Liberal Media Elite

When I took AP US History in high school I had this giant tome of history. It was the same text used in survey courses at Yale. It was almost 4″thick. I learned some history. Not quite so randomly, here are some things I learned:

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff was a major policy initiative of Herbert Hoover. Authored by Senator Reed Smoot (R-Utah) and Representative Willis C. Hawley (R-Ore) was signed into law on June 17, 1930 by President Hoover, and was in fact the law of the land for almost 3 years before FDR was sworn in as president on March 4, 1933.

In 1976, during Gerald Ford’s last year in office, there was a Swine Flu scare leading from the death and hospitalization of several Army recruits at Fort Dix, New Jersey. President Ford ordered nationwide vaccinations beginning the following fall. However the innoculations led to serious health problems, and 30 deaths and were discontinued in December, 1976, roughly a month before Jimmy Carter took the oath of office.

For the record the Hoot-Smalley Tariffs are entirely fictional, and sound amazingly like something from an SNL skit featuring (Senator) Franken.

It’s such a relief to see the serious discussion about what Bush, Cheney et al. have done to the soul of this country by authorizing torture. The discussion is painful, it is necessary, and having the strength to engage in it is something America can be truly proud of.

(Where is everyone?)

Anyway, thought this was funny for a lazy Sunday morning:

AS A book reviews editor at New Scientist, I often come across so-called science books which after a few pages reveal themselves to be harbouring ulterior motives. I have learned to recognise clues that the author is pushing a religious agenda. As creationists in the US continue to lose court battles over attempts to have intelligent design taught as science in federally funded schools, their strategy has been forced to… well, evolve.

UPDATE (03/16/09): Good grief. The New Scientist pulled the article:

New Scientist has received a legal complaint about the contents of this story. At the advice of our lawyer it has temporarily been removed while we investigate. Apologies for any inconvenience.

Something light to get back in the swing of things:

And as MissLaura at Daily Kos so accurately remarked: “Shoot, at least I bought my own damn pajamas and didn’t get the RNC to buy not just clothes for me but underwear for my kids.”

Of course we should be writing about all the transitionin’ going on, but there are so many trial balloons up in the air right now that it’s more fun to follow Alaska’s Imelda Marcos governor around a little more.

Fox is reporting that Gov. Sarah Palin is going to vote—on Election Day—in Wasilla, Alaska.

Although it’s not official just yet, that must mean she’s not going to be in Tempe or Flagstaff or Tucson or Phoenix or wherever it is John McCain is going to give his big speech from.

And if she’s planning to be absent… That must mean they’re not expecting that big speech to be one of victory. I mean, Alaska’s Mean-Girl-in-Chief wouldn’t miss her first chance to scrunch up her nose on live television before she has to go run that boring old Senate.

Just off the wires.

Guilty. All Counts.

This makes me happy.

Allow me to introduce the junior Senator from Alaska. Mark Begich.

UPDATE: Bye, Ted. —Matthew

I can’t even go into how mad this makes me. A friend of mine, who has never been a Republican in their lives, got this in the mail today. They were kind enough to let me share it with you.

I don’t have the time and don’t really think I need to go through point by point everything that is wrong with this.

This piece of mail is what the Republican Party of Minnesota is sending on behalf their members with the money their members gave them (Michele Bachmann’s, Norm Coleman’s Arne Carlson’s ALL of the MINNESOTA GOP).

Sorry you’ll have to click on the page numbers to see the actual hit piece. But it was the quickest way to do it.

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

If you felt like I did, you called the MNGOP at 651-222-0022 at told them what you thought of this.

Words just failed me when I watched this on Hardball with Chris Matthew’s. Expect more of the same in the remaining time until the election:

Germans would call her a “spiritual arsonist”. And it’s true, with attacks like these, Bachmann and her ilk are lighting fires in the soul of the American people that might be hard to extinguish.

(Update by Bill) Let’s throw Michele as many of our anti-American anvils as we can and get El Tinklenberg elected. Donate Here.

(Update #2 by Natascha) Done. Just gave him 20 bucks.

(Update #3 by Matthew) Rachel Maddow just said Tinklenberg received $30k after the remarks aired. Heh.

(Update #4 by Rik) SHE FUCKING CALLED FOR A NEW MCCARTHY ANTI-AMERICAN WITCH HUNT AT THE VERY END OF THIS CLIP! (mostly I added this so Natascha could get some kind of LME record for updates to a post…but, jesus, lady michele IS trying to revive tail-gunner Joe)

I think he got Tina Fey to write this one for him.

Barack isn’t a born comedian. His timing and delivery are just a shade off the mark. Regardless, I think I woke my roommate up from laughing so hard. This campaign season’s greatest hits lampooned with near perfection. Give it a watch.

Josh Marshall has a post up over at TPM about McCain’s recent reeling-in of the rhetoric on the campaign. Take a look at the video, and read Josh Marshall.

John McCain is sad, frustrated, and bitter old man. But what makes me scratch my head is how he got here. I mean McCain is one of the few Republicans I even considered liking. Even as recently as 2004 I was at least marginally a fan. That all ended with his 2006 torture vote. I didn’t understand how a survivor of torture would “compromise” on that subject. Pretty much shredded any respect I may have had for him. But that vote makes more sense to me, now. He wants so badly to be president that he is willing to do anything to get there. He realized that his only road to 1600 Pennsylvania was through the mouthbreathing Republican base (Watch the video. Those are the people I mean). And now, I think McCain realizes that in pandering to this base, and flailing at a strategy, any strategy that would get traction in these last few weeks of the election, he may have well cracked the seal on America’s proverbial Pandora’s Box. He may be hoping here to solder the damn thing back shut before ugliest parts of the Republican get out of hand.

Mostly, what I see in that video is an old man, suddenly finding himself in water skiis, soaring through the air, looking back at the shark and wondering how the hell he got there.

Or, to mix my trite metaphors (or was that an allusion?) John McCain is realizing that he must now lie down in a bed that he had no small part in making.

(Original by Shepard Fairey)

Earmarks are bad.

Sen John McCain said in the first debate that they are like a gateway drug.

Then Sarah Palin must be Timothy Leary.

That is the lesson from the GOP. They need to be reformed. McCain/Palin are the ones to do it. It’s a an issue that they try to forge like a blacksmith hammering a hot iron.

But like everything else that McCain/ Palin is trying to sell, it’s never going to take shape. Trying to convince someone a lie is the truth is a tough proposition in the age of Google, but I guess it’s obvious they aren’t very tech savvy.

So when there was a presser at the Republican National Convention for:

Republicans Support McCain-Palin Call for Earmark Reform

I naturally went. I wanted to ask about this story from the Seattle Times:

Palin’s earmark requests: more per person than any other state

See how one headline is totally different than the other one.

The press briefing was 8 (I know the list shows only 7 but they got another person on stage to help polish this turd) congresspeople talking about how bad earmarks were, how tough Republicans were on them and how electing McCain/Palin would rid our country of earmarks and save the world.

OK It wasn’t that dramatic. But you get the idea.

Then came the Q&A period, all THREE of the Q’s that were allowed. Now, a lot of press hadn’t shown up at this thing, but I think they knew this would either be a fruitless venture or they were lazy.

I’m going to go with lazy. Anyway one of the three questions was burned up by a guy from ultra-conservative Human Events magazine. I also suspected that the deck was stacked at this deal because the last call for questions went out after I raised my hand.

I have to admit I was rather nervous had called on me. I didn’t know what kind of scene would erupt if I pointed out the truth. I was so pissed off about this obvious lie that the tension built in my throat so as to make me believe I would just utter out a screeching that would only be deciphered by dolphins.

Anyway the session ended and the Congress people headed for the door.

I caught the one I wanted and was able to pepper him with questions about the farce they were putting forth.

Who did I get but Minnesota’s own Rep. John Kline.

I gave him a softball to get things going. I asked him about how much heat he had taken from county commissioners for not asking for earmarks for needed projects in his district.

He said there are some people that had given him a hard time about it but there are also some that are supportive of what he is doing.

Then he brought up McCain. This gave me the opportunity to ask him about Palin. I asked him about why she had asked for so much money in earmarks especially when the state of Alaska RUNS A PROFIT.  Seriously, they seem to be doing pretty well on their oil money; why do they need any more tax dollars from Minnesota or the rest of the United States?

He said that’s the way the system worked and if they wanted to get money for their state that’s how they got it.

I asked why she needed so much? Alaska runs a profit that they pay to their taxpayers. He went back to about how the system worked.

I asked him then when she saw “the light” on earmarks. He said he didn’t know but then brought up “the bridge to nowhere” as evidence of her hard stance on that.

To be fair Palin had only been a national figure for less then a week when I asked him this. The “Thanks but no thanks” line hadn’t proven to be a total lie yet. Although there were some who knew it wasn’t true. Like me, who heard the truth via MPR earlier.

But instead of challenging him on that I asked why did she ask for SO MANY OTHER EARMARKS?

Which is really what I wanted to get at. How can he say he supports the “McCain/Palin plan for Earmark reform” when she is a welfare queen in Alaska? They got so much money from the Federal Government and oil that they gave all their citizens a rebate check. Shouldn’t they have paid back the Federal Government and apologized for taking so much money?

He went back to his lines about how the system is broken.

So broken, Kline admitted, that he had to build a bridge in his district with an EARMARK.

So the lessen from that press conference is: earmarks are bad; part of a bad system that Rebublicans have had total control of for 4 of the last 6 years and half of their Presidental ticket that is going to solve the problem is an expert on it because she is the biggest abuser of it.

Makes total sense.

Any bets if Palin loses and has to go back to Alaska she’ll never ask for another earmark even though her state looks to be pretty flush with cash already?

Kline wouldn’t even bet on that.

Here’s my interaction with Kline here:

kline

Seriously, Letterman says it all.

As an aside: One of these days I will do a substantive post, one that doesn’t involve the YouTube du jour . Until then, this little gem of technology makes it so easy to take potshots at the opposition.

(The update is the more better snarktastic tagline at the end.)

Republicans take note: Stop trying to get laid in Minneapolis. It won’t end well. Of course there’s Mr. Wide Stance himself. As an aside, salmon everywhere are dancing a jig at Senator Craig’s untimely retirement.

But today’s episode stars Denver lawyer Gabriel Schwartz, GOP convention delegate. Long story short: Picks up woman in bar at Hotel Ivy downtown. They go up to his room. She slips a mickey in his cocktail, tells him to get undressed, and then robs him blind.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, too. Class act, this one.

Come-uppance is a bitch.

Also, nice shirt, dude. Does it come in brown? As far as shirts go, brown is really your color.

So you’re the Virginia GOP. You’re shitting bricks because your once happily red state might flip to the Obama column this year. You do your homework, and you realize Obama is running away with minority voters. You plan a big rally to reach out to minorities. Who do you pick be a featured speaker?

You guessed it. George Allen. Yeah, that George Allen.

As far as I’m concerned, George Allen can do all the minority outreach possible between now and November.

Courtesy Matthew Yglesias at Think Progress, we have this nugget about John McCain’s interview with the Spanish newspaper El País, in which they were talking about the Prez o’ Spain:

“The questioner asked several times about Senator McCain’s willingness to meet Zapatero (and id’d him in the question so there is no doubt Senator McCain knew exactly to whom the question referred). Senator McCain refused to commit to a White House meeting with President Zapatero in this interview,” he said in an e-mail.

As Yglesias points out, Spain is a member of NATO—meaning we’re obligated to go to war to protect the Spanish state from invasion, &c., just as Spain is obligated to do the same if we need them. In short, they’re an ally. A close ally. And McCain won’t commit to a White House meeting… WITH ANOTHER HEAD OF GOVERNMENT OF ANOTHER NATO MEMBER?!?

So, if we royally piss off Russia by bringing the Ukraine and Georgia and the rest of the hot Slavic mess into NATO and then (as Sarah Palin has suggested we might have to) go to war against Russia… the heads of government of Ukraine and Georgia and the rest of the hot Slavic mess wouldn’t get the White House’s ear? I’m sorry, that’s just… insane. Really, truly, unequivocally nuts.

It’s increasingly clear that Republicanism is just morphing into chauvinism—McCain is either covering up for saying something stupid or, worse, McCain is trying to shore up the rabid right so much that even meeting with an ally is now considered a threat to our national sovereignty and macho-man ‘tude. Either way, the Republican Party’s not even coherent any more. It’s just all strut and no walk.

John McCain, a U.S. senator from Arizona, called for another debate on President Bush’s plan to create private savings accounts as part of Social Security. He also urged citizens to become less reliant on Social Security as a retirement income.

“The dirty secret in America today is that Medicare and Social Security are going broke. They’re going broke and they’re not going to be there for future generations of young Americans, and we owe them the responsibility to make hard choices now,” McCain said.- USA TODAY 10/26/07

Rep. Ron Paul, the most vocal Republican opponent to the war in Iraq, rejected an overture from former “Americans are whiners” Senator Phil Gramm to endorse McCain/Palin.

Good.

Now while the main reason I root for Paul is because he splinters the GOP, I still think the Libertarian Party’s idea of government is a fantasy. Although their idea of privatizing everything, including national defense, may be closer to reality (see Blackwater) than it was 8 years ago, I think we are still a long way from selling their idea of plutocratic “utopia” to the masses.

I know the media likes to cover him as a novelty and they seem to think that his fervent supporters are cute, but how they were treated at the Republican National Convention would bring howls of protest if the same thing had happened at the Democratic Convention.

Here’s what happened:

While I was at the RNC, I overheard a prominent Minnesota delegate, we’ll call him “Bill Twinkie”, telling one of the RNC’s volunteers, who happens to work high up in Republican politics, that there were six people in the Minnesota Delegation that were voting for Ron Paul and not McCain. He said that they were trying to figure out who they were so they would switch their votes so as not to mess up McCain’s big nomination vote.

So how did the Minnesota Republican Party rectify their little dissent issue?

Unlike other states that just bit the bullet and announced Paul’s votes- to a chorus of boos- Gov. Tim Pawlenty apparently took matters into his own hands.

When the roll was called for Minnesota’s 41 delegate votes, Pawlenty announced 35 for McCain and then……Shut up.

The six votes for Paul were never announced or counted.

So that’s how they roll in the MN GOP. You vote the opposite of what Pawlenty wants; he’ll just not count them.

Imagine if a Democratic delegation had not counted a batch of votes for Clinton in Denver. What would the lead story look like on Fox News then?

This is what the final tally looks like if you disagree with the GOP bosses  here.

Has anyone asked what McCain meant when he said he was a Teddy Roosevelt Republican?

“In his turn, the capitalist who is really a conservative, the man who has forethought as well as patriotism, should heartily welcome every effort, legislative or otherwise, which has for its object to secure fair dealing by capital, corporate or individual, toward the public and toward the employee.”

Let me translate: if big business and rich people really cared about America and Americans, it would obey the law and pay its fair share of taxes to take care of the less fortunate and treat employees fairly.

Does that sound like anything McCain said at the RNC? Sure doesn’t. It’s Teddy Roosevelt in 1903. It was a speech later known as the “Square Deal.”

Back then conservative Republicans couldn’t stand having big business pushed around by the government, especially a government run by a Republican. So they got big, fat William Taft to look the other way when he became President. This caused Roosevelt to come out of retirement to run against the morbidly obese (my grandfather saw him in person once, he swore to the day he died: Taft was the fattest person he had ever seen) President.

What did Roosevelt’s Progressive or “Bull-Moose” party stand for?

A continuation of the Square Deal policies Roosevelt set in place before Taft.

But to others Roosevelt’s party platform had some stolen ideas.

Who would accuse TR, a patriarch of the Republican party, hero to John McCain of stealing his ideas?

Eugene Debs.

That’s right, the leader of the Socialist party. Don’t believe me? You can read it here in a New York Times editorial during the 1912 Presidential race.

Did I miss the day McCain said the government should nationalize the oil companies, bring about single payer healthcare and take care of the worker? Will McCain campaign for “social and industrial justice” like his hero Roosevelt did? Not if he wants to keep the “Drill baby, dill” crowd happy.

So either McCain has no idea what his “hero” stood for or McCain really means that he more liberal than Ted Kennedy. I wish someone in the media would ask him which one it is.