopher Hitchens while he’s still alive.)

Continuing, John Harwood of the New York Times wrote the following today (here, on why everybody is mad at Washington and why everybody within the city are mad at each other)…

Intrasquad anger among Democrats, who stand to lose ground in 2012 Senate elections, can be worse.

And as you read this post, you will find no evidence whatsoever to support Harwood’s claim that I highlighted (only his statement at the beginning that “every poll shows it”). And I don't see why I should have to do his research for him.

I don’t really have anything brilliant or interesting to say in response, but I thought I should point that out.

Staying with the Times (and with a similar theme), I think you’d have to go a long way to outdo this bit of jaded corporate media wankery from Jennifer Steinhauer (here, in which she compares the Senate Dems and Repugs to the Sharks and the Jets in “West Side Story,” alleging still more false equivalency)…

WASHINGTON — Of the multitudinous insults that have zinged across the Capitol this year, a taunt most brutal was leveraged by the Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on the Senate floor on Thursday night. He accused the Democratic leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, of “fundamentally turning the Senate into the House.”

Which is particularly hilarious since the party of Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao happens to be in charge there – continuing…

Mr. McConnell’s rage — and its expression roughly akin in this town to comparing the Hope diamond to a Joan Rivers baguette sold on cable TV — stemmed from a last-minute tweaking to the Senate’s intricate rules that prevented Republicans from forcing Democrats to vote on a stream of unrelated amendments to a China currency bill.

Ummm – am I the only one who is utterly confused by this cutesy remark (of course, being a guy, I would think sandwich when I hear about a “Joan Rivers baguette”).

How about if I introduce a little bit of actual reporting to this nonsense?

As noted here (from September a year ago)…

WASHINGTON — A determined Republican stall campaign in the Senate has sidetracked so many of the men and women nominated by President Barack Obama for judgeships that he has put fewer people on the bench than any president since Richard Nixon at a similar point in his first term 40 years ago.

The delaying tactics have proved so successful, despite the Democrats' substantial Senate majority, that fewer than half of Obama's nominees have been confirmed and 102 out of 854 judgeships are vacant.

Forty-seven of those vacancies have been labeled emergencies by the judiciary because of heavy caseloads.

…

White House counsel Bob Bauer and progressive groups squarely blame Republicans.

The Senate GOP is obstructing "confirmations across the board, even forcing noncontroversial nominees who passed committee with overwhelming bipartisan support to wait months for a floor vote," Bauer said.

Marge Baker, executive vice president of the liberal People for the American Way, said that stalling votes on judges is "part and parcel of the general obstruction we're seeing right now."

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has acknowledged that his strategy is partly payback for Democrats' blocking some Bush appointees.

But McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said the responsibility for the lack of confirmations lies with Obama, who nominated just 33 people to judgeships in 2009, and Reid, who controls the Senate calendar.

"We can't confirm what's not there," Stewart said.

But Republican senators have forced postponements of hearings and votes in the Judiciary Committee and used their power under the chamber's rules to block any easy route to full Senate votes.

Also, this tells us that as many as 100 Obama Administration nominees had “secret holds” placed on their nominations as of April 2010 (if I can track down an update, I’ll add it here).

And in keeping with the judicial appointments, this post from last February tells us the following…

Obama must shoulder part of the blame for his administration's relatively slow pace in judicial appointments. But mostly this is a story of Senate dysfunction and the politicization of judicial appointments. It only takes one senator to put a hold on a prospective judge -- and more than a few Republicans are all too eager to get their hands on Obama's appointments.

It's time for them to let go. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky announced in January an agreement to quash some of the procedural tactics that have stalled nominations.

(Oregon Federal Judge Marco) Hernandez made it through, but that's hardly a credit to the Senate. Three appointments over three years to get a judge with impeccable credentials confirmed to the federal bench? That's not advise and consent. That's absurd.

Almost as absurd as New York Times reporter baselessly comparing one of our two bodies of the U.S. Congress to a Broadway musical (sounds like Steinhauer is auditioning for the part of Maureen Dowd’s “mini me” – here is a list of other related posts on this topic).

Further, I have some breaking news – Marc Thiessen is still wrong (here)…

(Attorney General Eric) Holder’s bad advice began almost immediately after Obama took office, when he and White House counsel Greg Craig convinced the president to announce the closure of the prison at Guantanamo Bay by January 2010 — without even examining the feasibility of doing so. Not only did the president suffer the indignity of missing this deadline, public opinion turned against the decision so sharply that Democrats abandoned the president and joined Republicans in voting 90-to-6 in the Senate to block funds for the facility’s closure. Almost three years later, Guantanamo remains open and the administration has given up hope of closing it.

Gee, I gave up trying to count the deadlines that Obama’s predecessor (and Thiessen’s former boss) kept missing on when we would be all done with Number 43’s Not So Excellent Iraq Adventure (more on him later...talk about "indignity").

The next unneeded firestorm came with Holder’s decision to release classified Justice Department memos on the CIA terrorist interrogation program and reopen criminal investigations into the conduct of CIA interrogators. Holder overrode the objections of five CIA directors, including Leon Panetta. According to The Post, “Before his decision to reopen the cases, Holder did not read detailed memos that [career] prosecutors drafted and placed in files to explain their decision to decline prosecutions.” If he had bothered to do so, he could have predicted the eventual outcome: The special prosecutor he appointed came to the same conclusion as the career prosecutors under the Bush administration and found no criminal wrongdoing by the CIA officials involved in the agency’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program. After two years of wasted resources and needless controversy, Holder came up empty.

As noted here from September 2009…

In response to a public campaign by the CIA, the Obama administration has decided to further scale back an already narrow investigation of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) torture during the Bush years that was announced last month by Attorney General Eric Holder.

In announcing the probe, Holder had made clear that it would be limited to CIA agents whose torture of alleged terrorists went beyond the bounds laid down by Bush administration directives. It would target neither the Justice Department lawyers who drew up findings providing a pseudo-legal justification for waterboarding, hanging prisoners from walls, placing them in boxes for hours on end, and similar crimes, nor the top Bush administration officials who ordered and oversaw such practices.

The CIA—including the current director and Obama appointee, Leon Panetta—and former Bush administration officials, led by former Vice President Dick Cheney, have denounced Holder’s token probe, claiming that it will hamstring US intelligence operations and give aid and comfort to the terrorists.

Oh, and by the way, as noted here (under the heading of “actions have consequences”), the two Americans released by Iran last month after their illegal captivity, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, said that their captors used the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and the secret CIA prisons as an excuse for their maltreatment (yes, we know what Iran is, but had we not engaged in these odious practices – which also did not, and do not, yield actionable intelligence – we would have denied the Iranians of a propaganda tool).

Also, leave it to the formerly Moonie Times to concoct the following (here)…

The Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill was supposed to protect consumers. Not surprisingly, this “protection” means consumers are going to be nickel-and-dimed to death with brand-new banking fees.

Blame Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, for inserting an amendment into that crony-capitalist law to limit debit interchange fees that large banks (those with more than $10 billion in assets) can charge. Banks typically have provided debit cards free to consumers, and often included reward programs. Interchange fees paid by merchants made this possible. Now that the law has taken hold, the average fee has gone from about 44 cents per transaction to 21 cents. That might not sound like much, but in the first full week the cap was in effect, one of the largest processors in the country, Heartland Payment Systems, returned almost $1.8 million to the merchants in its network.

This adds up to big money. Interchange fees amount to about $16 billion a year for banks, and the Durbin Amendment is expected to cost banks $6.6 billion in revenue, which comes on top of a $5.6 billion loss from earlier restrictions on overdraft fees. Having lost a large chunk of their revenue, the big banks are going to look for other ways to recover.

As Think Progress tells us here, "it’s unclear how (conservatives) thinks a law that hasn’t even been fully implemented could already be killing one of the most powerful industries in the country" (and get a load of how our supposed financial geniuses will be forced to "recover" after reaping double-digit-percentage profit increases in the second quarter).

Besides, as noted here (from Dean Baker at the Center for Economic and Policy Research)…

Debit cards have a cost; it makes sense to have the people who benefit from using them pay the cost. Under the former system, cash customers effectively were being taxed so that banks could allow people to use debit cards for free. Under the new system, the cost is transparent and people could decide for themselves whether they want to pay it. Market supporters should prefer the current system. [E-mail to Media Matters, 9/30/11]

As noted here, though, the Washington Times should “clean its own glass house” on the issue of financial credibility before it starts throwing stones elsewhere.

Finally, I give you the following truly noxious item…

DALLAS — George W. Bush says that after eight years in the White House, he's happy to be back home in Texas and out of the spotlight.

But the former commander-in-chief tells The Associated Press there's one aspect of his presidency he still misses: interaction with U.S. troops. And Bush, who sent them to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, says that despite his desire to remain largely out of the public eye, he wants to make sure veterans and military members know they still have his support.

"I was a little concerned that our veterans don't think that I still respect them and care for them a lot," Bush told the AP. He added later, "There's nothing as courageous in my judgment as someone who had a leg blown off in combat overcoming the difficulties."

Bush is hosting next week's Warrior Open golf tournament in suburban Dallas, an event featuring members of the U.S. Armed Forces wounded while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, including those who lost limbs and suffered brain injuries. Bush joined more than a dozen wounded military members in the Warrior 100 - a 62-mile mountain bike ride he hosted in West Texas last spring.

I really shouldn’t give Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History credit for anything here, but I suppose what he’s doing is literally better than nothing.

But as far as supposedly “supporting the troops” is concerned, let’s recall the following from here (about Jim Nicholson, Number 43’s former head of the VA, as reported by Joe Conason)…

In contrast to the four most recent VA heads--who had previously held leadership positions with Disabled American Veterans, the Department of Defense, a state-level VA department, and VA itself--Jim Nicholson brings a refreshing lack of experience to veterans' advocacy (note: this is a decidedly tongue-in-cheek remark...)

In Bush's first term, Nicholson was rewarded with the ambassadorship to the Holy See. But he traded vespers for vets last February, joining his brother John, who was already head of the National Cemetery Administration. In June (2005), he admitted that VA had underestimated the number of veterans who would be seeking medical treatment this year by nearly 80,000 because it had failed to take into account the surge in enrollment by veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts--13,700 of whom have suffered blown-off limbs, bullet wounds, and the like. The miscalculation was a surprise to Congress, since Nicholson had written on April 5: "I can assure you that VA does not need [additional money] to continue to provide timely, quality service." Republican House Appropriations Committee Chair Jerry Lewis said VA's failure to identify the problem and notify Congress earlier "borders on stupidity."

Oh, and did I point out that about 26 million Social Security numbers of our veterans somehow went missing, more or less, around Memorial Day Weekend in 2006, creating a rather significant data breach?

And do you want more evidence as to how much Former President Nutball “supported the troops?” As Defense Secretary Robert Gates stated here in 2009, the “stop-loss” policy under Bushco, which basically amounted to a back-door draft, constituted “breaking faith” with our men and women in uniform.

I guess this is what you would expect from a guy who said here he was envious of our service people because he thought war was “romantic” (and based on this, I would say that those who were sent off to war are telling Former Commander Codpiece what they think of his “support”).

Update: Uh, yep.