DOWNLOADS: (26)

PLAYS: (198)

Embed

Hey what do you know -- someone on Morning Joe got to call out a Republican for pulling factoids out of their posterior without Scarborough there screaming over them and interrupting. I guess he was taking a break during this segment. Don't worry though, his co-host Mika Brzezinski did her best to keep up scandal-mongering in his absence.

As a rule, you may as well turn on just Fox and be done with it than to sit through any of this show on MSNBC, but you do have some rare occasions where something like this happens: MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ Slams GOP Chair For Insinuating Obama Is Involved In IRS Scandal:

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe Thursday morning, panelist John Heilemann got into a heated argument with GOP Chairman Reince Priebus over President Obama’s role in the targeting of conservative groups applying for 501(c)4 status. Priebus offered a series of comments trying to tie Obama to the scandal — which Republicans have attempted to frame the IRS scandal as Obama’s ‘Watergate’ moment — leading Heilemann to shout “that’s an assertion that’s not actually borne out by any of the facts”:

HEILEMANN: Okay. You used two phrases just now saying we have to wait for the facts but I’m entitled to my opinion and before we have the facts just wait. You then said it’s lawlessness and guerrilla warfare and Obama is in the middle of. You say we need to have all of the facts before we can determine whether President Obama is in the middle of it and now you’re asserting the fact he’s in the middle of it. That is your public tweet.

PRIEBUS: I would say it is consistent. When I start out an investigation and say it’s low level employees in Cincinnati and then you find out there are senior level people in Washington. Then Pfeiffer goes on five Sunday morning shows and says the White House didn’t know anything about this and two days later you figure out that the chief of staff actually knew about it. You have a hundred and, what? 15 visits from Shulman to the White House and 132 Democratic senators pleading with the IRS to investigate this. And the Chief of Staff of the White House is now involved or at least knew about it when — two days earlier Pfeiffer said they didn’t know about it.

HEILEMANN: I thought you said you have the facts you need. If you don’t have the facts you need why are you saying he’s in the middle of it?

Never mind as they noted that the IG's report found nothing of the kind, and as Lawrence O'Donnell has been pointing out over and over again, the real scandal here is that any of these organizations doing political activities have been given tax exempt status as "social welfare" groups.

After Chicago Public Schools received millions in billionaire bucks from the likes of Betsy Devos, the Bradley Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Michael and Susan Dell foundation, they made the brave decision to shut down 50 public schools in areas where students most desperately need the safety of a neighborhood school.

It's always awesome when those with power stomp on those with the least ability to defend themselves, isn't it?

Via All In with Chris Hayes' blog:

Wednesday afternoon, the Chicago Board of Educationvoted to close 50 reportedly “underutilized” schools—49 elementary schools and one public high school—in what was the largest round of school closures to ever occur in a single American city.

Continue reading »

I'm not exactly sure what this SRWT even means, but it's probably some kind of "You Don't Need Guns To Kill You Can Do It With Knives Neener-Neener!" taunt. At any rate, Piers Morgan wasn't amused, and promptly banned Loesch from his show.

Regardless, if your first instinct upon hearing about some horrible act of violence is to take to Twitter to taunt your political opponents, you might want to get some help.

It's kind of a trick question. Because the whole point of the Obama "extend and pretend" policy was to pretend that the banks are financially sound (when they're not) and if they actually did do a study showing their precarious financial situation and it got out, that would present certain problems. So Sen. Warren has boxed them in nicely with this approach:

The U.S. Department of Justice appears to have neither conducted nor received any analyses that would show whether criminal charges against large financial institutions would harm the economy, potentially undermining a key DOJ argument for why the world’s biggest banks have escaped indictment.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (28)

PLAYS: (364)

Embed

Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin on Wednesday asserted that the British people "brought it on themselves" after an apparent terrorist used a meat cleaver to hack a soldier to death in London.

Following Wednesday's horrific slaying, Fox News host Sean Hannity speculated that President Barack Obama would have refused to call the incident a "terrorist attack."

"What do you need to have? Neon lights that say, 'Islamic jihad,' 'Islamic jihad?' I mean, duh," Malkin agreed. "They were screaming at the top of their lungs, 'Allahu Akbar,' and repeatedly swore in the name of Allah that they would continue to fight against us."

"And in large part, unfortunately, in British culture, among the progressives there, they brought it on themselves in some ways because of lax deportation policies, and an unwillingness to screen out and profile Islamic militants who are now doing this in a homegrown manner on British soil," she added. "It's tragic."

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (17)

PLAYS: (272)

Embed

Via Buzzfeed, Medea Benjamin of Code Pink speaks out during Obama's counterterrorism speech today:

President Barack Obama was heckled during a major counterterrorism speech Thursday. The President was speaking at National Defense University in Washington, D.C.

The interruption was caused by Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin, according to reporters at the event.

“I’m willing to cut the young lady who interrupted me some slack, because it’s worth being passionate about,” the President said.

“Abide by the rule of law. You’re a constitutional lawyer,” the protestor said.

“The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to. Obviously I do not agree with much of what she said,” the President added.

The Washington Post reports:

Continue reading »

The Young Turks: Cenk, Ben Mankiewicz and Brett Erlich discuss troubling reports that the Department of Justice tapped Fox News reporter James Rosen’s phone line – and his parents’. Cenk says the journalist wiretapping is the only actual scandal going on right now (as opposed to the IRS audits and Benghazi). But because Fox News flips out over everything, it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff on the rare occasion that they’re right about something.

“Part of the problem is that Fox News cries wolf so much that once they have a legitimate argument… you’ve lost a little credibility,” Cenk says.

I'm not sure when, or if, Fox News ever had a legitimate argument -- or credibility -- but they do cry wolf rather often.

Wow, the hits just keep on coming. This week it's the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where a sergeant is accused of videotaping and peeping on female cadets.

New York Times:

The Army is contacting about a dozen women to alert them that their privacy may have been violated by the suspect, identified as Sgt. First Class Michael McClendon, and to offer support or counseling, officials said.

The allegations at West Point, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious military academy, come in the midst of growing outrage in Congress at the Pentagon, and from President Obama over reports of sexual harassment and assault in the armed services. They also come as the Army has begun integrating women into combat positions, bringing added demands for fair and equal treatment of those in uniform.

The revelations are especially startling at West Point, which has had problems with sexual assault but also has many progressive faculty members and prides itself on having an environment of discipline and respect. Women have been enrolled at the two-century-old institution, on a commanding bank of the Hudson River in upstate New York, for nearly 40 years.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who is to deliver the commencement address at West Point on Saturday, was briefed on the case Wednesday morning. Pentagon officials described him as “concerned and disturbed” by the allegations.

Continue reading »

Alex Jones is nuts. It's nuts that he gets any traction on his crazy show, and nuttier still that he gets support from any member of the Republican party. But he does, and he feeds all the paranoia and insanity on the far right on a daily basis.

Rachel Maddow walked through some of his usual conspiracy theories -- 9-11 truther, Oklahoma City bombing denier, and more -- to arrive at the latest one. Yes, folks, the tornado that devastated most of Moore, Oklahoma was no accident. It was actually a conspiracy on the part of the Obama administration. After all, what good is a conspiracy if you can't hang it on Obama, right?

Jones, in his own wacky words:

... and tornadoes are way down, they lie on the way up to get carbon taxes, but I don't know if this was a weather weapon or not, but they can with the right weather conditions, they can create and steer groups of tornadoes. People 50 miles out of storm systems see aircraft in and around the clouds spraying and doing things, if you saw that, you better bet your bottom dollar they did this. But who knows if they did, that's the thing.

Of course it's always the "who knows" part that launches the conspiracy. I guarantee you someone in Oklahoma now "knows" they saw "aircraft in and around the clouds spraying and doing things." What things? That's not necessary for the conspiracy. As long as there were aircraft, and they were "doing things", Jones has launched the conspiracy for everyone to gnaw on.

These are the "weather weapons." Rachel notes that they must exist right alongside the stockpiled bullets the government is hoarding in order to deny good God-fearing Amurikans their guns. Because Obama.

Raw Story:

Jones is being increasingly treated as a serious voice within the Republican Party, and lawmakers in statehouses across the country and in Congress are beginning to parrot his views, however bizarre they might sound. Even Fox News hosts and Republican freshman Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has appeared on the Alex Jones Show, much like his father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), continues to do.

I like Rachel's response the best.

Who knows? Who knows if the US. Government uses a secret made-up weather weapon that only exists in the mind of -- yeah, that's the thing, right? Here's the other thing. Alex Jones should be disqualified from participating in Republican party politics. His crackpot theories shouldn't prompt hearings in Congress and inspire actual legislation in Congress, shouldn't do a money bomb on his show running for Congress. Do not fundraise on the theater of the absurd by showing yourself to be one with this guy, really. He says the tornado was a conspiracy, the tornado. Can we agree it is over now, Republicans, going on his show, really, can we agree, please?

Republicans are going to line up to go on his show, Rachel. His audience is the only base they have left.

Note: Dave Neiwert reminded me that this theory has been around for many, many years. It ties in with the Militia of Montana people.

I wanted to let you know that the claims of government manipulating the weather to obtain political results actually dates back to the 1990s militia movement. It was one of John Trochmann’s favorite theories, and Militia of Montana sold a number of publications advancing it.

Even though Donald Rumsfeld opposed “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the former Defense Secretary won’t say whether he supports gay marriage, although it seems safe to conclude that he does not. In an interview this week with Larry King, Rumsfeld tap-danced around the question of whether same-sex partners should be allowed to marry and suggested he feared it could lead to polygamy. "You know, I'm, I guess, of a generation that I don't—I wonder—I listened to some of the Supreme Court justices and one of them said, ‘Well what’s next after that? Is it two people, three people?’” he told King. Rumsfeld also said that he doesn’t equate the fight for gay rights today with the civil-rights movement of the 1960s.

I don't know why anyone wants to have Rumsfeld on the tee-vee to talk about anything. He's the guy who -- when speaking about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- said: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."

So, which Supreme Court justice do you think Rummy was quoting?