Bachmann has made it official:
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) said Monday that she had formally become a Republican candidate for president.
Ms. Bachmann’s announcement had been expected, though the forum was not. It came while she was participating in a CNN-televised debate for Republicans seeking to challenge President Barack Obama.
Somewhere, Jon Stewart is rejoicing, and Stephen Colbert is beside himself with glee.
As a result of the train wreck that is Newt Gingrich, his entire campaign staff resigned.
The proximate cause was his decision to go on a cruise ship vacation while everyone else in the race is hitting places like Iowa and New Hampshire.
I’m beginning to think that this is all just a variation of his “Gingrich, Inc.” scam which Rachel Maddow had detailed, and he’s doing this because his little money making operation pretty much demands that he eventually run.
It raises a kind of a meta-media question: The standard narrative for the Washington Press whores corps about Gingrich is that he an intellectual colossus of the conservative movement, a meme which the beltway bozos continue to push, but we are seeing increasing evidence that he’s just a self serving clown.
In any case, I find the clown show, and the contortions of his fans in the media, an amusing show.
Because when some narcissistic sociopath gets a bee in his bonnet and blocks a Nobel prize winner in economics from a seat on the Federal Reserve:
The decision by a noted economist Monday to end a 14-month wait for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors is renewing concerns among some Democrats about the fighting spirit of the Obama administration.
The candidate, Peter A. Diamond, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Nobel Prize laureate for his work on labor markets, cited Republican opposition in asking the White House to withdraw his nomination.
But Democratic leadership did not press for a vote on the nomination, and Congressional aides said that the White House invested relatively little energy in fighting for Mr. Diamond. Moreover, they said that the administration had not submitted nominations for vacancies atop several of the federal agencies charged with overhauling and improving financial regulation in the wake of the 2008 crisis.
“There’s a deep feeling of frustration,” said one Democratic aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. “No one wants to insult the administration or put them in a position that’s uncomfortable for them or worse for them. So you’re just sitting around waiting for them to take the lead.”
The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said on Monday that the White House did everything it could to push the nomination, and he lamented the “partisan obstructionism” that had prevented approval of Mr. Diamond.
(emphasis mine)
Yes, “partisan obstructionism”, and the fact that your boss is a hopeless clueless chump.
Or maybe he really does not want meaningful regulation, and so he’s leaving seats empty, so that Geithner can continue to run things for the benefit of the banksters.
Your call, but I am leaning toward door number 2.
Giving into hostage takers just encourages more hostage taking.
BTW, you can read Diamond’s take on all of this here.
First Weiner, and now in response to Sarah Palin’s Paul Revere gaffe, her Evil Minions™ are attempting to edit Wikipedia to make it agree with her.
Well, this answers an important question: Just how brain damaged a Republican fanboi has to be in order to have Little Green Footballs mock them.
Revere’s official response
So, because she is in New England, she makes reference to Paul Revere, only she gets it really wrong, “He who warned, uh, the, the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and, um, makin’ sure as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that, uh, we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free and we were gonna be armed.“
The fact that anyone listens to Sarah Palin or takes her seriously says worse things about the USA than anything that Osama could have dreamed.
I pray for the day that her 15 minutes of fame is done.
H/t UM at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for catching the story, and finding the Revere pic.
Not Just a Helo, but a Big MoFo Helo
First, it was Jane Swift, and now everyone’s Republican asshole “it” girl Chris Christie, who took a state police medevac helicopter to his son’s baseball game, so that he could get back in time to talk with some wealthy Iowa donors:
A brand-new State Police helicopter was Gov. Chris Christie’s ride of choice yesterday as he traveled to and from his son’s baseball game in Bergen County.
His office won’t say where he came from or where he went afterward. But about an hour and 10 minutes after leaving the game, Christie arrived, by car, at the governor’s mansion in Princeton to meet with a group of Iowa businessmen trying to recruit him for a presidential run.
The use of state helicopters has opened New Jersey governors to criticism for decades, especially when it did not involve official state business.
“It is a means of transportation that is occasionally used as the schedule demands. This has historically been the case in prior administrations as well, and we continue to be judicious in limiting its use,” said Christie’s spokesman Michael Drewniak in an e-mail. He declined to answer additional questions.
(emphasis mine)
Yeah, right, “Judiciious in limiting its use.”
It gets better though, that fat f%$# couldn’t even be bothered to walk from where he landed to the ball park:
As the game at St. Joseph Regional High School in Montvale was about to begin, a noise from above distracted the spectators who watched the 55-foot-long helicopter buzz over the trees in left field, circle the outfield and land in an adjacent football field. Christie left the helicopter and got into a black car with tinted windows that drove him about 100 yards to the baseball field. The governor watched from the bleachers as his eldest son, Andrew, played starting catcher for Delbarton School. Christie played the position of catcher in high school as well.
He’s governor after all, you cannot let his foot touch the ground.
The thing here is that Christie has a long history of this sort of crap, 4 star hotels, buying off people that he’s run down going the wrong way on a one way street, etc.
Of course, while he was running for governor, the press ignored this, so one wonders whether he’s going to finally lose the undeserved man crush that they have on him.
So, after the Republican party’s attempt to demolish Medicare results in one of the most Republican districts in the nation flipping Democratic in a special election, Barack Obama completely misses the point:
I want to extend my congratulations to Congresswoman-elect Kathy Hochul for her victory in New York’s 26th Congressional District,” the president said in a statement. “Kathy and I both believe that we need to create jobs, grow our economy, and reduce the deficit in order to outcompete other nations and win the future. Kathy has shown, through her victory and throughout her career, that she will fight for the families and businesses in western New York, and I look forward to working with her when she gets to Washington.
So, what’s here? We have:
What we don’t have:
And did I mention that he neglected to mention protecting the elderly or Medicare?
Note that while this is going on, Joe Biden, negotiating for the Democrats, has not taken Medicare off the table:
Vice President Joe Biden set a goal of at least $1 trillion in budget cuts from negotiations with congressional leaders on the federal debt as talks turned to Medicare, a contentious issue that risks replicating a partisan divide on Capitol Hill.
Democrats in the meeting yesterday ruled out concessions on Medicare without Republican agreement to raise tax revenue, a step the party’s leaders so far have rejected, according to someone familiar with the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity. Biden underscored the issue in remarks to reporters afterward.
(emphasis mine)
So the deal is, so long as they can get some token tax increases from Republicans, probably directed at labor unions and single mothers, they can agree to cut Medicare.
This does not bode well for 2012.
<facepalm>
The Republicans, yet again, complaining that their attempts to dismantle and privatize Medicare are bging called an attempt to dismantle and privatize Medicare:
House GOP budget star Paul Ryan is keeping up his offensive against Democrats who claim their victory in a New York special election Tuesday night was a rebuke of his budget plan that overhauls Medicare.
Democrats “are shamelessly demagoguing and distorting” Medicare, “trying to scare seniors and using this as a political weapon,” Ryan said Tuesday morning at the Peterson Foundation Summit in Washington.
Ryan appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” earlier Tuesday where he blamed Democratic attack ads for the Republican loss, not the substance of his plan.
I understand you are a little objectivist Ayn Rand groupie, and so you believe that everyone thinks that government is pernicious and evil, even when it produces programs that outperform the private sector and benefit society, but the problem here is not that people are lying about your plan, it is that they are telling the truth.
Suck it up, bitch.
At least when it’s clear that he is a crook and a liar, you clearly deserve to reap the whirlwind
Case in point, Florida Governor Rick Scott, who presided over Columbia/HCA while it was defrauding Medicare, and proceeded to take the 5th amendment around 75 times during the investigation.
And now it apopears that the dumb-ass voters of Florida are having a bit of buyers remorse:
Gov. Rick Scott is one of the least popular governors in America, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll that shows 57 percent of voters disapprove of his job performance.
Only 29 percent favor the job Scott is doing, the poll of 1,196 registered voters shows.
Scott’s job-performance numbers mirror public sentiment about the $69.7 billion state budget, which cuts schools, healthcare and programs for the environment. The poll finds that 54 percent of voters say the budget is “unfair” to someone like them, while 29 percent favor it.
Scott has praised what he calls the “jobs budget” as a way to get Florida’s economy moving. But despite the nickname, the budget will lead to more layoffs in the short-term because it eliminates nearly 4,500 state worker positions.
Tough titties, Floridians, you elected him, and you don’t have a recall law for state wide official, so for the next few years, it will suck to be you.
Because Newt’s campaign co-chair is Zell Miller, who was last seen challenging Chris Matthews to a duel. (No, really, watch the Vid)
I think that Newt confused the words bipartisan and bipolar.
Pass the popcorn.
This time, it’s House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who is insisting that any aid that any aid going to the tornado ravaged town of Joplin Missouri be offset by budget cuts:
Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Monday that if Congress passes an emergency spending bill to help Missouri’s tornado victims, the extra money will have to be cut from somewhere else.
“If there is support for a supplemental, it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental,” Mr. Cantor, Virginia Republican, told reporters at the Capitol. The term “pay-fors” is used by lawmakers to signal cuts or tax increases used to pay for new spending.
Note that this sort of callous disregard for this sort of disaster not only puts him on the wrong side of all decent people, it puts him on the wrong side of Tom “The Hammer” Delay, who supported borrowing to fund hurricane Katrina relief.
Noted African American studies professor Cornell West recently characterized Barack Obama as, “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats,” in addition to declaring that he the President has bought wholeheartedly into “the American Killing Machine.”
While there are a number of reasons why a man who was once one of Barack Obama’s staunchest supporters might have become disillusioned, and in the interview linked above, there does appear to be a sense of wronged entitlement, West complains about not getting phone calls answered and issues with the inauguration tickets.
Having relatives who have worked, or are working in academe, some at fairly rarefied levels, I can state with some level of authority that a sense of entitlement is rather endemic in this environment, particularly amongst those who ply their trade in the Ivys.
So, I do not find Dr. West’s opinion particularly surprising or worthy of note, but I do find the positively kraptastic response to this criticism amongst the intelligentsia and much of the liberal blogosphere to be interesting.
Karoli has a good survey of those responses, in addition to being a prime example of this idiocy:
I don’t understand what the goal is when it comes to Cornel West’s opinion. He says in that same interview that if the only backstop against fascism is Barack Obama, he’ll go with that. If the goings-on in Republican states and the United States Congress doesn’t convince you of that, then look to the Supreme Court’s future to understand what’s at stake. So why come out and call President Obama a tool of the oligarchs? It makes no sense, and is suppressive in nature and intent.
How about this: because it is the truth.
Whether it is Geithner and Summers and the banks, the quashing of even the most casual investigation of torture, the expansion of the surveillance state, the war on whistle blowers, etc., Cornell West’s statement is objectively true.
He is better than the current crop of Republican candidates, but so was Terri Schiavo when she was on a ventilator.
It appears that Ms. Merkel doesn’t realize that she’s not bailing out the Greeks, she’s bailing out the German banks who are owed the money, but she’s still being a hard-ass and virtually assuring that we will see defaults, as well as worsening social unrest:
Also at issue was the technical operation of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the permanent euro zone bailout fund due to come into force in mid-2013.
As ministers prepared to tackle the increasingly precarious financial situation in Greece, Dr Merkel made clear her resistance to any debt restructuring by the country.
Addressing students in Berlin, Dr Merkel said private sovereign creditors should not bear losses until the ESM starts its work.
“It would raise incredible doubts of our credibility if we simply were to change the rules in the middle of the first programme,” Dr Merkel said.
The rise in dissatisfaction with the EU, and the rise on nationalistic, and frequently xenophobic, parties in the EU is a direct result of the fact that it is being run as a support group for the banks, who, after all, were the ones who f%$#ed up everything in the first place.
I stick with my original statement on the Euro Zone: the country that needs to leave is not any of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain), but Germany, which has increasingly seen the Euro as a way to artificially deflate its currency for export purposes, both within and outside of the EU.
They are a predatory exporter, only marginally better than China.
Yes, the foundation of British civil rights, and by extension of the United States, has been ruled invalid by the Indiana state Supreme Court, who have upended the 900 year old precedent, and ruled that police have the right to Illegally enter your home:
Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.
In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.
Why? Because the cop is always right:
“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” David said. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”
It appears that these wankers never read the part of the Constitution that says, “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.”
So, a medieval peasant, living under King Edward I (Longshanks) in Coventry in 1300 has more civil rights than an American living in Indiannapolis.
I’m thinking that these guys got their law degree from either a Cracker Jack box, or from the Christian Broadcast Network University (now called Regency University).
You see, in the process of banning bestiality, they banned any person having any sort of sexual contact with an animal outside of the norms of animal husbandry and veterinary science:
An act relating to sexual activities involving animals; creating s. 828.126, F.S.; providing definitions; prohibiting knowing sexual conduct or sexual contact with an animal; prohibiting specified related activities; providing penalties; providing that the act does not apply to certain husbandry, conformation judging, and veterinary practices; providing an effective date.
Unfortunately, it appears that none of these folks took high school biology.
To quote Mel Brooks, “Ooh, baby, you are so talented! ……… And they are so *dumb*!”
Yes, the “disgraced former Speaker of the House” Newt Gingrich is officially running for President:
Newt Gingrich is entering the 2012 presidential race as a familiar face — a 20-year veteran of Congress who served a polarizing turn as House speaker before assuming a career as a prolific political commentator and author.
But Gingrich, who officially announced his White House bid Wednesday, is bringing a decidedly different approach to this contest than he did to his previous stint in public office.
In his speeches and campaign appearances, Gingrich is expected to lay out a political vision that intertwines fiscal and social conservatism, drawing from a newfound interest in religion he has infused into his work in recent years.
It’s a message he’s expected to make Friday at the Georgia Republican Party convention in what advisors are billing as his formal announcement speech, an address that will marry the concept of American exceptionalism with an emphasis on God-endowed rights.
“American exceptionalism with an emphasis on God-endowed rights” appears to mean sleeping around on your wife and dumping her when she gets cancer, or MS, while attempting to impeach Bill Clinton for getting a blow job in the white house.
I’m beginning to think that I need to add a tag, Clown Show to my list of standard tags to descripe the ‘Phant Presidential field this year.
*Credit goes to JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for coming up with this bon mot.
So, after voting to abolish Medicare, the Republican freshmen have sent a letter to Obama demanding that the Democrats not beat them up over this:
Politicians usually don’t begin press conferences with an admission of guilt.
But that’s exactly what happened Wednesday, when freshman Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) called on the president to condemn the scare tactics Democrats have used against Republicans on Medicare — the same type of attacks Republicans used against Democrats throughout the 2010 campaign that helped put many of the GOP freshmen in office.
“We’ve all been guilty at one time or another of playing partisan politics with key issues facing our country, but now is the time to hit the reset button,” Kinzinger said, as if to pre-empt accusations of hypocrisy coming from Democrats. “As a freshman class, we have the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and … not continue the petty politics we’ve seen in the past.”
Last year, as a candidate, Kinzinger sang a different tune: He criticized the Democratic health care overhaul, saying it would amount to $500 billion in cuts over 10 years, removing 4 million patients from Medicare and putting 15 million on Medicaid, according to local news reports.
I’m sorry, but if these guys are not strong enough to defend themselves from a 72 year old constituent with blue hair, how can they be expected to protect us from bin Laden Saddam Hussein Fidel Castro anyone more threatening than the Easter Bunny?
You know the attacks against the rat f%$#s are different from the death panels, because they are true, which has counted for something in the United States since the days of John Peter Zenger.
Why do House Republicans hate America?
The moron is talking about means testing Medicare:
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) offered cautious support Tuesday for the idea of adopting further means-testing of Medicare and Social Security to help shore up the finances of both programs. But the devil, he said, will be in the details.
“I don’t want to get into means testing until we look at specific proposals,” Hoyer said at his weekly Capitol briefing in response to a question from TPM. “Generally speaking, we do, as you know, have certain means testing in both Medicare and SS at this point in time. … I think clearly we’re going to have to make both of those programs sustainable over the long run, and I think to some degree it would be clearly appropriate to look at — without endorsing any specific proposal — the insuring that the least well off are protected and to do that look at the best off … in terms of what level of support they get.”
First, if you cut off the top ½%, you don’t save any money, and if you cut off any more than that, and you destroy the program, which makes it bad policy.
Then you have to follow that up with the fact that the Republicans are killing themselves with this, but good old Steny feels the need to give them an opportunity to point at the Dems and say, “See, they are trying to cut your Medicare!”
Is he trying to lose?
Actually, considering him, he might be. I think that he figures that he becomes the Dem leader in the House if Pelosi does not get back the House in 2012, so he wins by the country losing.
The original
Der Tzitung
De Voch
Not one but two Heredim (black hat ultra Orthodox) publications, Der Tzitung and De Voch photoshopped Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and and White House aide Audrey Tomason out of the iconic picture of staff watching the progress of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound.
It appears that they consider even a photograph of a woman to be too sexually salacious.
It just proves that medieval hyper-religious nut-jobs are not limited to al Qaeda, or the talibaptist whack jobs, but includes fellow Jews.
As my brother is wont to say, “Schwer zu Sein a Yid.” (It ain’t easy being a Jew.)
H/t Failed Messiah.
All the arguments about the bin Laden death photo are a part of the bigger picture, which is that essentially nothing resembling accurate and impartial photojournalism is ever allowed in our “war on terror”, and this is intentional.
A more accurate picture of the forever war we are involved in would inevitably result in a substantial erosion in the support for it, which would mean that Blackwater Xe would not be able to support John Ashcroft in the manner to which he is accustomed.