When someone says a phrase like, "Every scientist agrees" or "All economists will tell you", it grates on my nerves. Because economists don't agree. If they did, there would be one economic theory and we'd all follow it. Scientists have a similar problem. The job of a scientist is to challenge conventional wisdom and question knowledge as we understand it.
Naturally, when I heard Obama say:
Economists from across the political spectrum agree that if we don't act swiftly and boldly, we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double-digit unemployment and the American dream slipping further and further out of reach...
...I laughed. It presumed a world full of Keynesian economists, economists who believe in government intervention. Luckily, Politifact debunks this notion:
"...But we do know that Obama is wrong when he says there is "no disagreement that we need action by our government." Clearly, there is disagreement. We rate his statement False."
The Drudge Manifesto is not a great book. However, it has one moment in it that was well worth reading. Its the story of how Drudge found himself sitting on the political story of the decade, and how he realized that it truly was a big deal.
In the Drudge Manifesto, Matt describes the moment before he pressed the return key. He had double checked his facts, and apparently, his gut told him that the reaction that he was getting from everyone confirmed that it was real. Still... he knew that the moment he touched the return key, he was making a huge accusation.
Web Posted: 01/17/98 23:32:47 PST -- NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN
BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT
**World Exclusive** **Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT**
At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!
I used to write for a college newspaper. We never had anything that big to write about. Yet, every time, before you sent a story off, you'd reread it to make sure you weren't saying anything you'd regret later. Not just because of lawsuits. (Libel is a huge issue in the newsroom) You didn't want to write anything that you would have to retract later.
So when I read that part in the Drudge Manifesto, it gave me chills. Imagine having the biggest story of the year. The political story of the decade. You don't have an editor to look over your shoulder. Its just you, and your keyboard. And your accusation is against the most powerful man in the world.
I love a lot of things about my country, but the freedom of speech is probably what I value the greatest. There is something very comforting to me that Drudge was able to break this story with minimum repercussion (barring the democrats, themselves, who first called it an outrageous lie, and then openly defended the president having an affair with a 22 year old).
As I sit here behind my own keyboard, I'm reminded of both the privilege that I have, and the responsibility that comes with it. With that in mind, from here on, I promise to renew my commitment to make sure that what I post is not only relevant, interesting, and topical... but that I can say without hesitation that I believe it to be 100% true.
ABC news caught up to Obama, and asked him about one of his biggest flip flops since Gitmo. When asked if it was a mistake to vote against the debt limit as a senator, the president said:
I think that it’s important to understand the vantage point of a Senator versus the vantage point of a…President. When you’re a Senator, traditionally what’s happened is this is always a lousy vote. Nobody likes to be tagged as having increased the debt limit for the United States by a trillion dollars… As President, you start realizing, "You know what? We-- we can’t play around with this stuff. This is the full faith in credit of the United States." And so that was just a example of a new Senator, you know, making what is a political vote as opposed to doing what was important for the country. And I’m the first one to acknowledge it.
That's a very long winded way of saying that as a senator, he was trying to take political advantage of a situation. But now that he's a president, he has to be an adult.
I'm glad that the president is acknowledging his mistakes. (Even if he is doing that whole "I'm better then most people" thing, while doing it) What appalls me is that at no point does he recognize how completely craven it was for him to "play politics" with trillions of debt.
I just wanted to remind everyone who first bought up the controversy about a presidential candidates citizenship:
"I would like to see Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) as a presidential candidate, but I heard that he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. The Constitution requires that a president be a "natural born" citizen of the United States. Is Sen. McCain barred from the presidency? – Steven R. Pruett, Falls Church, Va."
That was in 1998. The writer wrote to a political beat reporter for the Washington Post named Ken Rubin. Ken answered, in part:
"McCain has an adoring media on his side, and a reputation as someone who will make the difficult choices. What he shouldn't have is any question about his eligibility to be president."
An adoring media on his side. Huh. That sounds familiar. Anyway, the point is, Barack isn't the first person who's birth has been questioned, as the report points out. (There's more there... I won't belabor it. Read the article.) The biggest difference is that this adoring media finds race to be the motivator, but when McCain's detractors were questioning his citizenship, everyone understood it to be about: 1) politics and 2) whether or not he was a citizen
When you start suggesting that you should "hang bankers", you're just a tiny bit away from being a complete idiot.
It feels like it was just yesterday that the left was complaining about the violent rhetoric of the right. I love how the bankers point out how inconsistent Max's arguments are.
I've been watching a steady stream of misinformation and straight out lies about Glenn Beck lately. No matter what you think of the man, its not cool to lie about him.
So let's start with the lie. Which, naturally, starts with Media Matters:
Beck failed to ask Hagee about controversial statements, instead asked him if Obama might be the Antichrist
Reading that, one might conclude that Glenn Beck actually thought that it was a valid question to ask Hagee if Obama was the anti-Christ. Right? That can't POSSIBLY be taken out of context.
I mean, Huffpo carried it too! And those sounds formed a question that sounded out across the airwaves unto disbelieving ears. That question: "Is Barack Obama the anti-Christ."
We are not making this up. Glenn Beck, serious newsman, needed to find out if Barack Obama was the Devourer of Worlds, Son of Harlots, Bearer of the Mark of the Beast. John Hagee had to be thrilled by the question: somehow, Beck managed to make Hagee look reasonable.
You'll note that on that link, it says 'video not found'.
Huh. I wonder why.
Beck has a video.
You should watch it. It pretty much proves that both Media Matters and Huffpo can. Not. Be Trusted.
US DEBT: Jan/2001 $5.7 Trillion Jan/2007 $8.6 Trillion
In the 6 years of Republican control, the debt was raised by 2.9 Trillion.
Jan/2009 $10.6 Jan/2011 $14.0
From 2007 to 2009, the debt rose by $2 Trillion. 2 Trillion. In 2 years of Democrat control of congress.
Now that was NOTHING compared to the drunken spending that would ensue after a Democrat took the presidency.
By this year, this January, our debt is 14 Trillion.
In two years, the president and congress have raised the debt by 3.4 Trillion.
Now I'm watching Democrats calling Republicans hypocrites.
Democrats and Obama have raised the debt by more in two years then the Republicans and Bush did in 6 years... and democrats have the balls to call the REPUBLICANS IRRESPONSIBLE?
Combining the two terms that Bush was in office, the total number of military fatalities in Afghanistan was 630. From 2001 to 2006, the total was 358.
If you included 2007, that number would be 475. Or 7 more deaths then there currently are in 2010.
Let's put this in perspective: 2009 317 2010 468
During the 7 years of the Bush presidency, 630 of our brave soldiers died in Afghanistan. During the past two years of the Obama presidency, 785 soldiers died in Afghanistan.
Now don't get me wrong. I want our soldiers fighting these battles. However, why is it that Barack, who complained about the deaths of American soldiers, is being given such a clear free pass on this?
Let me put it another way: What would be the response if a McCain/Palin team lost more soldiers in the first two years of their presidency then Bush did in the previous 7?
Truth be told, though, for the most part conservatives haven't actually been using the words in such a way as to lend themselves to double entendre. With one or two exceptions, almost all of it has actually been coming from the left, which seems to have adopted the joke en masse during an earlier round of these protests back in February. After many hours of investigative journalism -- the kind that makes you wish you'd just gone to law school instead -- I think I've traced the meme's birth back to February 27th, when blogs like Instaputz and Wonkette started using it independently of one another. They were inspired by a photo that the Washington Independent's David Weigel shot of one protester carrying a sign that was, if you knew that second meaning, pretty funny: "Tea bag the liberal Dems before they tea bag you !!" (sic).
Since then, the left has used it so often, that Oxford added it to their dictionary. Here's how various lefty websites covered this event. The Huffington Post:
Keith Olbermann took credit for popularizing the word on MSNBC Tuesday night. But the word "teabagger" actually started to spread after the Washington Independent's David Weigel photographed a protester at the first D.C. Tea Party Protest in February holding the sign, "Tea Bag the Liberal Dems Before They Tea Bag You!!"
It actually wasn't Keith, but Rachel. Although you have to give Keith credit for copping to it. What Mediaite wrote:
Their definition doesn’t touch upon any of the raunchier, more testicular connotations of the word, which Keith OlbermannandAnderson Cooper had a lot of fun with in April. Cooper can take a lot of credit for the popularization of the phrase: in response to David Gergen’s questions about the Republican Party’s abilities to organize and articulate a message, Cooper infamously quipped, “It’s hard to talk when you’re teabagging.”‘
And, just to make sure you can read the original Oxford posting, click on it for the details.
It turns out, if you want to get technical in a way that makes late-night college dormitory arguments go on forever, O'Donnell was correct. In fact, it is a well-worn talking point on the religious right, in particular, that the phrase "separation of church and state" is not in the Constitution.
By now, everyone has seen this video of MoveOn member Lauren Valle being taken down by Rand Paul supporters.
What you probably haven't seen is the event leading up to it:
So Lauren shoved her sign into the window of a moving car, and in response, Rand Paul supporters were keeping tabs on her. That's why in the first video you can literally hear Rand Paul supporters calling for the police as they take down Lauren.
There are a few issues that I want to address with this. The first one being the assertion that Lauren's head was stomped on. That's just not true. I have still frames from the video to prove it. In the middle image, I copied the shape and size of her head from the 3rd frame, and overlapped it with center image. That's why it appears white. So point #1 was that she had rushed his car earlier, trying to put a sign through it. Point #2 is that she wasn't 'stomped' on the head. As this series of images show, he was stepping on her shoulder when she rotated her shoulder forward. His foot stays on her shoulder, but doesn't hit her head.
Reports from news outlets say that she received a concussion from this. I'm not sure how. But I digress.
My final point is about how members of the left have said that this is 'typical' of Tea Party behavior, and how the Tea Party is made of thugs. Which pisses me off, considering the make up of these videos.
This one is from the Town Hall meetings on health care. You remember those? The ones where democrats felt that if you disagreed, you should be ejected from the 'open' meetings, and slapped around. As in this case:
Then there was the guy who cold cocked a Tea Party protestor...
But by far, my worst example of violence against the Tea Party movement is this one. Please watch.
Kenneth Gladney was supposed to get his day in court with his attackers on October 27th. I can't find any news of it, anywhere... but I'll keep looking.
In the meantime, Lauren is being supported by everyone from Media Matters to Think Progress as a useless victim who just happened to be wandering through a crowd of thugs when she was attacked. I beg of you, for the sake of context, to share the video of Lauren pushing her sign through the window of that moving car. She's an idiot. Not a victim.
MTV, BET and CMT are casting the audience for town hall meeting with President Obama. Shooting Oct. 14, 4 p.m. in Washington, D.C.
Seeking—Audience Members: males & females, 18+.
To apply, email townhallaudience@mtvnmix.com and put “Town Hall” in the subject line. To ensure that the audience represents diverse interests and political views, include your name, phone number, hometown, school attending, your job and what issues, if any, you are interested in or passionate about. Also, provide a recent photo and short description of your political views. Submission deadline: Oct. 14. No pay.
According to Politico's report:
"We’re just trying to get the broadest, most diverse audience possible," she said, denying that either Republicans or ugly people would be screened out.
Whew. If they screened out both Republicans and the ugly people, there wouldn't be any one left.
This really is riveting. I'm not kidding. Please watch this.
Please watch it. Christopher Coates was under pressure from the DOJ not to testify. He did anyway, as someone who worked for the Voter Rights division. Coates testimony is that there were people inside of the DOJ who felt that Voter Intimidation cases should not be pursued if the victim is white. Furthermore, when the Obama administration took over the DOJ, they promoted those people into positions of power. Coates was then told that he should only pursue 'traditional' Voter Rights intimidation cases, which he understood as being where a non-white person was the victim.
I used to be a big Bill Maher fan. I mean a huge one. I loved watching his show as he went on to challenge the bloated whales of the world, and poke fun at everyone with an equal amount of spite. Somewhere along the way, Bill became extremely hateful of Christians. In this interview, he says that what he likes about the president is that he doesn't seem to rely on his faith too much. Yet, that's kinda what the president has been saying for a while, as in this example.
This leads me to why I don't like Bill Maher anymore. He's failing to question authority. In fact, he's protecting it... all the while making fun of the underdogs. In this case, the Tea Party. In this interview, Maher actually accuses 'almost all' of the opposition to Barack to be based in racism. Bill, you are an asshat.
I say that with all sincerity. I cannot stand people who cannot just think critically and listen. Its not like conservatives have a reason to suddenly be interested in a liberal president or his policies. I get that Bill is a little bitter at conservative women who were on his panel, and who wouldn't sleep with him, and why he's pursuing them with all of his bitter glee. I don't like it, but I've seen guys like that before. I get why Bill doesn't trust religious people for the same reason. Bill travels with the Playboy set, and I imagine that crosses really are one of the biggest turn-offs for him, since Christian women tend to say 'no' more often. But I'll never get why he's fallen into playing the race card. Its a real easy way to make people like me actually disrespect him more. Its proof that he is just angry at conservatives, and can't open his mind long enough to listen to what we are saying. That's a damn shame.
I'll never understand why it is that when a conservative talks about Christ, he's obviously nutters. Yet, when a Democratic president talks about Christ... well, isn't that special? From the New York Times:
“I’m a Christian by choice,” the president said. “My family, frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. My mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew but she didn’t raise me in the church, so I came to my Christian faith later in life and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead. Being my brothers and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me, and I think also understanding that Jesus Christ dying for my sins spoke to the humility we all have to have as human beings, that we’re sinful and we’re flawed and we make mistakes and we achieve salvation through the grace of God.”
Now don't get me wrong. I believe that everyone should be able to worship the God of their choice. I just don't get why, when a Republican talks about God, they are crazy people who believe in a fairy-tale. But when a Democrat says something about their faith? Well, you know...
Apparently, it doesn't matter because they don't actually believe it.
I want to work for Andrew Brietbart. He seems to be the only one in the US willing to stand up to anyone and just ask the right questions. I love, love, love this video:
If you have a friend who is on the left, ask them to watch this video, and get their reaction. If they tell you that it doesn't matter, because the source of the video seems to be on the right... then ask them why they believe the videos that portray Tea Party activists as ignorant. Thanks to Founding Bloggers for the video.
Keep in mind: New York is one of the most liberal cities in the US. The state is pretty blue.
A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the state finds that 57% are angry at the government’s current policies, including 36% who are Very Angry. These findings are slightly lower than those found nationally. Thirty-eight percent (38%) are not angry at these policies.
Roughly half (52%) of voters in the state say neither party’s political leaders have a good understanding of what is needed today. Thirty-seven percent (37%) disagree, while 12% are not sure. These findings, too, are lower than those measured nationwide.
Only 28% of voters in the Empire State feel that most members of Congress care what their constituents think. Fifty-seven percent (57%) don’t believe this to be true, and another 15% are undecided.
