Friday Night Tunes

If you like Rickie Lee Jones and Steely Dan, you will really like this one. I listened to it twice after first hearing it.

Or maybe you would prefer a little Stevie Ray Vaughn.

Dave Foley’s Spooky Glenn Beck Prophecy!

Hat Tip to Bob Cesca for the link, who posted this back in September. YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY!

That is very scary how even the same language is used, I think I heard complete sentences that Glenn Beck has said, damn near. This should go completely viral, spread it around. It so mirrors the absurdity of Glenn Beck that it may help reveal him as the charlatan that he is.

Funny Headlines!

BRING IN THE COTS…. I want to debate Wall Street reform all night, and party ev-er-y day.

by Steve Benen

Show Us Your Papers!

A Refresher On Our Rights As U.S. Citizens

I’m pasting below a few chunks of the constitution as a reminder to some folks in our country who apparently don’t know what is in it. Enjoy! Here is the whole thing.
Amendment 4 – Search and Seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment 14 – Citizenship Rights. Ratified 7/9/1868. Note History

1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Now You’re Mad!

Courtesy of the awesome Kay in Maine at White Noise Insanity, who found it on the internets!

Now You’re Mad?!

After The 8 Years Of The Bush/Cheney Disaster, Now You Get Mad?

You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate
Energy policy and push us to invade Iraq.

You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.

You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.

You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn’t get mad when we spent over 800 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn’t get mad when Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined.

You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars in cash just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people.

You didn’t get mad when Bush embraced trade and outsourcing policies that shipped 6 million American jobs out of the country.

You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn’t get mad when Bush said he wasn’t concerned about Bin Laden, just a few months after 911.

You didn’t get mad when Bush rang up 10 trillion dollars in combined budget and current account deficits.

You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans, drown.

You didn’t get mad when we gave people who had more money than they could spend, the filthy rich, over a trillion dollars in tax breaks.

You didn’t get mad with the worst 8 years of job creations in several decades.

You didn’t get mad when over 200,000 US Citizens died over an 8-year period because they had no health insurance.

You didn’t get mad when lack of oversight and regulations from the Bush Administration caused US Citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments, retirement, and home values.

You finally got mad when a black man was elected President and decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, job losses by the millions, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, and the worst economic disaster since 1929 are all okay with you, but helping fellow Americans who are sick…oh hell no.

Quote of the Day

From Real Time with Bill Maher regarding the Tea Party protesters who think their taxes have been raised too much.

“Why let the truth get in the way of a perfectly good Klan rally”

Who Wrote That Arizona Law, Anyway?

Rachel Maddow does a great piece on the folks behind the new law in Arizona. I think this incident is just the tip of the iceberg. As I’ve said for a while, the media has legitimized the Tea Party movement (that can barely scare up a crowd of a couple hundred people with misspelled signs) and empowered the fringe elements in our society. It began when the village idiot was elected as president in 2000 and then again in 2004. And what sent them over the edge of course was when the American people elected the first black president. Anyone who says race has nothing to do with the Tea Party is a fucking RACIST, I’m sorry. But if you can really convince yourself that it has nothing to do with race, you are in denial and a racist, whether you want to admit it or not.

Eugenics…..unbelievable, really. Go check out this website for a documentary based on the book The War Against the Weak. I saw it at the Rhode Island International Film Festival and was blown away. If you get a chance to see it, do so.

Liberal Economic Policies Work – The Obama Boom!

I frequently think of the Richard Pryor line, (paraphrasing) “who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes”. It must be really hard for the Tea Partiers and hard core conservatives to continue to believe the lies that they have chosen to promote. I realize some of the people don’t know any better, they are just regurgitating what Rush and Glenn tell them. But others clearly know they are lying but continue to do it in the light of the truth. Bob Cesca has a post about this…

But for some reason the teabaggers are still very, very angry even though the economy is improving, taxes are lower and the president is assembling a commission for debt reduction. ROOOOOWWWR! Still angry! So angry, in fact, that people are seriously considering voting for Republicans in November. Yep, we really need a GOP Congress right now. Just as things are improving, we’ll get a Congress ensconced in nothing but frivolous investigations of the president.

Here is a great summary comparing Clinton’s progressive economic policies pitted against George W. Bush’s return to the tired old supply-side economics that ran up the National debt in the early 80′s. Hat tip to Oliver Willis, from the Center for American Progress…

Progress

President Clinton took office at a time of large deficits and high unemployment. The country was headed in the wrong direction after more than a decade of supply-side economics. President Clinton turned the country around by adopting progressive economic policies that focused on reducing the budget deficit, halting the widening gap between rich and poor, and spurring innovation and investment. By the end of his term, these progressive policies had yielded the longest sustained period of economic growth in American history and more than 23 million new jobs.

Regress

Despite the clear success of progressive policies in the 1990s, President Bush returned the country to the failed economic strategy of focusing on the very wealthy under the theory that their success would “trickle down” to everyone else. It didn’t work out that way. President Bush cut taxes repeatedly for high-income earners and on capital gains, with the promise that those cuts would result in impressive growth for everyone. The rich were doing very well after eight years of supply-side policies, but everyone else was falling back. Median incomes and wages were down, poverty was up, job growth was anemic, and unemployment was beginning to soar.

Oliver Willis (Like Kryptonite To Stupid) has been documenting the positive progress Obama’s policies have had on our economy. Check them out here, here and here.

photos of the day

Shot by Extreme Liberal and haven’t been seen since then! Long lost photos!

I’m Taking My Ball and Going Home!

Steve Benen over at the Washington Monthly has a great post about the idiotic tactics the Republicans have been using since President Obama took office. It’s good stuff, here is a couple of pieces of it. I highly recommend you go check it out.

Long-time readers may recall a discussion we had back in December, about the quality of the debate over health care reform. It was obvious at the time that the meaningful, interesting disputes weren’t between conservatives and liberals, but between liberals and other liberals.It’s not that the right remained silent; it’s that they offered arguments that no serious person could find credible. Consider, just off the top of your head, the most prominent concerns raised by opponents of the Affordable Care Act. What comes to mind? “Death panels.” “Socialism.” “Government takeover.”

It was the biggest domestic policy fight in a generation, but most of the policy debate was spent debunking transparent, child-like nonsense. The left approached the debate with vibrancy, energy, and seriousness. The right thought it was fascinating to talk about the number of pages in the legislation.

Making matters worse, the quality of the discourse on health care wasn’t especially unusual. We endured a mind-numbing debate over economic recovery efforts because Republicans weren’t prepared for a serious argument. We can’t discuss Wall Street reform because Republicans keep saying “bailout” for no reason. We can’t discuss a climate bill because Republicans reflexively reject the science.

I think it is very much a scorched earth tactic. Prove that politicians can’t do anything right so they sweep the bums out….which is really the only hope the party of “hell no” has. It could very well work with the media being such willing participants in the process. Steve Benen links to Marc Ambinder, who is excerpted below…

I want to find Republicans to take seriously, but it is hard. Not because they don’t exist — serious Republicans — but because, as Sanchez and others seem to recognize, they are marginalized, even self-marginalizing, and the base itself seems to have developed a notion that bromides are equivalent to policy-thinking, and that therapy is a substitute for thinking.

It is absolutely a condition of the age of the triumph of conservative personality politics, where entertainers shouting slogans are taken seriously as political actors, and where the incentive structures exist to stomp on dissent and nuance, causing experimental voices to retrench and allowing a lot of people to pretend that the world around them is not changing. The obsession with ACORN, Climategate, death panels, the militarization of rhetoric, Saul Alinsky, Chicago-style politics, that TAXPAYERS will fund the bailout of banks – these aren’t meaningful or interesting or even relevant things to focus on. (The banks will fund their own bailouts.)

I have to imagine that old politicians on the right have to be cringing at what has happened to their party. They’ve been hijacked by the wackos…Rush, Glenn, Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin, Mitch McConnell….well, I guess they are all pretty much wackos. It’s a new day in American politics, not a good day though…the place is on fire!

Making Room in Hell for Republicans!

Word on the street is that Satan has had to make a big capital investment in Hell to make room for all the Republicans who are heading straight there. Bechtel and Haliburton both have competitive bids in on the project. It’s the largest expansion of Hell since the Joe McCarthy period.  Satan is salivating at all the new business coming out of the Republican Party and the Tea Party. It’s mostly the lies that are bringing in the new biz. And these aren’t little white lies, these are big whopping lies….the kind that land you in the eternal fires of hell. The kind that are the exact opposite of the truth, not just an exaggeration or a slant, oh no, these are manufactured lies courtesy of Frankie Luntz.

Frank has been working for Satan, he’s their best recruiter down there. They have monuments to him at the gates, right near the Fox News Theatre where they run Glenn Beck on a loop. On the way in, Rush hands out Oxycontin to the new arrivals, pointing them towards the Excellence In Bullshit (EIB) building, which is where they hold the worship services now hosted by Jerry Falwell, the new pastor.

Sales of Blond Wigs Soar In Arizona!

How crazy it is that American citizens have to carry their papers with them at all times and are considered guilty until proven innocent – based on how they look? What’s wrong with that picture? The new law just signed in Arizona is basically a racial profiling law, nothing but. It’s as Booman calls it “The Latino Harassment Act of 2010“.  And it does all boil down to how they look. The whole “reasonable suspicion” bullshit, what the hell else could that be – besides how they look? Waving a Mexican flag around? More than 4 darker skinned people in any given vehicle? Maybe it’s anyone speaking Spanish in public, that’s pretty suspicious. The craziness of this law crystallized for me when I saw Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico saying how he could very well be hassled the next time he travels to Arizona.

It’s curious that some of the biggest supporters of this new law are on the right-wing. Now, I thought the right wingers were all about civil liberties, running around screaming about losing freedom and carrying misspelled signs. What is different between those people and the ones who are gathering today in cities across Arizona? It’s basically a pigment issue. The pasty white people carrying the misspelled signs aren’t too concerned about the folks gathering in Arizona who actually just lost some of their liberties. I don’t think we’re going to see the teabaggers jump on FreedomWorks buses, heading off to Arizona anytime soon. What do you think?

As I was listening to a piece on NPR’s “On Point” (I’m one of those latte’ sipping liberals, you know? Not a fan of arugula though!)…but as I was listening, it dawned on me that blond wig sales and skin bleaching could be lucrative businesses in Arizona – with this new law. American citizens having to wear disguises so they don’t get hassled, is it just me or is that really crazy? And all the Hispanics who are trying to get into the country are probably digging it too, I imagine along the border in Mexico, salons are springing up already. Could there ever be a more glaring example of a bad solution to a big problem. This is a classic case of overreaction and bigotry guiding policy.

Now even though I AM an extreme liberal, my thoughts on immigration are probably considered moderate or even conservative to some on the left. That law that just passed is wrong, it is a prescription for racial profiling and that is not a price we can pay to stop the flow across our borders.

I am not one of the “turn your head the other way” liberals who thinks we should just allow illegal crossings to happen. I’ve never been to Mexico, but I have been to Canada several times, being a “Michigander” and whenever I’ve crossed the border, I’ve appreciated that border, gone through customs and respected the fact that they want to control who comes into their country. Why should it be any different coming into America, we as a country should be able to control who comes into our country. And that is the point, controlling the borders. If we are going to have laws about immigration, we should do what needs to be done to enforce the laws. It isn’t right to turn your head the other way when a farmer hires a non citizen or a restaurant owner or whatever. Laws are laws, right? The whole idea that we enforce some laws but not others just doesn’t pass the smell test to me.

For those already in our country, there should be a process for them to apply for citizenship, but that doesn’t mean they all get in automatically. It really isn’t fair to those people who are going through the legal process to come here. I have a friend from China who has been trying to become a citizen legally, it’s a big hassle. Nobody likes it when they are standing in line and someone cuts in front of them. So in my opinion, the compromise and solution to the immigration problem really has to start at the borders. We have to seal them up somehow so that legal immigration becomes the way to migrate here. That may mean increasing the size of ICE or creating a new department that is designed from the ground up, with logical, streamlined procedures for approving applications. It would also make a lot of sense to create a model for how many people we allow in per year and structures for changing that based on economic trends. The anger by unemployed citizens who see non-citizens, working jobs that they would do, is understandable. It goes to that whole idea of “why have laws if you aren’t going to enforce them?”

I’m certainly glad we are having this debate now, with President Obama and a Democratic controlled congress. But it isn’t going to be pretty, if you think we’ve seen racism and bigotry in the last year and a half, just wait till the LouDobbsians mobilize.

A Sea of Republican Lies!

One of the continuing lies from the Republicans and Teabaggers is that President Obama bailed out the banks. Uh, TARP was passed on October 3, 2008 and signed by President Bush. According to my memory, President Obama wasn’t even elected until November 4, 2008. The Republicans and their lap-dog media just continues to imply that President Obama is responsible for the bailout. I’d bet 95% of the teabaggers believe that wholeheartedly. No surprise there though, they ARE more educated and wealthier, right?

Do you suppose these folks know that it was George W. Bush who passed the TARP bill? I don’t think so. The Republicans have become very good at spreading lies and misinformation and it’s hard for us liberals to keep up with shooting them down. There is so much of it out there, it’s no wonder that the American people are so confused over what is real and what is a product of Frank Luntz’s crafty word games. I know I’m trying to do my part in shining a light on this bullshit.

Still Fixing Bush’s Economic Nightmare!

Continuing with the poll theme, a new one out says 75% of the “American People” still blame Bush for the bad economy. From Raw Story…

A new Gallup poll conducted March 26-28 shows that 75% of Americans surveyed still place most of the blame for the current economy on former President George W. Bush…

…Gallup also notes that “Americans in July 2009 clearly recognized that the nation’s economic problems preceded Obama’s term; at that time, close to half of Republicans (43%) — in addition to most independents (63%) and nearly all Democrats (92%) — believed Obama bore little or no responsibility for them.” While those figures have begun to decline, clearly Bush still takes much more of the blame for the current state of the economy.

It sure isn’t going to last very long and the numbers are already creeping up for Obama when it comes to blame. I have confidence that President Obama’s policies will have a positive effect on the economy and jobs so he will begin getting credit instead of blame pretty soon.