"Dear Sasha and Malia, I get you're both in those awful teen years, but you're part of the First Family, try showing a little class. At least respect the part you play. Then again your mother and father don't respect their positions very much, or the nation for that matter, so I'm guessing you're coming up a little short in the "good role model" department. Nevertheless, stretch yourself. Rise to the occasion. Act like being in the White House matters to you. Dress like you deserve respect, not a spot at a bar. And certainly don't make faces during televised, public events."Oh really? Let's Flip the Script.
The former first lady recalled receiving a letter from someone she knows saying she should tell Jenna Bush how outrageous it was for her to have stuck out her tongue at photographers while traveling with her father on a campaign trip, an act caught on film.
"I wrote the girl back and I said, if you'll pardon me, 98 percent of Americans would like to stick their tongue out at the press," Barbara Bush told ABC, adding that the gesture took place while the press corps was kidding around. "It was so nothing, and it was funny."
Psst! It must be hard to be a republican and an American.Doe-eyed Bristol Palin, 17, and ruggedly handsome Levi Johnston, an 18-year-old self-described "f---in' redneck," have been dating a year, locals in Wasilla, Alaska, told the Daily News.And the pregnancy? An open secret in the close-knit town of 9,780.
The problem is that there is a basic hypocrisy in the media that allows the right to not be held accountable bad behavior. Not only is the right allowed to get away with worse things than the MHP segment on a daily basis, but no one on the left is ever cut the same slack."I have said this before and it is worth repeating: Nobody plays the victim card like these wingnuts. Sarah Palin has made a career out of it. (I see you Mr. Bashir). "
It isn’t just politicians that are feeding their bases, it is the media outlets, as well. The village common — you know, that place where we all meet to discuss our problems, relying on the same set of facts — has shrunk to the size of a postage stamp, surrounded by the huge gated communities of like minds who never venture into the great beyond.Case in point
There is no such law, I am aware who would need to indict Showers but a little MSM media attention would go a long way…Tweet of the Day
So it upsets you when a poor person buys some Mountain Dew with their #EBT card, but not when a rich person buys your congressman?
— Grand Old Parody (@GrandOldParody1) October 13, 2013
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| H/T Rachael Maddow Fan Page |
House Republicans will hold a symbolic vote next week to pressure Democrats into accepting deep spending cuts in exchange for lifting the $14.3 trillion debt limit.
The move, announced Tuesday in a closed-door conference meeting, is designed to show President Obama and Senate Democrats that Congress will not unconditionally grant the government more borrowing authority.
Republican aides dismissed concerns — raised by some Democrats — that a failed House vote would rattle the financial markets, much like the failure of the initial Wall Street bailout package in 2008 sent the Dow crashing by more than 700 points. The GOP circulated a fact sheet listing nine examples of clean debt-limit votes that have failed in the House or Senate since 1975.
Until Wall Street is clear that the Republicans really would refuse to raise the debt limit, the Republicans can continue to play their kabuki to try to force Democrats to vote against their key programs - Social Security and Medicare. Who causes the other to blink wins the narrative. Republicans are already arguing that Democrats have already cut Medicare (the same BS that won the GOP the House last year). But that argument after the Ryan budget has less traction.
There is one huge hot sweaty debate coming right before the August recess. (That's assuming that the administration has not made savings that kick the can down the road.) Faced with the debt ceiling being reached while they are home talking with voters and getting their local organizations lined up for next year's campaign, what will Republicans do? As usual, the disunity in the Democratic House caucus (thanks, Heath) is a problem.
The GOP media machine is getting more shrill, a clear indication they are getting worried that the extortion might not work and the hostage might escape.
What it means to me...the DEMS had no plan on how to handle this vote. They should have hung together and voted FOR the debt limit increase because it's the right thing to do and what needs to be done. Forget the 30 sec ads; it won't matter in the large scheme of things and that's what DEMS don't get.
They needed to hang together and make a statement; if they couldn't on a yes vote they should have all voted no in protest to the rules and had that be the message; either way it's stupid the way it shook out and took the focus off Medicare which is where it needs to be.
This was a mess all around and the White House should have been focused in on this and working to pull together a plan with house democrats.
Then again, they seem to be focused on a Biden track for a solution and ignoring the House.
Frankly, I don't see how one can be both Conservative and a Democrat. Democrats are pro choice. Conservatives are pro life as long as it's in the womb. Democrats are pro equal rights and civil rights. Democrats are pro labor and pro union, Conservatives are pro-prayer in school and pro "traditional family". Conservatives favorite Congressmen are Jim Marshall and Jim Taylor, Democrats favorite Congressmen are John Lewis, Robert Wexler and Dennis Kuchinich.
I don't care what's in your heart. If you say something that is racist or maybe forward an email that is racist, I don't care if you're pure of heart and have black friends. It's about what you did, not who you are.
To MSNBC: Just get rid of the racists. Pat Buchanan needs to go and Breitbart should not be allowed to appear on any one's show to pimp a book which is an intellectually dishonest screed about how devoted Breitbart is to the truth. This is not free speech suppression. It's simply NOT NEWS.
Simply put, the typical guest on a cable news show is white and male. This becomes stark when we compare the proportion of white men to the proportion of minority women:
That is because the corporate mainstream media has a bias toward covering protests from the right, but virtually ignores progressive
crowds.
There is something very ugly in what Donald Trump is doing, and it is built on a base of racism and paranoia. I'm not saying Donald Trump is racist or paranoid. He doesn't have to be to do the damage he is now doing to this country. He just has to be vulgar enough to keep barking out the lies that the racist, paranoid, Obama haters want to hear. And in doing that for them, on major network television talk shows, he legitimizes their feelings, their hatred, their racism. The millions out there who seethe with the madness Donald Trump stokes watch him and say, 'Hey, it's not just me who thinks this, Donald Trump thinks this. And he's a smarter guy than me and I know he's a smarter guy than me because he says he's a smarter guy than me. And he's made a lot more money than me, and that proves he's smarter than me.'"
You and I, along with some
politicians and public figures,
right and left, probably contribute
to the sickness with use
of the imagery of violence.
An anonymous commenter at Daily Kos and the last Republican vice presidential nominee are not equivalent, no matter how many ridiculously irresponsible members of the media would have us believe otherwise.You said;
Public figures with a followingOn this point I agree, however as Melissa points out again;
need to take special care
in what they say.
There is, demonstrably, no leftist equivalent to Sarah Palin, former veep candidate and presumed future presidential candidate, who uses gun imagery (rifle sights) and language ("Don't Retreat, RELOAD") to exhort her followers to action.You said;
We all need to take careI guess it depends on who WE IS. It's a slippery slope when some have to watch what they say and others don't.
in what we say in public
and in private.
There is no leftist equivalent to the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a group which was created from the mailing list of the old white supremacist White Citizens Councils and has been noted as becoming increasingly "radical and racist" by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which classifies the CCC as a hate group—and is nonetheless considered an acceptable association by prominent members of the Republican Party, including a a former senator and the last Republican presidential nominee.You said;
Call folk on it whenever they use violence imagery, especially in political debateAgain we agree people who use violent imagery should be called on it, however it can't be taken out of context, there is a difference in saying "I clean my flintlock and leave it loaded by the door." as an imagery to express the strength of your feelings about our racial and racist past and telling people if you can't win at the ballot box, use bullets.
and in the public space.
There is no leftist equivalent to Glenn Beck, host of a long-running nationally syndicated radio show, former host of a show on CNN and current host of a show on Fox, best-selling author, DC rally organizer, and longtime user of eliminationist rhetoric, including equating universal health care to rape, joking about victims of forest fires being America-hating liberals, comparing Al Gore to Hitler, condoning the murder of Michael Moore, accusing Holocaust survivor George Soros of being a Nazi collaborator, joking about poisoning Nancy Pelosi, equating immigration reform with burning US citizens alive, publicly endorsing violent revolution, and winkingly telling his viewers not to get violent, all of which amounts to a speck on the tip of a very big iceberg.You said;
Believe in self defenceWhat good is believing in self-defense and the defense of others if you can't talk about it? How you are you going to defend yourself and the weak with silence? IMHO that's why we're in this mess because those who believe in self-defense and the defense of others are silenced.
and defence of others, such as the weak,
but don't talk it, especially in public.
It may influence others, others
who don't perceive nuance real
and imagined.
There is no leftist equivalent to Ann Coulter, best-selling author and syndicated columnist, who has been a panelist on Fox's Hannity 28 times and was on Hannity & Colmes an additional 18 times, who has been a guest multiple times on The O'Reilly Factor, Geraldo at Large, Larry King Live, Huckabee, Your World with Neil Cavuto, Hardball, and other cable news shows, has made appearances on The Tonight Show, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, The Daily Show, and Real Time with Bill Maher, and has co-hosted The View, and has also said that a baseball bat is "the most effective way" to talk to liberals, as well as: "We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too." And: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building." And: "In [Clinton's] recurring nightmare of a presidency, we have a national debate about whether he 'did it,' even though all sentient people know he did. Otherwise there would be debates only about whether to impeach or assassinate."You said;
No ambiguity in cross hairs, especially when used in targeting context.Per Melissa Ewen;
Rationalizations, such as claim that it's surveyors' cross hairs, are disingenuous, spurious, and profane.
This is not an argument there is no hatred, no inappropriate and even violent rhetoric, among US leftists. There is.I will not apologize for standing up to the right-wing bully's. I am not culpable and neither are you.
This is evidence that, although violent rhetoric exists among US leftists, it is not remotely on the same scale, and, more importantly, not an institutionally endorsed tactic, as it is among US right wingers.
This is a fact. It is not debatable.
The shooting in Tucson was not an anomaly. It was an inevitability.Democrats are the ones under attack. Democrats who defend the defenseless.
And as long as we continue to play this foolish game of "both sides are just as bad," and rely on trusty old ablism to dismiss Jared Lee Loughner as a crackpot—dutifully ignoring that people with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators; carefully pretending that the existence of people with mental illness who are potentially dangerous somehow absolves us of responsibility for violent rhetoric, as opposed to serving to underline precisely why it's irresponsible—it will be inevitable again.
Congressman Danny Davis reportedly received a threatening email following Saturday's shooting rampage in Arizona.That's not my fault or your fault. WE are not the ones culpable.
U.S. Rep. Davis, a Democrat from Chicago, told the Chicago Tribune the email was sent to a staffer and read "Danny Davis is next," likely referencing the Saturday shooting. Davis' staff then notified the authorities.
Since Rep. Gabriel Giffords (D-AZ) and others were shot in Tucson, AZ this weekend, Sarah Palin has received renewed criticism for a map her PAC posted last year with gun cross-hairs over the districts of several Democrats who voted for health care reform — including Giffords’. Hours after the shooting, Fox News — which employs Palin — aired scenes from a vigil in Phoenix, but when one mourner appeared to began to call out Palin’s incendiary rhetoric, the Fox feed abruptly went to commercial.Nor is Keith Olberman for calling them out and telling the world who they are and what they stand for.
NPR has fired senior news analyst Juan Williams, who also appears as a commentator on Fox News, for comments about Muslims that Williams made in an appearance with Bill O’Reilly.
As Fox News reported it:
“I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country,” Williams told host Bill O’Reilly during a discussion on the dilemma between fighting jihadists and fears about average Muslims.
“But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they’re identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous,” Williams said.
At Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government site, the headline is “Screw Free Speech, NPR Fires Juan Williams for Muslim Remarks.” Williams’ fellow Fox News contributor, Sarah Palin, just tweeted to the effect that “NPR defends 1st Amendment Right, but will fire u if u exercise it. Juan Williams: u got taste of Left’s hypocrisy, they screwed up firing you.”
Even though he was fired from NPR, Juan Williams won't have to worry about keeping a roof over his head. The Los Angeles Times reported that Fox News has signed Williams to a new, three-year, $2 million contract. He will have an expanded role on the network and will write a column for FoxNews.com.
NPR is facing a storm of criticism for its decision to fire Juan Williams after his comments about Muslims on Fox News, with several prominent conservatives calling for NPR's government funding to be cut and refusing to appear on the network anymore.
Speaking on Fox News, both Bill Reilly and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called for Congress to investigate NPR and cut its government funding in the wake of Juan Williams' firing from the organization.
So why are we repeating the same mistakes made by other "super powers" of the past? In a time of extraordinary economic decline for most Americans we continue to pour precious resources into a conflict that we cannot "win" whatever "metric" one uses to measure "winning."Congress should immediately reinstate funds to ACORN. This knee-jerk action by Congress was a travesty. It's been proven the whole Pimp story was a right wing funded set up and lie. ACORNS only crime was being a community organizing group. They need to go after the real Pimps, but of course they won't. That would be to much like right(pun intended).
O'Keefe got big accolades from a lot of the CPAC speakers and of course ACORN got ripped up one side and down the other.Instead of going after ACORN they need to go after stuff like THIS.
Sometimes I think some of the elected people in DC never read anything and instead rely on each other regarding what to think. They jumped all over ACORN without really looking into the whole case.
I thought I read somewhere that a judge had said the govt. had to give ACORN the money they had already been promised.
Voters trying to cast ballots in Lower Oxford Township East stood in lines for so long that TV crews showed up to capture the scene. Some of those waiting ordered out for pizza. Sympathetic neighbors brought water and coffee. When the last vote was cast shortly before 11 p.m., polls were officially closing on the West Coast and Barack Obama had already been declared the winner.
Some of the 1,440 who voted there that day waited for seven to eight hours in the rain, queuing up close enough to working railroad tracks to reach out and touch passing freight cars. The tiny community center they waited to enter could accommodate only seven booths and one optical scanner. The adjacent parking lot was big enough for a dozen cars.
This wasn't a mistake. It was deliberate. It was the clearest example you could hope to find of partisan politics trumping common sense and civic duty.
The theory is that if Democrats make a show out of reaching out to Republicans, but Republicans slap Democrats down every time and obstruct for the sake of obstructing, then Democrats will gain politically.Thanks to the democratically controlled Congress, President Obama is afraid to lead. Seriously. They've made him afraid of the far left liberals, who have been right about everything from the war to the deficity in favor of the so called moderates and independents. The President's Healthcare Bill and What is Missing is proof.
The reality is that Republicans gain in the polls if Democrats fail to pass legislation that improves people's lives, no matter the political theater of obstruction.
There’s no public option in the Prez’s proposal which is a shame since polls show that the majority of Americans want a public option (such a dumb phrase), as good as say… Medicare or VA health benefits or even the government-sponsored program in which Sarah Palin’s son Tripp is hypocritically enrolled. The audacity of that woman — what’s good enough for her son is evidently not good enough for other Americans, it would seem.Sarah Palin is the Hypocrit of the Decade.
As we all know, Sarah's suffering for her family is boundless, but this must be the worst of all. What is difficult to understand is why she doesn't use this most personal example of the horrors of government run health care in her public cries to prevent Obamacare. She normally isn't one to suffer in silence; maybe someone in the media will ask her to share the nightmare that her daughter must endure knowing, all day every day, that her son will receive health care regardless of her ability to afford it. Or maybe not.Tiger Yoo? While the MSM was breathlessly parsing every word of Tiger Woods apology they totally ignored the story about John Woo and the Massacre Memo
In John Yoo's vision of executive power, the president can legally order a village of civilians "massacred," according to the internal Justice Department report released Friday.The MSM calls Glenn Becks wild eyed rant *cough cough* Brave Criticism of the GOP. Give me a break.
Take a look at these headlines.Are we in trouble yet?
WaPo: “At CPAC, Glenn Beck scolds the Republican Party.“
MSNBC: “Beck criticizes Obama and the GOP.“
The Atlantic: “Beck Thumps GOP, Puzzling Conservatives.”
L.A. Times: “Glenn Beck to Republican Party: Repent.“
And on and on. If you only skimmed those headlines, you’d think that Beck went boldly into the belly of the beast, and had some kind of Sister Souljah moment.
Except Beck didn’t do that. He blew smoke up the CPAC audience’s white asses by simply reciting, verbatim, exactly the same tired spiel Republican leaders have been parroting nonstop since they lost control of Congress in 2006.
NEOCONS.
The Bush neocons realized they would never get back in with the party name
'REPUBLICAN' while the Republican Party tries to chave it's image and present
itself as less extreme.
Welcome TEA BAGGERS.
If PALIN is going to lead that party, that is EXACTLY WHAT IT IS;
NEOCON
"Definitely, it's because of Obama," said a saleswoman at Freddie Bear Sports in Tinley Park. The saleswoman, who declined to give her name, said that the boost is more for the "long guns," like AK-47s and assault rifles.
Comedienne Janeane Garofalo held nothing back while discussing the “tea parties” with Keith Olbermann last night. Though the parties’ organizers claim they’re protesting taxes, Garofalo insists they’re nothing but “tea-bagging rednecks” who are simply motivated by “hating a black man in the White House.” She went on to say that participants “will believe anything you tell them, as long as it’s not the truth.” The truth, she claims, “confuses them.”
Olbermann basically agreed.
Palin was mocking, asking, "How's that hope-y, change-y stuff working out for you?" and she was serious, especially while criticizing what she judged to be President Obama's too-measured approach to national security. A country at war, she said, needs "a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law."
Palin was folksy. Sticking our kids with the bill for deficit spending is a form of "generational theft" that makes us less secure, makes us less free, "and that should tick us off." Sure, solving the country's problems is tough, she added, but "If you can't ride two horses at once you shouldn't be in the circus."
Southern schools are far more segregated now than they were at the height of integration in the ’70s and ’80s, a period that saw a narrowing of the achievement gap, said Gary Orfield, the co-director of The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at U.C.L.A. The South has the lowest percentage of children in private school of any region, Mr. Orfield said.
Nearly 3 out of 4 black students who attend charters are in "intensely segregated" schools with student populations that are at least 90 percent minority, according to the study by the UCLA Civil Rights Project. That's twice the rate of regular public schools.
Almost a third of those black students are in what the researchers called "apartheid schools," where 0 to 1 percent of their classmates are white. Charter schools in the Bay Area and California have similar rates of racial isolation.
And kidnapping is a crime. It doesn't matter if you're taking a child out of a poor or disaster-stricken country. If you do the above, you are committing a criminal act. You are, in fact, a criminal.As it turns out the ring leader of the group from Idaho (yes you read it right, Idaho) has some issues;
And, no, it doesn't matter whether your purpose is profit or proselytizing. It doesn't matter if God, the Tooth Fairy, Charles Manson, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster told you do to it. It doesn't matter if your Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, or Rosicrucian. You do no have the right to just take a child. Your religion doesn't give it do you. Nor do your intentions. (Or what you say they are.)
A CBS News employee who witnessed today's court proceedings says Silsby told the judge: "We were trying to do what's best for the children."
When the judge asked, "Didn’t you know you were committing a crime?" Silsby quietly answered, "We are innocent."
But CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker reports there are serious questions tonight about Silsby's motives. The 40-year-old business woman, who convinced members of Idaho's Central Valley Baptist Church to follow her dream of an orphanage in Haiti, has a troubling financial history.
She's been the subject of eight civil lawsuits, 14 for unpaid wages, Whitaker reports. Her Meridian, Idaho house is in foreclosure. She's had at least nine traffic citations in the last 12 years including four for failing to register or insure her car.
