If there is one thing conservatives and Republicans should credit Rachel Maddow for, it's her ability in having absolutely no problem correcting the record when shown that she was wrong in her reporting after it's brought to her attention. But what they should fear is that they'd better be 100% right and not just base their accusation of slander on a technicality. Because if she finds that she's really right, she will fuck. Your. Shit. Up. Watch as she lays down the hammer on Republican Senator and climate change denier James Inhofe, who's office dared to complain of inaccurate reporting on Inhofe.
NY Times: Charlie Wilson, the former congressman from Texas whose funding of Afghanistan's resistance to the Soviet Union was chronicled in the movie ''Charlie Wilson's War,'' died Wednesday. He was 76.
Wilson died at Memorial Medical Center-Lufkin after he started having difficulty breathing while attending a meeting in the eastern Texas town where he lived, said hospital spokeswoman Yana Ogletree. Wilson was pronounced dead on arrival, and the preliminary cause of death was cardiopulmonary arrest, she said.
I don't know if I understand this even as a political tactic.
Yesterday, House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were invited to the White house to speak with President Obama on finding a way forward with the jobs bill, the economy and the Health Care bill. And immediately after leaving the White House, while still on the White House lawn, basically told the President to go fuck himself.
It's like having a little kid you've told not to touch the crystal vase on the mantle and he IMMEDIATELY goes and touches the vase, breaks it and then when asked why he did the exact opposite of what you just asked, responds "...I don't know." And Boehner still moaning about the amount of pages in any particular bill is just infuriating.
It's this obstructionism being reverberated in the echo chamber that is Fox News which causes so much confusion and disinformation to have Republicans and conservatives frothing at the mouth when it comes to anything, ANYTHING that may be critical of their party.
Take for example the comments section in Oliver Willis' blog post about the "Miss Me Yet?" George bush billboard in Wyoming.
"Anyone else notice that the home foreclosures started the same year the Democrats took over Congress? " As if there was no precursor for this problem. If they started the same year, that means the problem happened beforehand.
"one last thing it wasnt a surplus @ the end of clintons term he was .8% over GDP" Uh, yeah. "Over" means surplus. "Under" means deficit.
"In the current wars we are fighting – you know the ones that BO was going to stop? – BO has had the most US soldiers killed by a wide margin." Really? Seven years in Iraq and Afghanistan and Obama has already caused more military dead? Fine. Pull them out. But then he would be weak on national security, right?
"All informed and intelligent people realize that W will go down in history as one of the best presidents we have ever had the good fortune to enjoy." ...How can you argue with someone who truly believes that?
And my personal favorite: "Bush inherited 911 but I never heard him whine or blame Clinton (even though Clinton and Gore played patty-cake with Al-Qaeda for years)."
Bush inherited 9/11. But we all know where that came from.
And there is the crux of the problem. You can't have a reasoned debate or policy argument when the other side doesn't even agree on the facts. Solid, documented, hard facts. If they believe President Obama is tripling the debt in his first year, If they believe more soldiers have been killed under Obama's first year than Bush's eight years, if they believe Bush inherited 9/11, for God's sake, then there's no sense in debating them because they will refuse to believe the truth even when shown documented proof. Even simple things like, oh, let's say, a calendar!
The the current crop on the GOP side in Congress is no different. Rachel Maddow sums it up nicely here.
Well, it finally started snowing here in New York City, and although it's predicted to be pretty bad (12"-18" and wind gusts of up to 50 MPH) I'm kind of surprised by the panicky reaction I've been witnessing. It's like some have never seen snow before!
Speaking of which, this is probably my favorite weatherman forecast EVER.
NY Times: Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, a gruff ex-Marine who was one of the most hawkish Democrats in Congress but who became an outspoken critic of the Iraq war, died on Monday in Arlington, Va. He was 77.
He died while under treatment for complications of gallbladder surgery, his office said.
The first Vietnam veteran to serve in Congress, Mr. Murtha voted in 2002 to authorize use of military force in Iraq. But he evolved into a leading foe of the war as it was conducted under the administration of President George W. Bush.
From Frank Rich: The arguments for preserving “don’t ask” have long been blatantly groundless. McCain — who said in 2006 that he would favor repealing the law if military leaders ever did — didn’t even bother to offer a logical explanation for his mortifying flip-flop last week. He instead huffed that the 1993 “don’t ask” law should remain unchanged as long as any war is going on (which would be in perpetuity, given Afghanistan). Colin Powell strafed him just hours later,when he announced that changed “attitudes and circumstances” over the past 17 years have led him to agree with Mullen. McCain is even out of step with his own family’s values. Both his wife, Cindy, and his daughter Meghan have posed for the current California ad campaign explicitly labeling opposition to same-sex marriage as hate.
No wonder Palin continues to criticize President Obama for using a teleprompter. He hasn't mastered the fine art of scribbling on his body. I guess because he never had to.
Even in my sleep I can tell you that "Drill, Baby, Drill!", tax cuts and smaller government are the cornerstone talking points of the GOP and conservatives. But Sarah Palin needs to write them down on the palm of her hand like a high schooler with crib notes to get through an hour with an adoring crowd. She's eventually going to get sent to the Principal's office.
Update (1:45pm): A commenter at another blog posted the following regarding this story: "I honest-to-God do not get what the big deal is about this. You folks MAKE her a big deal with all the attention you pay her." ...to which I felt a response was needed.
You've got to be kidding. The "big deal" is that [Sarah Palin] is who the wingnuts have chosen to be their leader, and while she criticizes the president for using a teleprompter that presidents have been using for the last 30+ yearsincluding [Ronald] Reagan, who she mentioned at least a dozen times last night, [Palin]'s acting like a high school cheerleader writing down talking points on the palm of her hand (that everyone else can recite in their sleep) so she doesn't fail her pop quiz even though she knew the questions beforehand.
You don't think that hypocrisy has to be called out?!
Adding... Margaret Carlson of Bloomberg News bet wrong in her last Countdown appearance when she said of the whole "retarded" issue, "I'm gonna go out on a limb here - I think because it is a matter of the heart for her, I don't think she wears this child on her sleeve... I bet that Rush Limbaugh quickly apologizes himself knowing that she will have to treat him the same way."
... in which Jon Stewart reveals who the real pinhead is. What I don't understand is why Bill-O (to his credit) would allow the full version of the interview to be posted online for an easy comparison of what actually made the show and further shows his thin skin. The aired interview was more heavily edited than a James O'Keefe ACORN video.
Martha Johnson is voted in UNANIMOUSLY, 96-0, after a political waiting game.
The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to confirm Martha N. Johnson as head of the General Services Administration, nearly 10 months after she was first nominated to head the federal agency.
Upon assuming office, Johnson "will become the first permanent Administrator of the General Services Administration in nearly two years."
Earlier in 2009, Johnson was unanimously approved by members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. But a single senator, Republican Kit Bond from Missouri, has used his symbolic 'privilege' to hold up consideration of Johnson's nomination since last summer. The delay was meant to pressure GSA administrators to approve a $175 million federal building project in Kansas City.
Then - John McCain, October, 2006:"The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, 'Senator, we ought to change the policy,' then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates: ...said Tuesday that he supports President Obama's decision to seek the repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy prohibiting gays from serving openly in the military and has appointed a "high-level working group" to figure out how to do it.
..."I fully support the president's decision," Gates said. "The question before us is not whether the military prepares to make this change, but how we ... best prepare for it. We have received our orders from the commander in chief and we are moving out accordingly."
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen: "I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy that forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens," Mullen said. "For me, personally, it comes down to integrity -- theirs as individuals and ours as an institution."
And now what does the Arizona maverick, who may be fighting for his political life this November, have to say about it?
McCain declared himself "disappointed" in the testimony. "At this moment of immense hardship for our armed services, we should not be seeking to overturn the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy," he said bluntly, before describing it as "imperfect but effective."
"If the price of certainty is essentially for us to adopt the exact same proposals that were in place for eight years leading up to the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression -- we don't tinker with health care, let the insurance companies do what they want, we don't put in place any insurance reforms, we don't mess with the banks, let them keep on doing what they're doing now because we don't want to stir up Wall Street -- the result is going to be the same. I don't know why we would expect a different outcome pursuing the exact same policy that got us into this fix in the first place."
...if our response ends up being, you know, because we don't want to -- we don't want to stir things up here, we're just going to do the same thing that was being done before, then I don't know what differentiates us from the other guys. And I don't know why people would say, boy, we really want to make sure that those Democrats are in Washington fighting for us."
Nothing shows human compassion, understanding the rule of law and foreign affairs more than an elected official who is the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee making waterboarding jokes.
On foreign affairs, I understand what Guantanamo has come to mean in world opinion. But we can fix that, without closing Guantanamo.
All we have to do is change its name. How about calling it the Richard B. Cheney Resort and Rehabilitation Spa?
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