A Blue View

Jon Stewart, The Best Journalist On TV, Follows The Ground-Zero Mosque Money ... Right Back To Fox News

If only the Democrats were as smart, and could communicate as brilliantly as Jon and team.

First, they satirize Fox's, and the Right's, guilt by association reasoning:

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Extremist Makeover - Homeland Edition
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Then, they cleverly devastate Fox's duplicitious fear mongering with an "either they're evil or stupid" bit:

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Jon Stewart On The GOP & Their Shakedown Charge

Starting at about 2:30 minutes in ...

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Welcome To Arizona (cartoon)

 

Arizona In 2010 Really Does Think It Is Alabama In 1954

The Lede:

Just weeks after adopting a controversial immigration law denounced as racist by its opponents, Arizona has adopted a new measure restricting what can be taught in ethnic studies classes in the state’s public schools.

The new law, which suggests that students are “taught to resent or hate other races” in such courses, was promoted by opponents of a Tucson school district program devoted to the study of Mexican-American history and culture.

When the measure was signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer on Tuesday, the Arizona Daily Star explained:

State schools chief Tom Horne, a Republican running for attorney general, says the district’s ethnic studies program promotes “ethnic chauvinism” and racial resentment toward whites.

One provision of House Bill 2281, passed last month by the state Legislature, says that Arizona’s government:

Prohibits a school district or charter school from including in its program of instruction any courses or classes that:

•Promote the overthrow of the United States government.

•Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.

•Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.

•Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.

Judy Burns, the president of the Tucson district’s governing board, told the Los Angeles Times the measure was misguided because, “We don’t teach all those ugly things they think we’re teaching.”

Mr. Horne, the state’s superintendent of public instruction, told reporters on Wednesday that he wanted to learn more about the Tucson Unified School District’s courses in African-American studies, Native American studies and Asian studies. But, the Arizona Daily Star reported, “He said he felt he knew enough about Mexican-American studies and intends to go after” the district when the new law comes into force in December.

Mr. Horne also showed reporters a photograph of what he said was “a protest against my bill by students and teachers at Tucson High School and, as you can see, they are dressed up as revolutionaries.”

The same day Mr. Horne told NPR:

One of the functions of the public schools is to take kids of different backgrounds and teach them to treat each other as individuals. And this ethnic studies program does the opposite. It divides kids up by race.

In Mr. Horne’s run for state attorney general he has made his fight against Mexican-American studies a focus. The main page of his campaign Web site is now almost entirely devoted to trumpeting his efforts “to ban ethnic studies.”

According to The Arizona Daily Star, Mr. Horne’s battle against the Tucson district’s Mexican-American studies program “goes back to 2007, when activist Dolores Huerta spoke at Tucson High and told students that Republicans hate Latinos.” When Mr. Horne sought to counter this message by bringing Margaret Garcia Dugan, a Latina Republican who is his deputy, to speak at the school, “students stood up, turned their backs to her and put their fists in the air.”

Mr. Horne and Ms. Garcia Dugan told the Daily Star on Wednesday “that they had never seen such disrespect from students to a speaker, and they firmly believed that the students didn’t learn to be rude at home, but in the classroom.”

Updated | 8:02 p.m. In a new post, Justin Elliot of Talking Points Memo has more on Tom Horne and the new law.

Obama Jokes About The GOP's & Media's Reaction To Health Reform Passage

Definitely worth watching both because it's amusing and because it again makes clear that Obama operates on a longer time frame than his opponents and the media:

The GOP's Failed Strategy (cartoon)

Weiner To O'Reilly: "You gotta stop making stuff up about the bill"

"Patriot" & GOP Reaction To Health Reform (Cartoons)

The Right Begins To Eat Its Own

Fearing donor anger, David Frum's criticism of the GOP ("The GOP's Waterloo") was apparently a bit too much to take:

Three days after calling health-care reform a debacle for Republicans, David Frum was forced out of his job at the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday.

The ouster also came one day after a harsh Wall Street Journal editorial ripped the former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, saying he "now makes his living as the media's go-to basher of fellow Republicans" and accusing him of "peddling bad revisionist history."

Frum made clear, in a letter to AEI President Arthur C. Brooks, that his departure after seven years as a resident fellow at the conservative think tank was not voluntary. "I have had many fruitful years at the American Enterprise Institute," he wrote, "and I do regret this abrupt and unexpected conclusion of our relationship."

In a brief interview, Frum said "there was no suggestion by AEI" that his sharp criticism of the GOP's health-care strategy was the reason for his dismissal. He declined to say what Brooks told him.

"They invited me to remain associated with AEI on a non-salaried basis," Frum said, and he declined ...

Brooks said in a statement that while AEI will not discuss personnel matters, "David Frum is a truly original thinker and we are proud to have been associated with him for the last seven years. His decision to leave in no way diminishes our respect for him."

Bruce Bartlett, another conservative scholar who has been at odds with the right, wrote that Frum told him AEI staffers "had been ordered not to speak to the media" about health care "because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do. . . . The donor community is only interested in financing organizations that parrot the party line."

Are The Holocaust Musuem, IRS & Pentagon Murderous Attacks The Logical Extension Of Extreme Right Wing Anger Against The Feds?

Wash Post:

The setting was seemingly random: an outer gate at the Pentagon at evening rush hour. But John Patrick Bedell's violent rampage Thursday made him only the latest in the growing ranks of the disaffected and disturbed to take aim at a symbol of official Washington.

The shooting contained jarring echoes of other recent attacks, from last month's plane crash at an IRS building in Texas to the shooting last June of a museum guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in the District. Although the circumstances differ greatly, all were acts of rage by men who blamed their personal misfortunes on what they perceived to be sinister forces within the government.

All three also appear to have drawn ideological nourishment from the same well: online communities of like-minded people who validate and amplify extreme views. Today, more than in recent years, such communities are tapping into a broad undercurrent of anti-government discontent fueled by economic recession, joblessness and concern over the growing federal deficit, according to experts who have studied the phenomenon.

For Bedell and others like him, Washington and its institutions are an irresistible target -- the "ultimate symbol of power for the powerless," said Jerrold Post, a professor of political psychology at George Washington University.

"We've always had individuals who strike out at the giant 'system' when they're feeling a sense of powerlessness and insignificance," said Post, author of "Political Paranoia: The Psychopolitics of Hatred," a book on extremist movements. "Now we see an alarming tendency in which these same individuals can find substantiation online for almost any point of view."

Researchers who track violent groups see Bedell's rampage as a distorted manifestation of the anti-Washington view that has driven the rise of right-wing militias. A report last week by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that the number of such organizations jumped 244 percent since the election of President Obama, from 149 groups to 512, including 127 militias. At the same time, the number of extremist attacks in the United States that resulted in deaths has fallen since the 1990s.

White House officials declined to comment for the record about increased militia activity and noted that the two most recent incidents, at the Pentagon and in Austin, were perpetrated by men who had specific gripes with the government that appeared to be unrelated to the president personally.

But current and former officials privately acknowledge that the toxic political climate has heightened concerns about increased attacks. "Are we headed into a climate similar to Oklahoma City? It isn't clear," said one former administration official, referring to the 1995 attack on a federal building that killed 168 people.

A similar surge in militias and hate groups occurred during the mid-1990s, but this time the groups are interlinked to a much greater degree by the Web and mainstream radio and TV talk shows that echo many of the same viewpoints, said Mark Potok, author of the Southern Poverty Law Center report.

"People are bringing completely groundless conspiracy theories into the mainstream, and they are doing it for purely opportunistic reasons," Potok said. "To some, it may be only a ratings game, but the danger is that some people actually believe these tall tales and a few will actually act on them."

Yet the motivations for the attacks differ greatly. Joseph Stack, who flew a small plane into an IRS building in Austin, was inspired in part by the anti-tax movement. Bedell's anti-government views were more libertarian, and some were from the radical left, such as his belief that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were a U.S. government conspiracy. Conservative bloggers Friday sought to label Bedell as leftist extremist, noting his online tirades against President George W. Bush's administration.

"Tea party" leaders reject the notion that their movement fosters violence. "It is extremely unfortunate that certain elements are trying to malign, distort and misrepresent a movement that supports fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free markets," said Jenny Beth Martin, a national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots.

Although concern about anti-government groups has grown, the number of ideologically motivated attacks by extremists that led to deaths in the United States has not.

RNC Director, Not A "low-level staffer," Behind Tea Party Style Fundraising Pitch

In case you missed the story about the RNC's repugnant, Tea Party style pitch, you can read about it here.

From the Wash Post:

In the three days since the leak of a confidential and crude Republican fundraising pitch, the party's leaders have scrambled to distance themselves from the 72-page PowerPoint depiction of President Obama as a socialist Joker -- and from the man behind it. Michael S. Steele, the Republican National Committee chairman, declared the pitch inappropriate and said it was the work of a "staffer."

But Rob Bickhart, who presented the document during a retreat at a Florida resort, is no low-level staffer.

He's the RNC's finance director -- and a veteran operative in party politics at the national level. During a career that spans more than 30 years, he has served in senior jobs in the Reagan administration, the Senate and the regional transit authority in Philadelphia. In between, he has raised piles of cash for campaigns and earned lucrative fees as a hospital lobbyist.

When Steele hired Bickhart, 53, in May, he praised "his political savvy, extensive campaign experience and rock-solid reputation as a fundraiser" as "indispensable assets" for a party hungry to take back power in the Senate and the House.

Since then, the RNC has paid Bickhart and a consultancy he owns $370,000, according to Federal Election Committee records. At the RNC's winter retreat last month in Hawaii, Bickhart gave several presentations, including one to reporters on the impact of the Supreme Court decision overturning a key law that restricted corporate giving.

RNC Taken Over By "fear-mongering lunatic fringe"

Wash Post:

Democrats on Wednesday sharply criticized a Republican National Committee fundraising document that caricatured President Obama as the Joker, while Chairman Michael S. Steele sought to distance himself from it.

Also depicted were House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.), presented as Cruella de Vil and Scooby-Doo, respectively. The three Democratic leaders were gathered under the heading "The Evil Empire."

The cartoonish images were part of a 72-page PowerPoint presentation assembled for potential campaign donors and fundraisers. The document was obtained by Politico after being left at a Florida hotel where the Republicans had gathered Feb. 18.

The presentation also outlined how donors will be encouraged to give to Republicans at a time when the party holds neither the White House nor Congress: "Save the country from trending toward Socialism!"

It cites "fear" and "extreme negative feelings toward existing administration" as reasons why donors might contribute to the GOP.

Said Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse: "If you had any doubt, any doubt whatsoever, that the Republican Party has been taken over by the fear-mongering lunatic fringe, those doubts were erased today." He added, "Republicans across the country have cheered on crowds where these very images appeared."

Steele did not attend the presentation in Boca Grande, Fla., and had not been aware of the document, spokesman Doug Heye said. "Fundraising documents are often controversial. Obviously, the chairman disagrees with the language and finds the use of such imagery to be unacceptable," Heye said in a statement. "It will not be used by the Republican National Committee -- in any capacity -- in the future."

Raynard Jackson, a GOP activist who has worked to attract blacks and other minority members to the party, was outraged by word of the presentation.

"This is just beyond the pale," he said. "And the best we can get is Michael Steele issuing a statement through a spokesman? And they wonder why they can't get minorities, especially black people, involved in the party?"

Jonathan Chait reacts:

The Republican National Committee drew up a memo advising its top-fundraisers how to appeal to potential donors. Unfortunately for them, one member left a copy laying around a bar where a Democratic found it and leaked it to Politico.

Apparently, the party is under no illusions about what motivates its base:

The small donors who are the targets of direct marketing are described under the heading “Visceral Giving.” Their motivations are listed as “fear;” “Extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration;” and “Reactionary.”

Major donors, by contrast, are treated in a column headed “Calculated Giving.”

Their motivations include: “Peer to Peer Pressure”; “access”; and “Ego-Driven.”

So, let's see, you've got your paranoids, your reactionaries, your corrupt greedheads, your spineless cowards, and your all-around arrogant jerks. What, no category for "racists," "repressed self-hating gays," "the terminally heartless" and "philandering televangelists"? I thought they were going to hit every single Republican stereotype.

Why It's Hard Not To Be Disgusted By The Congressional GOP

Here is the so far successful GOP formula for scuttling any health care reform: focus on relatively small details, lie about them in a way that gains you politically and then smear the whole bill with that distorted brush. Here's an example:

Broad brush smear: the whole bill is a government takeover of health care.

The lie that's the basis for the smear: the government would set standards for the insurance policies all Americans can buy

The first truth: the Secretary of HHS would establish minimum standards for the policies that would be sold in the exchange to a small minority of Americans, the < 10% who do NOT get their insurance through work. The vast majority who get theirs through the private market (eg, through work) would be uneffected. 

The second truth: even if one pretended for a moment that the GOP was right and this was a government take over of health care payers, there is nothing in the bill, not even one tiny provision that can be lied about and puffed up into something bigger, that can be construed as a take over of health care providers.  All along, the focus has been on the insurers, not the doctors and hospitals that most Americans think of when they hear "government takeover of health care." It does seem that fear mongering to induce anger is a GOP specialty.

Here's Paul Krugman with more GOP distortions:

What was nonetheless revealing about the meeting was the fact that Republicans — who had weeks to prepare for this particular event, and have been campaigning against reform for a year — didn’t bother making a case that could withstand even minimal fact-checking.

It was obvious how things would go as soon as the first Republican speaker, Senator Lamar Alexander, delivered his remarks. He was presumably chosen because he’s folksy and likable and could make his party’s position sound reasonable. But right off the bat he delivered a whopper, asserting that under the Democratic plan, “for millions of Americans, premiums will go up.”

Wow. I guess you could say that he wasn’t technically lying, since the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Senate Democrats’ plan does say that average payments for insurance would go up. But it also makes it clear that this would happen only because people would buy more and better coverage. The “price of a given amount of insurance coverage” would fall, not rise — and the actual cost to many Americans would fall sharply thanks to federal aid.

His fib on premiums was quickly followed by a fib on process. Democrats, having already passed a health bill with 60 votes in the Senate, now plan to use a simple majority vote to modify some of the numbers, a process known as reconciliation. Mr. Alexander declared that reconciliation has “never been used for something like this.” Well, I don’t know what “like this” means, but reconciliation has, in fact, been used for previous health reforms — and was used to push through both of the Bush tax cuts at a budget cost of $1.8 trillion, twice the bill for health reform.

"Truth And Reconciliation"

Jonathan Chait calls out the GOP hypocrisy on reconciliation:

Republicans have been working very hard to portray any use of budget reconciliation to amend budgetary features of the health care bill as some unprecedented assault upon minority rights. Here, for instance, is Michael Gerson:

[A] reconciliation strategy would both insult House and Senate Republicans and motivate them for future fights. The minority would not only be defeated on health reform but its rights would be permanently diminished -- a development that would certainly be turned against Democrats when they lose their majority. Each side would have an excuse for decades of bitterness, creating a kind of political karma in which angry spirits are reincarnated again and again, to fight the same battles and suffer the same wounds.

If only we had this sensitive soul around in 2001 when the Bush administration used reconciliation to push through a massive, regressive tax cut! Oh, wait, we did.

Anyway, if you want to read an informed take on the history of using budget reconciliation for health care reform, look at today's report by NPR's Julie Rovner. It documents how reconciliation has been used very frequently for major health care changes. ("In fact, the way in which virtually all of health reform, with very, very limited exceptions, has happened over the past 30 years has been the reconciliation process," says Sara Rosenbaum, who chairs the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University.) It's kind of amazing that nobody has done this story before.

The NY Times provides additional examples of the GOP's frequent use of reconciliation. Here's one my favorites: 72% of the time that reconciliation has been used, it has been used by the GOP (16 out of 22 times).

"She was prepared to lay down her life to protect [the Constitution] from the likes of Mr. Obama. 'I would not hesitate,' she said, perfectly calm."

A terrifying, must read report from the NY Times:

The Tea Party movement has become a platform for conservative populist discontent, a force in Republican politics for revival, as it was in the Massachusetts Senate election, or for division. But it is also about the profound private transformation of people like Mrs. Stout, people who not long ago were not especially interested in politics, yet now say they are bracing for tyranny.

These people are part of a significant undercurrent within the Tea Party movement that has less in common with the Republican Party than with the Patriot movement, a brand of politics historically associated with libertarians, militia groups, anti-immigration advocates and those who argue for the abolition of the Federal Reserve.

Urged on by conservative commentators, waves of newly minted activists are turning to once-obscure books and Web sites and discovering a set of ideas long dismissed as the preserve of conspiracy theorists, interviews conducted across the country over several months show. In this view, Mr. Obama and many of his predecessors (including George W. Bush) have deliberately undermined the Constitution and free enterprise for the benefit of a shadowy international network of wealthy elites.

Loose alliances like Friends for Liberty are popping up in many cities, forming hybrid entities of Tea Parties and groups rooted in the Patriot ethos. These coalitions are not content with simply making the Republican Party more conservative. They have a larger goal — a political reordering that would drastically shrink the federal government and sweep away not just Mr. Obama, but much of the Republican establishment, starting with Senator John McCain.

In many regions, including here in the inland Northwest, tense struggles have erupted over whether the Republican apparatus will co-opt these new coalitions or vice versa. Tea Party supporters are already singling out Republican candidates who they claim have “aided and abetted” what they call the slide to tyranny: Mark Steven Kirk, a candidate for the Senate from Illinois, for supporting global warming legislation; Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, who is seeking a Senate seat, for supporting stimulus spending; and Meg Whitman, a candidate for governor in California, for saying she was a “big fan” of Van Jones, once Mr. Obama’s “green jobs czar.”

During a recent meeting with Congressional Republicans, Mr. Obama acknowledged the potency of these attacks when he complained that depicting him as a would-be despot was complicating efforts to find bipartisan solutions.

“The fact of the matter is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party,” Mr. Obama said. “You’ve given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you’ve been telling your constituents is, ‘This guy’s doing all kinds of crazy stuff that is going to destroy America.’ ”

The ebbs and flows of the Tea Party ferment are hardly uniform. It is an amorphous, factionalized uprising with no clear leadership and no centralized structure. Not everyone flocking to the Tea Party movement is worried about dictatorship. Some have a basic aversion to big government, or Mr. Obama, or progressives in general. What’s more, some Tea Party groups are essentially appendages of the local Republican Party.

But most are not. They are frequently led by political neophytes who prize independence and tell strikingly similar stories of having been awakened by the recession. Their families upended by lost jobs, foreclosed homes and depleted retirement funds, they said they wanted to know why it happened and whom to blame.

That is often the point when Tea Party supporters say they began listening to Glenn Beck. With his guidance, they explored the Federalist Papers, exposés on the Federal Reserve, the work of Ayn Rand and George Orwell. Some went to constitutional seminars. Online, they discovered radical critiques of Washington on Web sites like ResistNet.com (“Home of the Patriotic Resistance”) and Infowars.com (“Because there is a war on for your mind.”).

Many describe emerging from their research as if reborn to a new reality. Some have gone so far as to stock up on ammunition, gold and survival food in anticipation of the worst. For others, though, transformation seems to amount to trying on a new ideological outfit — embracing the rhetoric and buying the books ...

their vision of the federal government is frequently at odds with the one that both parties have constructed. Tea Party gatherings are full of people who say they would do away with the Federal Reserve, the federal income tax and countless agencies, not to mention bailouts and stimulus packages. Nor is it unusual to hear calls to eliminate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. A remarkable number say this despite having recently lost jobs or health coverage. Some of the prescriptions they are debating — secession, tax boycotts, states “nullifying” federal laws, forming citizen militias — are outside the mainstream, too.

At a recent meeting of the Sandpoint Tea Party, Mrs. Stout presided with brisk efficiency until a member interrupted with urgent news. Because of the stimulus bill, he insisted, private medical records were being shipped to federal bureaucrats. A woman said her doctor had told her the same thing. There were gasps of rage. Everyone already viewed health reform as a ruse to control their medical choices and drive them into the grip of insurance conglomerates. Debate erupted. Could state medical authorities intervene? Should they call Congress?

As the meeting ended, Carolyn L. Whaley, 76, held up her copy of the Constitution. She carries it everywhere, she explained, and she was prepared to lay down her life to protect it from the likes of Mr. Obama.

“I would not hesitate,” she said, perfectly calm.

<Continue reading.>

GOP Obstructionism: Another Clear Example Of How The GOP Rejects Their Own Ideas When Obama Agrees To Them

NY Times:

John Walker Lindh and David Hicks were both young Muslim converts who traveled to Afghanistan to join the Taliban and were captured there in 2001 by American troops. But then their cases diverged — in ways that might surprise anyone following the fierce political debate over how the Obama administration should treat terrorism suspects.

Bush administration officials decided to charge Mr. Lindh, an American, in the civilian criminal justice system. He was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison and will not get out until at least 2019.

Mr. Hicks, an Australian, was treated as an enemy combatant — the approach now pressed by President Obama’s Republican critics. He went before a military commission at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and got a seven-year sentence with all but nine months suspended. He is already free.

The Dec. 25 arrest of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, has reignited an old argument over how to treat terrorism suspects. Republican critics have denounced the decision to charge Mr. Abdulmutallab criminally, read him his rights and give him a lawyer. He was a combatant in Al Qaeda’s war on the United States, critics say, and should have been treated accordingly.

But the assumptions behind the criticism — that the military approach will gain more intelligence, avoid the meddling of government-paid defense lawyers and lock away a convicted terrorist for a longer sentence — are undercut by the record since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In eight years, the Bush administration said it had obtained at least 319 convictions in “terrorism or terrorism-related” cases in the civilian justice system, according to a Justice Department budget document. A study by the Center on Law and Security at New York University found convictions in nearly 9 of 10 cases, with a 16-year average sentence for those convicted of terrorism.

Only two accused terrorists arrested in the United States, Ali al-Marri and Jose Padilla, were moved temporarily into the military system. But after legal challenges by the lawyers supplied to all detainees who face military justice, the Bush administration moved both cases back to civilian courts, where Mr. Padilla was sentenced to 17 years in prison and Mr. Marri to 8 years.

Meanwhile, at Guantánamo, just three men were convicted by military commissions, largely because the tribunals drew countless legal challenges. Two of the three men convicted, including Mr. Hicks, are now free.

Robert M. Chesney, an expert on national security law at the University of Texas, said the attacks on the Obama administration’s handling of Mr. Abdulmutallab were “mired in misinformation, some of it willful.”

Mr. Chesney said the Republicans were largely to blame for what he called “a bizarre public discussion that is 90 percent politics and 10 percent substance,” since they never complained when the Bush administration handled terrorism cases the same way. But he said the Obama administration might have invited the attacks by itself applying partisan spin to security.

DADT Cartoon

 

GOP Politicians "are going out there, they are unknowing of the facts, and they are making charges and allegations that are not anchored in reality”

NY Times:

The White House pushed back Sunday against Republican criticism of its approach to terrorism, calling it “not anchored in reality” as a national security debate that was largely muted in recent years roared back to center stage with an angry intensity.

After a week of sustained attacks led by former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska and a host of Congressional Republicans, President Obama and his aides argued that they were handling terror suspects much as the previous administration did, dismissing Republican complaints as politically motivated.

“The most important thing for the public to understand is we’re not handling any of these cases any different than the Bush administration handled them all through 9/11,” Mr. Obama told CBS News on Sunday. “They prosecuted 190 folks in these Article Three courts,” he added, referring to civilian courts. “Got convictions. And those folks are in maximum security prisons right now. And there have been no escapes.”

Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, was more scathing about the Republican criticism. “Quite frankly, I am tiring of politicians using national security issues such as terrorism as a political football,” Mr. Brennan, a longtime Central Intelligence Agency officer, who also worked under President George W. Bush, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “They are going out there, they are unknowing of the facts, and they are making charges and allegations that are not anchored in reality.”

The White House rebuttal came a day after Ms. Palin drew rousing applause at a convention of Tea Party activists by declaring that “we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law.” Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Ms. Palin followed up her critique of Mr. Obama by attacking what she called “this perceived lackadaisical approach that he has to dealing with the terrorists.”

The exchanges reflected a stark escalation in rhetoric in recent weeks as the uneasy truce on terrorism that existed at the beginning of the Obama presidency evaporated. The Republican critique of Mr. Obama as a Miranda-reading, soft-on-terror president attempts to tap into an historic vulnerability for Democrats, with midterm elections on the horizon and the president already on the defensive on a health care bill and the economy.

Strategists in both parties said the argument had gained new traction with the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an airliner, the missed deadline for closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the collapse of the plan for a trial in New York of the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Some Democrats worried that Mr. Obama was losing control of the issue politically.

“Terrorism has really become an issue again,” said Leslie H. Gelb, a former president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s jumped to a much higher level because of the Christmas bomber that scared the willies out of people.” And, he added, “for the most part, the narrative has been taken out of the White House’s hands.”

Republicans said they were seeing growing alarm after a year of Mr. Obama’s policies. “People suspended judgment and wanted to let him play his hand,” Karl Rove, the former adviser to Mr. Bush, said of the president. But the Christmas Day bombing attempt “has caused doubts about how he is handling this to bubble to the surface.” ...

The Woman Who Doesn't Know What Her Priorities Would Be Is Running For President

Andrew Sullivan I:

Of Course She's Running For President

It's her divine mission, as she sees it. And it would be a function of "divine intervention" as she explicitly said last night.

Ambers, previously a skeptic, comes around. Given the complete lack of talent among GOP ranks and their universal fear of taking on Palin supporters, it seems obvious to me she will likely be the next GOP nominee. My hope, of course, is that this a) forces what was once a serious governing party to nominate a responsible fiscal conservative in the primaries and fight back against the madness; or b) drives every last sane conservative to realize they have no choice but to back Obama; or c) that Palin so alienates the GOP elites by primary challenges that they somehow manage to quash her and she runs as a "rogue" third party George Wallace style candidate, and helps re-elect Obama by an electoral college landslide.

This is so far into the future, of course, that it's pure speculation.

She may also implode as more scrutiny exposes who she  and her dangerous, radical and clearly controlling husband really are. But I'm beginning to wonder if there's anything in her past, any lie or scandal, that could at this point deter her supporters. If she were found guilty of a Watergate-level iniquity, they'd see it as a frame-up by the liberal elites (as many, remember, did Nixon). And those elites, out of cowardice and fear, never nipped this in the bud when they could have; and that bitter old cynic, McCain, gave her the platform she needed. 

So we have here a truly Coughlinite movement, headed by an Eva Peron figure, eager to use the Dolchstoss card to bring out the kind of voters Rove always believed could eventually crush even the most mobilized democratic GOTV operation.

Know fear.

Andrew Sullivan II:

Palin's Cheat Sheet

Having mocked president Obama for using a TelePrompter - not long after he made mincemeat of Republicans with no such TelePrompter at their retreat - she had to scribble down her priorities as president on her palm for the truly tough-as-nails Q and A she had to endure for ten minutes or so last night.

Written on her hand:

"Energy"

"Budget [crossed out] (Cuts)"

"Tax"

"Lift American spirits"

My favorite detail is "[Budget] Cuts". Which just about sums up the real Tea Party agenda on spending. But it also suggests that she was told in advance of the questions she would be asked, one of which was what would be you priorities if you were elected president? Now think about this: she had to write on her hand her priorities as president.

 

Everything You Need To Know About President Obama, The deficit & The Right

Jonathan Chait:

Pretty much everything you need to know about President Obama and the budget deficit is contained within this chart:

The chart, which is based on Congressional Budget Office figures, shows something which is both incontrovertible yet known by very few people:Obama's budget does not increase the long-term, or even the medium-term, budget deficit. It reduces it slightly.Most of the commentary castigating Obama for the deficit is an attempt to imply, usually without quite saying so, that Obama's policies have caused the red ink. This editorial from National Review is typical:

federal fiscal policy has now run completely off the rails... what had been a chronic problem that all involved knew needed corrective action has now become, in the Obama years, a full-fledged disaster in the making.... If the Obama budget is adopted in full, federal borrowing will top $18 trillion by 2020. Over the period 2011 to 2020, the president’s plan is to run deficits totaling an astounding $8.5 trillion.

Based on the writing of this editorial, NR's editors know full well that Obama's budget does not cause the fiscal disaster. They are blaming him for failing to clean up the mess he inherited. That's a fair thing to blame him for, but it's not a serious enough crime to sustain the rhetorical fury. So the NR has written the editorial in such a way as to lead its readers to the erroneous conclusion that Obama has caused the deficit. It's true that "If the Obama budget is adopted in full, federal borrowing will top $18 trillion by 2020." What the editorial fails to say is what will happen to federal borrowing if Obama's budget is not adopted. We are supposed to think that the debt will be lower, but it won't. It would be higher.

I'm singling out National Review, as I said, not because it's egregious, but because its rhetorical trick is completely typical of the argument coming out of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Just about every argument you'll hear from the right about the budget will be some version of this rhetorical maneuver.

More Haiti Cartoons On The Media & Right-Wing

A Double Agent? (cartoon)

 

Cheney Cartoons

Cheney Utters More Nonesense From His Lair (cartoon)

Hypocrite Cheney Does It Again; White House Hits Back

Wash Post:

The political war over the failed Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. airliner showed no signs of abating Wednesday as leaders of both parties escalated their attacks, employing fiery rhetoric in assessing blame for the Detroit incident.

Former vice president Richard B. Cheney led a GOP offensive to assail President Obama's leadership on national security, charging that the American people are less safe because, Cheney believes, Obama is "pretending" that the United States is not at war with terrorists.

"We are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren't, it makes us less safe," Cheney, one of Obama's strongest critics, said in a statement to Politico. "Why doesn't he want to admit we're at war? It doesn't fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn't fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency -- social transformation -- the restructuring of American society."

Top aides to Obama and Democratic leaders pushed back aggressively, accusing Cheney and other Republicans of politicizing the incident in ways they say Democrats did not during previous terrorist acts.

"Cheney was out there today saying that the president doesn't recognize that we have a war on terror," White House senior adviser David Axelrod said in an interview. "This is the president who has made a very tough decision to refocus our efforts in Afghanistan after seven years of drift."

Democrats said the Bush administration -- chiefly Cheney -- failed to keep its focus on the fight against al-Qaeda as it pursued war in Iraq.

"This president is not interested in bellicose rhetoric, he is focused on action," White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer wrote on a blog. "Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country. And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the president."

For days, a chorus of GOP leaders has sought to portray Obama as weak on national security because of his administration's response to the incident as well as the intelligence and security failures that allowed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board a Northwest Airlines flight carrying an explosive.

Republicans said Obama should have interrupted his Hawaiian vacation before Monday to address last Friday's attack. But Democrats called this a double standard, saying they did not attack then-President George W. Bush when he said nothing during his vacation in Crawford, Tex., for nearly a week after shoe bomber Richard C. Reid's failed attack in 2001.

"Republicans are simply hypocrites," Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse said. "There is nothing -- no bounds whatsoever -- to what they will politicize for their own political gain."

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) on Wednesday said the Detroit incident is evidence that Obama should reconsider his decision to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "It's time for the president to halt terrorist transfers to other countries, including Yemen."

The detainees who ended up in the al-Qaeda leadership in Yemen were released not by Obama but by Bush two years ago.

"Obama is a Communist"

Bet you didn't know that.  Luckily Commieblaster informed us all when he commented on yesterday's post, Bill Ayers dumps Obama:

Bill Ayers is a Communist and has ties to 8 people in the White House. See facts here: http://www.commieblaster.com/bill_ayers/index.html. Obama is a Communist. See facts here: http://www.commieblaster.com/obama/index.htm. 80+ in Congress are Communists. See facts here: http://www.commieblaster.com/progressives/index.html

His site, btw, is quite a paranoid, historically-ignorant trip.

Commieblaster's comment reminded me of the anonymous note I received while campaigning for Obama during the election:

  

and the subsequent comment A Blue View reader left about it:

I have been pretty active in campaigning for Barack Obama. A lot of folks where I live know this about me. I strive to do this, both in the community and on the canvassing trail as politely and respectfully as possible. However, not everyone wants to behave in a like manner. Yesterday I was verbally accosted at our local school bus stop. Out of the blue - I did not bring up the subject of politics - I was told that if Obama was elected, that I would be the one to blame. I was told that "We will come knocking on your (my) door to blame you (me) for having to live in a socialist society".

At the time these events occurred, EJ Dione asked:

Are we witnessing the reemergence of the far right as a power in American politics? Has John McCain, inadvertently perhaps, become the midwife of a new movement built around fear, xenophobia, racism and anger? ...  We are in the midst of what could become -- and here's hoping it doesn't -- the worst economic downturn in decades. The last thing we need is a campaign that strengthens fanaticism, tarnishes the authority of the next president and whips up the worst kinds of prejudice. 

Thanks to Commieblaster, the birthers & Tea Baggers, I think it is both sad and clear that we have witnessed the rebirth of the far right fringe over the last year. The unanswered question, is how powerful are they? Will they effect enough elections to have impact?

Your thoughts?

"We should have a muslim-only check in line at our airports" (animated cartoon)

 

The Apocalypse The Right-Wing Fears With Stupifying Consistency Has Not Come To Pass

The New Republic:

Conservatives have lined up in near-unanimous opposition to any progressive legislation introduced during President Obama’s first year in office. Whether they’ve been railing against health care reform, a climate bill, or financial regulation, their ire has stemmed less from legislative specifics than from a generalized prophecy of doom: Obama’s proposals will move the country toward socialism, bankrupt entire industries and small businesses, and deny Americans their basic freedoms.

These arguments, however, aren’t new. Conservatives—not just Republicans, but various politicians and groups who’ve resisted major social changes—recycled them throughout the twentieth century. They used them to oppose numerous progressive measures that Americans now take for granted, from women’s suffrage to child-labor laws to Medicare. [See "The Republican Party ... [has not and] cannot come to grips with the very nature of the problems of modern American politics"]. Here we’ve collected a few choice predictions about disaster that never came. Conservatives today might prefer they be forgotten.

“It may be impracticable that our distinctively American experiment of individual freedom should go on.”

—Senator David Hill (D-NY), in 1894, bemoaning the creation of a federal income tax

“Woman suffrage would give to the wives and daughters of the poor a new opportunity to gratify their envy and mistrust of the rich. Meantime these new voters would become either the purchased or cajoled victims of plausible political manipulators, or the intimidated and helpless voting vassals of imperious employers.”

—Former President Grover Cleveland, in 1905, on why women shouldn’t be able to vote

“[T]he child will become a very dominant factor in the household and might refuse perhaps to do chores before six a.m. or after seven p.m. or to perform any labor.”

—Senator Weldon Heyburn (R-ID), in 1908, on why child labor should remain unregulated

“I fear it may end the progress of a great country and bring its people to the level of the average European. It will furnish delicious food and add great strength to the political demagogue. It will assist in driving worthy and courageous men from public life. It will discourage and defeat the American trait of thrift. It will go a long way toward destroying American initiative and courage.”

—Senator Daniel O. Hastings (R-DE), in 1935, listing the evils of Social Security

“[I]t would make it practically impossible for any publisher in the United States to accept any food, drug, or cosmetic advertising without facing squarely into the doors of a jail.”

—Federal Trade Commission Chair Ewin L. Davis, in 1935, on the dangers of empowering the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the food, drug, and cosmetic industries ...

“[The Act represents] a step in the direction of Communism, bolshevism, fascism, and Nazism.”

—The National Association of Manufacturers, in 1938, condemning a national minimum wage and guaranteed overtime pay

“It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding.”

—Senator Strom Thurmond (D-SC), Senator Richard Russell (D-GA), and other Southern legislators, in 1956, describing the perils of integrating public schools

“It is socialism. It moves the country in a direction which is not good for anyone, whether they be young or old. It charts a course from which there will be no turning back.”

—Senator Carl Curtis (R-NE), in 1965, opposing Medicare

“[T]his bill could prevent continued production of automobiles . . . [and] is a threat to the entire American economy and to every person in America.”

—Lee Iacocca, executive vice president of Ford Motor Company, in 1970, on why the government shouldn’t regulate airborne contaminants that are hazardous to human health

“The effects include serious long-term losses in domestic output and employment, heavy cost burdens on manufacturing industries, and a resultant gradual contraction of the entire industrial base. The irony of this bleak scenario is that these economic hardships are borne with no real assurance they would be balanced by a cleaner, healthier environment.”

—The National Association of Manufacturers, in 1987, on the perils of an emissions reduction program to combat acid rain

“The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it’s like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren’t equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can’t live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.”

—Ronald Reagan, in 1961, arguing against the creation of Medicare

It's Time For You To Go (cartoon)

 

"Oh come all ye tea baggers"

At Home With The Denial Family (cartoon)

 

Tea Party Activists Continue Pushing The GOP Over The Cliff

Wash Post:

The energized "tea party" movement, which upended this year's political debate with noisy anti-government protests, is preparing to shake up the 2010 elections by channeling money and supporters to conservative candidates set to challenge both Democrats and Republicans.

Buoyed by their success in capsizing a moderate Republican candidate this fall in Upstate New York, tea party activists and affiliated groups are unveiling new political action committees and tactics aimed at capitalizing on conservative opposition to health-care reform, financial bailouts and other Obama administration policies. The goal is to harness the anger that led to hundreds of protests around the country from spring to fall, including a gathering of tens of thousands of protesters on the Mall in September.

The strategy poses both an opportunity and a risk for the beleaguered Republican Party, which is seeking to take advantage of conservative discontent while still fielding candidates who appeal to independent voters. Fundraising efforts are just beginning, but tea party activists have already inspired serious challenges to establishment GOP Senate candidates Carly Fiorina in California and Charlie Crist in Florida; a similar insurgency in last month's House race in New York splintered local Republicans, leading to a Democratic victory.

"It's time to take control," conservative activist Eric Odom declares on the Web site of his new political action committee, Liberty First PAC, which will "support fellow patriots looking [to] defend our liberty." Odom, who played a central role in organizing the first tea party protests this spring, says the PAC will not support incumbents of either party.

Smart Girl Politics, a conservative women's group active in getting people to tea party protests, is considering forming a PAC to steer its 23,000 members to help conservative candidates.

Another influential activist, Erick Erickson of RedState.com, plans to encourage donations to conservative challengers such as GOP Senate candidate Pat Toomey, who hopes to win the Pennsylvania seat held by Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter.

And in Washington, FreedomWorks, an advocacy group that helped organize many major tea party protests, is set to announce plans this month to raise millions of dollars through a reorganized PAC targeting its 500,000 registered members, said Matt Kibbe, the group's president. Chaired by former House majority leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.), the group says its fundraising effort will be modeled on the Internet financing juggernaut created by Barack Obama in 2008.

"We're looking at the potential of raising small checks from a vast number of donors, just as Obama did," Kibbe said. "We've been studying everything about the Obama primary strategy, and I happen to think the tea party movement could make even the Obama grass-roots machine look obsolete."

But Kibbe and others acknowledge that they are not near that point yet, and political experts in both parties say it is unclear if the movement can become the kind of unified force that can win, and not just disrupt, elections.

The tea party movement is splintered into hundreds of local and state-level groups that have differing rules and goals and for the most part have not participated in big-money politics. Many of the groups have been torn apart by personal feuds in recent months; one major umbrella organization, the Tea Party Patriots, has filed a lawsuit against a founding board member who signed on with a rival, the Tea Party Express.

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said during a speech last week that the "tea party movement is savaging the GOP" and has sparked a "corrosive and consistent fight" over the party's direction.

Today's Opposition Cartoons

Jon Stewart To Lou Dobbs: Why Does The Right Wing Equate Losing An Election With Tyranny?

Jon Stewart is a very smart guy. He gets across his progressive perspective in such a disarming yet devastating way. Watch his interview with Lou Dobbs as they discuss why he left CNN and why the right-wing acts like expanding health care access to lower middle class people is the end of American democracy.

Watch both parts to enjoy one of the best, most succinct ways I've seen of puncturing the right-wing's rationalizations of their Obama hysteria ... in the audacious form of a conversation with one of its worst offenders.

Part I (which was aired):

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Lou Dobbs Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Part II (available only online):

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Lou Dobbs Extended Interview Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

The Anti-Defamation League Singles Out Glenn Beck As Anti-Government Conspiracist

NY Times:

The Anti-Defamation League, in a report released this week, has asserted that “a current of anti-government hostility has swept across the United States” since President Obama was elected just over a year ago.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the study cites the Tea Party movement and the at times rowdy health care town halls that occurred over the summer as examples of the increasingly anti-government climate. But it also takes aim at one prominent media figure: Glenn Beck.

In general, the report said that those more hostile toward government believe the Obama administration poses a threat to the long-term well-being of the country, with some believing the president wants to import socialism or fascism to America.

“Some of these assertions are motivated by prejudice, but more common is an intense strain of anti-government distrust and anger, colored by a streak of paranoia and belief in conspiracies,” the study found.

And Mr. Beck, the report found, has helped fan that hostility by invoking conspiracy theories and “demonizing” the administration on both his radio program and Fox News television show. In contrast, the A.D.L., a prominent Jewish organization whose mission is to fight anti-Semitism, reported that commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have sharply criticized Mr. Obama on partisan grounds while dismissing extremists and conspiracy theorists.

Mr. Beck’s broadcasts “play an important role in drawing people further out of the mainstream, making them more receptive to the more extreme notions and conspiracy theories.”

Christopher Balfe, the president of Mr. Beck’s production company, Mercury Radio Arts, said Mr. Beck had no comment on the report at this time.

The Right's Reign Of Terror Begins: Now, The Tea Parties & Birthers Are Purging Themselves, Not Just The GOP

Jon Stewart Does Glenn Beck

He's got Beck down!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The 11/3 Project
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

The Partisan Divide

First, a relatively innocent play on the Berlin Wall:

Then two cartoons, which because they're so far removed from the truth yet professional cartoonists felt they were ok to publish, really illustrate how conservatives & progressives have a Mars / Venus thing going with a vengeance right now.

The Ft Hood Handoff (cartoon)

 

In Reaction To Ft Hood, Right Wing Begins Ginning Up Anit-Muslim Sentiment

Quinn suggests we "broom the Muslims out of the military," says internment "worked" during WWII:

Satirical Skinheads From Maine

How do you think these two guys voted on Tuesday?

Dana Carvey Show - Skinheads From Maine
by PigLips

The State Of The GOP Cartoons

Hysteria In America (cartoon)

 

Eh, He's So Scary (cartoon)

 

The GOP Will Say Anything To Kill Health Reform No Matter How Gallingly Hypocritical

It started two days ago with Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, posted by Prescriptions:

In a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday morning, Mr. Corker lashed out at Democrats and their plan to permanently adjust a Medicare doctor payment formula at a 10-year cost of nearly $250 billion that will simply be added to the federal deficit. Democrats are expected to try to take up the bill on Tuesday.

Then, the NY Times reported this morning on the GOP's success:

In the face of solid Republican opposition, Senate Democrats on Tuesday backed down from their effort to increase Medicare payments to doctors without offsetting any of the cost over the next 10 years.

Jonathan Chait gets to the galling heart of the matter:

 ... What's going on is a perfect metaphor for how Obama and the republicans are treating fiscal policy.

More than a decade ago, Congress tried to control Medicare costs by restricting payments to doctors. But the reimbursement cut has proven unpopular. So every year, Congress appropriates more money to fill the hole and keep the doctors happy. Yet the pay cut remains on the books. So, admitting the obvious fact that the reimbursement cuts will never happen would, officially speaking, cost $247 billion over ten years.

Everybody agrees that it's a sham. Since the Democrats are trying to reform, and trim, how much Medicare spends, they planned to wipe the slate clean and just admit the obvious reality that the $247 billion is going to get spent.

Conservatives are attacking this as proof that health care reform is based on fraudulent accounting. See -- they're spending money they don't pay for! National Review calls this "offloading $247 billion in Obamacare costs onto a separate, standalone, unfinanced piece of legislation." But it's not "Obamacare costs." It's money that would get spent whether or not health reform happens. It would be fair to make this charge if Obama were using these illusury savings to cover the cost of the new spending in his health care reform, but he isn't.

So why is Obama getting attacked so bitterly over this? Because he's acknowledging it. It's the same thing that's happened to fiscal policy since he took office. The Bush administration hid the true iscal picture with a plethora of accounting gimmicks -- keeping all war costs out of the budget, pretending the middle-class tax cuts would expire, and on and on. Obama has tried to make the budget reflect reality. Alas, reality is a bummer. (And yes, the long-term deficit is entirely the fault of policies Obama inherited.) So Obama gets attacked for a "shell game" when all he's really doing is admitting the shell game that's been going on for years.

People have made this point before, but the conservative attacks on health care reform's fiscal responsibility are beyond hypocritical. George W. Bush and the Republicans created a new health care entitlement in 2003 that was completely unfinanced. Not a dime was paid for. The Democrats have decided to completely finance every cent of health care reform, and they're taking a hundred times more flack for fiscal irresponsibility than the Republicans ever did. There's a lesson here, and "fiscal responsibility pays" isn't it.

Irrational Obama Opposition Cartoon

 

Generals: Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney Are Fearmongering

From Politico:

About a dozen retired generals and admirals, trying to add momentum to President Barack Obama’s effort to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison, are accusing former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz of scaremongering about the dangers of closing it.

“It’s up to all of us to say these arguments advanced by Cheney and his acolytes are nonsense and that really what they’re doing is undermining our national security by delaying the date at which Guantanamo is closed,” retired Brig. Gen. James Cullen, a former chief judge of the Army’s Court of Criminal Appeals, told POLITICO Tuesday.

“Some of the fear issues that are being raised in this are really unfortunate. It gets people excited about things they shouldn’t be excited about and impedes doing what is critical to this country. Get that damn symbol off the table,” said retired Gen. David Maddox, a former Army commander-in-chief for Europe. “We take a setback every time somebody, whether it’s the vice president or his daughter comes out and says the things that they say….We have to get out there again and just keep pounding.”

The former vice president and his daughter declined comment on the criticism.

The former military officers, whose Washington visit was organized by Human Rights First, argued rather bitterly that the Cheneys have exaggerated the risks of bringing Guantanamo prisoners from Cuba to the United States.

“Can you imagine getting a terrorist from Guantanamo convicted and put in a federal penitentiary in your town?” Maddox asked. “Have you ever checked who the hell’s in there already? Have any of them gotten out? The person who we’re putting in is probably a heck of lot less dangerous than most of them who are already in there.”

Administration officials recently acknowledged that Guantanamo may not be closed by Obama’s deadline of Jan. 22. But retired Army Maj. Gen. Tony Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, said the president was smart to set a mark.

“It forces us to have an end state,” Taguba said. “It cannot be open in perpetuity because we’re having this so called long war against terrorism.”

Bernie Sanders: In Wash DC, Where Hypocrisy Levels Are Pretty High, The GOP As Medicare Champion "Bounces off the charts"

Damn those video tape libraries! They make it so easy to catch our lying hypocrisy:

Right-Wing Census Paranoia: Bachmann, Beck, Fox News, and More

This Week's Mediscare From The GOP

From Jonathan Cohn:

The Republican grandstanding on Medicare during Finance Committee hearings this week hasn't been surprising, I suppose. But the audacity is still pretty breathtaking.

As you may have heard or read by now, the Republicans are angry over proposed cuts to Medicare Advantage, the private insurance alternative to traditional Medicare. The insurers who offer Medicare Advantage plans receive a flat fee for every senior that signs up. But virtually every independent expert who has studied the program has concluded that those fees are way too high--that, in effect, the government is getting a lousy deal. So when Democrats, including those drawing up the Finance bill, were looking for revenue to finance expansions of health insurance coverage, they figured that getting rid of those subsidies was a smart idea, particularly since it would generate more than $100 billion over ten years.

The danger of these cuts is that, without the promise of those fat subsidies, some private insurers may decide to pull out of the business altogether. It happened once before, back in the late 1990s, when the Clinton Administration pushed through reductions to Medicare-plus-choice, the predecessor to Medicare Advantage. (It was basically the same program under a different name.)

Today, about ten million seniors are enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans, which tend to offer things like vision care, gym club memberships, and lower cost-sharing. Some of these people might have to give up those plans. And Republicans think this is a travesty. "Medicare shouldn't be the piggy bank," Senator Jon Kyl said on Wednesday. "The reduced costs fund a new entitlement. They don't help seniors who rely on Medicare."

Actually, that's not clear at all.

Seniors who lost their Medicare Advantage wouldn't be left uninsured--or even without the opportunity to get the extra benefits they now enjoy. They would still have the traditional Medicare program, which covers pretty much every essential medical service, as well as the chance to buy supplemental coverage to fill in the financial gaps. They might have to pay a bit more for it, but the only reason they pay less now is that the government has been over-paying insurance companies. This simply puts them on the same footing as other Medicare beneficiaries, while eliminating a source of inefficiency in the program. You could make a case--in fact, I would make a case--that the net effect is to make Medicare stronger, particularly if you believe that comprehensive reform will eventually help make the entire American health care system more efficient (thus easing cost pressures on Medicare).

But put that aside and consider what sort of standing Republicans have to make this argument. Remember, this is the same party that promoted much larger, less targeted cuts to Medicare in the 1990s--and did so not to shore up the program or expand health insurance for working-age Americans, but to create room for tax cuts that primarily benefited the wealthy.

So, just to review:

Modest Medicare cuts to make the program more efficient and help working-age people get insurance...bad.

Much larger Medicare cuts to give rich people get tax cuts...good.

And to think Americans still don't trust the GOP on health care.