I Like The Sound Of This

Wonderful:

Tea Party Nation is pleased to announce the First National Tea Party Convention to be held February 4-6, 2010 at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, TN. The convention is aimed at bringing the Tea Party Movement leaders together from around the nation for the purpose of networking and supporting the movements' multiple organizations principle goals. This event will be co-sponsored by other national groups that believe in a responsible and limited federal government that is responsive to all the people.

Come on all you Tea-Baggers -- go and support your party. Sarah Palin will give the keynote address, and it will only cost you $349 to hear her speak!

What Do I Like Most About Republicans?

When they are in a hole, they just keep digging:

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said today that the President's nomination for head of the TSA concerns him because it shows that "the President is more focused on coming through with a campaign promise to the unions rather than keeping Transportation Security focused on the real security of American passengers."

DeMint appeared on CBS today and responded to criticism from Democrats over his hold on Obama's nomination to the TSA's top post, Errol Southers.

DeMint said that he's "not trying to block" the vote, he just wants "debate and a vote because the stated goal of the president and Secretary Napolitano is to submit our airport security to collective bargaining. This is something that has been prohibited since the agency was formed because it takes away the flexibility that we need to continually upgrade."

Obviously, if a Democrat had tried to delay the confirmation of one of George W. Bush's national security nominees, he or she would have been crucified -- not only by the GOP, but by the so-called liberal media as well. But DeMint has been getting away with this for quite some time -- thanks in no small part to the fact that the Democrats are weak and they let him get away with it -- so it is good to finally see him catching some criticism. Too bad it took a failed terrorist attack to really bring DeMint's bullshittery into the light.

Don't forget that this is the same guy who said earlier in the year that "[i]f we're able to stop Obama on [health care reform], it will be his Waterloo. It will break him. . . ." DeMint has since tried (unsuccessfully) to distance himself from that statement, but as far as the Democrats are concerned, he is a gift that keeps on giving. The Dems just need to get better at using this gift.

Ted Nugent Is Still Alive?

I guess so (although it is pretty clear that he is, in fact, brain-dead):

Rocker TED NUGENT isn't a fan of U.S. leader BARACK OBAMA - he thinks the president should be jailed.

The Cat Scratch Fever hitmaker, a fervent Republican, insists America should be ashamed about voting in the Democrat, who took office in January (09). He tells Royal Flush magazine, "I think that Barack Hussein Obama should be put in jail. It is clear that Barack Hussein Obama is a communist. "(Former Chinese leader) Mao Tse Tung lives and his name is Barack Hussein Obama. This country should be ashamed. I wanna throw up."

This Isn't Too Surprising

In fact, they really have no choice. If Republicans running for office in 2010 and 2012 don't come out against health care reform, then they'd risk pissing off the Tea-Baggers:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) went on an anti-health care reform blitz yesterday, both asserting that the bill will be a central issue for Republicans running in 2010 and 2012, and even suggesting that repealing the bill will be a big part of this platform.

Gingrich, appearing on Meet The Press, was quite blunt about the idea: "I suspect every Republican running in '10 and again in '12 will run on an absolute pledge to repeal this bill."

He also called the health care reform bill "the most corrupt legislation I think I've seen in my lifetime." McConnell was less straightforward, saying that all the Democrats "kind of joined hands and went off the cliff together."

Palin/Beck 2012!

By the way, check out these lies from right-winger Mary Matalin:

"I was there [in the Bush White House]. We inherited a recession from President Clinton and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation's history. And President Bush dealt with it."

One thing the Republicans have learned over the years is that it is OK to lie to the American people. And the bigger the lie, the better.

George W. Bush did not inherit the 9-11 attacks. They actually occurred eight months into the his first term, and Bush/Cheney spent those first eight months pretending that al Qaeda didn't exist. And Bush did not inherit a recession from Clinton.

Nice try, though -- I'm sure the Tea-Baggers loved it.

And speaking of lying, this is hilarious.

Great Speech RE: Health Care Debate

Senator Whitehouse from Rhode Island really nailed it with this floor speech (watch video here). He started out with a sixty-year-old quote from Richard Hofstadter, who warned that a right-wing minority could create "a political environment in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible," and then went on to state that "the malignant and vindictive passions that have descended on the Senate are busily creating just such a political climate."

My favorite part of Whitehouse's comments occurred near the end:

"When it turns out there are no death panels, when there is no bureaucrat between you and your doctor, when the ways your health care changes seem like a good deal to you, and a pretty smart idea, when the American public sees the discrepancy between what really is, and what they were told by the Republicans, there will be a reckoning. There will come a day of judgment about who was telling the truth. * * *

"There will come a day of judgment, and our Republican friends know that. That Mr. President, is why they are terrified."

Great words, but for me, the amazing part of this whole health care debate is that the bill that will ultimately come out of Congress will probably be mediocre at best when it comes to actually addressing this health care crisis. In other words, the GOP -- along with Lebofuck and the rest of them -- were really able to water this thing down to a great extent.

But you wouldn't know it from listening to Drug-Fiend Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Lielly, Mike "Murderer Releaser" Huckabee, Lars Fucking Larson, and all those other right winged extremist assholes who dominate local radio station KBND -- they used to just dominate late morning/afternoon programming, but now we have to hear them spew their raw sewage in the early part of the day as well (I felt like giving my radio the Hitler salute this morning).

Anyway, these brain-dead ass clowns -- whom I blame for a good portion of our country's problems given that they were the ones carrying a lot of water for BushCo -- were talking as if the right wing lost everything. I guess they figure that anything the Democrats do with regard to the health care problem will be a victory for Obama and thus a problem for them.

What's the GOP plan for addressing this problem? Well, it's the same bullshit thing they always say: MORE TAX CUTS!! That's their answer for everything. Jesus, these America-haters even managed to pass a fucking tax cut during war time. Their twisted anti-tax message has gotten so pervasive that our country can't even have a real debate about tax policy anymore (i.e., the rational pursuit of our country's well-being and safety has become impossible). And I find the Republicans' recent interest in budget deficits to be hilarious, given that they were the motherfuckers who spent us -- and legislated us -- into this mess in the first place.

In any event, I love how upset all these right wingers are right now. Maybe Senator Whitehouse is right and these idiots are merely terrified that the American people will ultimately judge them for all the manure they spread around with the help of all the town hall teabagging idiocy. But I've had enough of their crap.

By the way, it is hard to argue with these poll results. The 00s did suck in a big way, and the reason it was such a crappy decade had a lot do with some of the things I mentioned above.

Talk About Ingratitude . . .

If it wasn't for John McCain, Sarah Palin would still be a nobody:

The failed Vice Presidential nominee took time off from shilling her book to vacation with her son Trig, daughter Piper and opposite sex spouse Todd, in President Barack Obama's birth state of Hawaii on Tuesday.

But during beach time, Sarah chose to wear a visor from her campaign -- a visor that was emblazoned with the former presidential candidate's name ... that is, until Palin redacted McCain's name with a black marker.

McCain's decision to put Palin on the ticket will go down in history as one of the great political blunders of all time -- her idiocy turned out to be a huge drag on the ticket and her continuing idiocy may spell the end of the GOP as a major American political party (please God -- let her get the Republican nomination in 2012).

But McCain naming her as his running mate in 2008 certainly helped Palin personally. She should show more appreciation for that.

Seems Like A Prudent Move

From TPM:

A Costco in Salt Lake City, Utah reportedly removed all of its tomatoes ahead of a Sarah Palin book tour event, after a man was arrested for attempting to hit Palin with a tomato at an earlier event in Minnesota.

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Costco management was "determined" to avoid another tomato-throwing incident, and resorted to removing all of the tomatoes from the store.

This extreme measure followed a December 7 incident in which a man tried to hit Palin with a tomato at a Mall Of America event, but missed and hit a police officer instead.

And while I am on the subject of the extreme right wing, I've gotten a kick lately out of how the GOP is really starting to worry about deficit spending, given that they were the ones who caused the huge deficit in the first place. Of course, if you tried to tell that to a right-winger, he'd turn around and blame Obama. Well, unfortunately for the Republicans, they really can't do that (from The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities):

Some critics charge that the new policies pursued by President Obama and the 111th Congress generated the huge federal budget deficits that the nation now faces. In fact, the tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the economic downturn together explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years.

The deficit for fiscal 2009 was $1.4 trillion and, at an estimated 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), was the largest deficit relative to the size of the economy since the end of World War II. Under current policies, deficits will likely exceed $1 trillion in 2010 and 2011 and remain near that figure thereafter.

The events and policies that have pushed deficits to astronomical levels in the near term, however, were largely outside the new Administration’s control. If not for the tax cuts enacted during the Presidency of George W. Bush that Congress did not pay for, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that began during that period, and the effects of the worst economic slump since the Great Depression (including the cost of steps necessary to combat it), we would not be facing these huge deficits in the near term.

While President Obama inherited a bad fiscal legacy, that does not diminish his responsibility to propose policies to address our fiscal imbalance and put the weight of his office behind them. Although policymakers should not tighten fiscal policy in the near term while the economy remains fragile, they and the nation at large must come to grips with the nation’s deficit problem. But we should all recognize how we got where we are today.

That last sentence is pretty good advice, but you know that two things are going to happen: (1) the GOP will blame Obama for everything, especially all the shit that they -- the Republicans -- caused, and (2) the Democrats will offer up a weak response, just like they always do.

Alan Grayson Tells Our Cowardly, Draft-Dodging Former VP To "STFU"

More Democrats need to talk this way about Dick "Five Deferments" Cheney:

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) put his sharp tongue to use again on Hardball this evening. Chris Matthews asked Grayson about Dick Cheney's penchant for taking swipes at President Obama, specifically his most recent accusation that Obama was giving "aid and comfort to the enemy," which is the constitutional language that defines treason. Grayson replied by telling Cheney, in so many words (or in this case, letters), just what he can do:

Grayson: I don't know. You know, on the Internet there's an acronym that's used to apply to situations like this. It's called "STFU." I don't think I can say that on the air, but I think you know what that means.

Matthews: Well, give me the first part.

Grayson: "Shut."

Matthews: Oh! I got you. Stop talking, in crude language. Well, I don't think you're gonna get him to do that.

They moved on to Cheney's accusation that Obama had shown weakness when he bowed to the Emperor of Japan, and in doing so, opened up the country to more terrorist attacks.

It's just too bad that it's too late to impeach him," Grayson said. "That's all I can say."

Dick Cheney Is A F*cking Idiot

Well, I already knew he was an idiot, but geesus:

Dick Cheney has ratcheted up his criticism of President Obama again, calling the decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in New York a "huge mistake."

In an interview with Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity, the former vice president said the trial, which isn't expected to begin for at least a year in Manhattan's federal district court, will allow KSM an ill-advised showcase to spew his anti-American venom.

"He'll be able to go in whenever he's up on the stand and proselytize, if you will, millions of people out there around the world including some of his radical Muslim friends and generate a whole new generation of terrorists," Cheney said.

"I think it will make Khalid Sheikh Mohammed something of a hero in certain circles, especially in the radical regions of Islam around the world. It will put him on the map. He'll be as important or more important than Osama Bin Laden, and we will have made it possible."

As Steve Benen notes, however: "There's a nagging detail that even someone of Cheney's limited intellect should be able to understand: there are no cameras for federal trials."

On second thought, maybe Cheney knows there are no cameras in Federal Court, but he also knows that the folks who actually watch Hannity's show are morons who have no clue with regard to whether there would be cameras. If that is indeed the case, then Cheney is simply a liar who is taking advantage of the idiocy of FoxNews viewers.

I guess I should have titled this post, "Dick Cheney Is An Asshole."

And speaking of FoxNews, this is hilarious.

And check this out: Rachel Maddow -- a lesbian -- interviews Richard Cohen, head of the International Healing Foundation, a group that claims it can can cure homosexuality.

Sarah Palin Has A Real Problem When It Comes To Answering Simple Questions

And the guy asking the question was not a member of the left-wing media elite like Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, but a fellow right-winger:

Sarah Palin declared on Thursday that the legitimacy of President Obama's birth certificate is "rightfully" an issue with the American public, and that it is "fair game" for politicians to question Obama's citizenship.

The comments came during an interview with conservative radio host Rusty Humphries, who asked Palin whether she planned to "make the birth certificate an issue" if she runs for president in 2012.

"I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue," Palin said. "I don't have a problem with that. I don't know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers."

Humphries -- who began the interview with a rendition of the song "Sarah, Queen Of The Wild Frontier" -- followed up: "Do you think it's a fair question to be looking at?"

"I think it's a fair question just like I think past associations and past voting records. All of that is fair game," Palin responded, adding that "the McCain-Palin campaign didn't do a good enough job in that area. We didn't call out Obama and some of his associates on their records and what their beliefs were, and perhaps what their future plans were, and I don't think that was fair to voters to not have done our job as candidates and a campaign to bring to light a lot of things that now we're seeing manifest in the administration."

Someone must have told her that she was a complete idiot to answer that question the way she did, and she has since tried to backtrack. But I think it is hilarious how much trouble Republicans are having with this Birther Movement. Palin and other don't want to upset these lunatics, but they are also afraid to be lumped in with them.

This Is Encouraging

From MSNBC:

* * * The unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 10 percent last month, from 10.2 percent in October, as employers cut the fewest number of jobs since the recession began. The better-than-expected figures provided a rare dose of good news for a labor market that's lost 7.2 million jobs in two years.

The average work week also rose, along with average earnings. And the Labor Department said 159,000 fewer jobs were lost in September and October than first reported. * * *

The economy shed 11,000 jobs last month, an improvement from October's revised total of 111,000, the Labor Department said Friday. That's much better than the 130,000 Wall Street economists had expected. * * *

This recovery is going to take years, though. As noted in the article: "Job creation is expected to remain far too weak in coming months to absorb the 15.4 million unemployed people who are seeking work — and 11.5 million others who are either working part-time but want full-time jobs or have given up job hunting."

But it's nice to get some good economic news for a change.

By the way, this is hilarious.

Finally -- A Democrat With Some Guts

I'm sure Hoyer will catch a lot of shit for saying this, but he's absolutely right:

George W. Bush "turned tail" from the Afghan war to invade Iraq, leaving President Barack Obama a worsening war he must now try to turn around, a senior Democratic White House ally said Tuesday.

In unusually sharp comments, Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said he was "angry" about former vice president Dick Cheney's latest attacks on Obama's handling of a bloody conflict now in its ninth year.

"Frankly, they turned tail. That's pretty tough language, but I get angry when I hear vice president Cheney talk about a job they started but didn't finish," Hoyer told reporters." They started something and didn't finish it, and they left it for this administration to clean up," he said. "We are clearly not making the same mistake the Bush administration made." * * *

F*ckin-A.