Hypocrisy is nothing new when it comes to the Bush crew, but Andrew Card's recent statements just really pissed me off. Here's Card on Wednesday night telling "Inside Edition" that President Obama's casual, jacket-less Oval Office style somehow shows disrespect for the Office and the Constitution.

“There should be a dress code of respect…I wish he would wear a coat and tie…The Oval Office symbolizes…the Constitution, the hopes and dreams, and I’m gonna say democracy. And when you have a dress code in the Supreme Court, and a dress code on the floor of the Senate, floor of the House, I think it’s appropriate to have an expectation that there will be a dress code that respects the office of the President.”

(video here)

Wow. It's as if these people think that wearing a suit jacket in the Oval Office somehow negates routinely violating the Constitution and treating it as just "a piece of paper."

But that's only the audacity. See here for just a few examples of the hypocrisy.

According to Greg Sergeant, Senators Ben Nelson and Susan Collins are conspiring to cut a whole lot of important stuff out of the stimulus bill, all in the name of "bipartisanship" and pleasing minority Republicans.

I’ve just obtained an internal Senate committee memo detailing the latest cuts being eyed by the gang of Senators being led by Dem Ben Nelson and GOPer Susan Collins. Here is what’s being eyed in the bill right now:

Total Reductions: $80 billion

Eliminations:

Head Start, Education for the Disadvantaged, School improvement, Child Nutrition, Firefighters, Transportation Security Administration, Coast Guard, Prisons, COPS Hiring, Violence Against Women, NASA, NSF, Western Area Power Administration, CDC, Food Stamps

Reductions:

Public Transit $3.4 billion, School Construction $60 billion

More info here.

I fully understand the need to compromise on certain aspects of the stimulus -- it's a HUGE bill and, as much as we hate to admit it, 46% of the country voted for the other guy. But this attempt at bipartisanship just plain stinks. The media has done a hell of a job distorting the debate, claiming that things like food stamps and unemployment benefits have nothing to do with stimulating the economy, but the facts show they're wrong.

Go here, find your Senators contact info, and make your voice heard.

Note from sitemonitor: Any further comments mentioning 9/11 on this thread are getting deleted. At this point it's flamebaiting, regardless of whether it's on topic or not. Funding firefighters is a good thing. Our own Nonny Mouse made that point, and we get that. Now stop it.

The hemorrhaging continues...

Washington Post:

The U.S. economy lost another 598,000 jobs in January, a larger than expected decline that highlighted a weak global economy and the pressure building on companies to cut costs and payrolls.

It is the largest one-month job loss since December of 1974, and pushed the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent, from 7.2 percent in December.

That is the highest unemployment rate since the fall of 1992, with 11.6 million people out of work -- and would have gone even higher except for a slight decline in the number of people looking for work, itself a possible sign of economic weakness as people become discouraged from job-hunting.

Moral of the story: If you hate your job, suck it up and consider yourself lucky that you even have one.

Exit question: How many of you have either lost their jobs or have friends/family that have lost theirs? Two of my closest friends are in that boat.

The Associated Press, presumably looking to cash in on the phenomenal success of the "HOPE" artwork, are now going after artist Shepard Fairey, claiming he used an AP-licensed photo without permission for his iconic portrait.

USA Today:

As we've previously reported, the Hope posters that artist Shepard Fairey created during the presidential campaign use an image of Barack Obama that's based on a photograph taken for the Associated Press by then-freelancer Mannie Garcia.

Now, the AP wants credit and compensation.

The wire service says Fairey didn't get permission to do what he did. Fairey's attorney says "fair use" gave him the legal right to take the image and rework it into a piece of art.

"We have reached out to Mr. Fairey's attorney and are in discussions. We hope for an amicable solution," says the AP's director of media relations, Paul Colford, in a statement.

This may just turn into a landmark "fair use" case. Where do you stand?

See the images in question here.

We wish you a speedy recovery, Mrs. Ginsburg.

NPR:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only woman currently serving on the nation's highest court, underwent surgery Thursday for removal of a cancerous tumor from her pancreas.

Ginsburg, 75, is being treated at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Ginsburg has served on the court since 1993.

She was treated for colon cancer 10 years ago.

Ginsburg's pancreatic cancer was discovered early, in the course of a routine annual screening, but medical literature says even in this circumstance, a patient's five-year survival chances range from 10 to 30 percent.

President Obama took to the pages of The Washington Post this morning to continue to make the case for his economic stimulus package.

WaPo:

By now, it's clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression. Millions of jobs that Americans relied on just a year ago are gone; millions more of the nest eggs families worked so hard to build have vanished. People everywhere are worried about what tomorrow will bring.

What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives -- action that's swift, bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis.

Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.

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In his press conference yesterday -- with Treasury Secretary Geithner at his side -- President Obama finally made a lucid and forceful case for his economic stimulus package. Rejecting the "failed economic theories" that got us to this point, President Obama urged members of Congress to heed the demands of the American people and enact the change they voted for back in November in record numbers.

WhiteHouse.gov:

Now, in the past few days I've heard criticisms that this plan is somehow wanting, and these criticisms echo the very same failed economic theories that led us into this crisis in the first place -- the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can ignore fundamental challenges like energy independence and the high cost of health care; that we can somehow deal with this in a piecemeal fashion and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.

I reject those theories. And so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change. So I urge members of Congress to act without delay. No plan is perfect, and we should work to make it stronger. No one is more committed to making it stronger than me. But let's not make the perfect the enemy of the essential. Let's show people all over the country who are looking for leadership in this difficult time that we are equal to the task.

Make sure you read dday's fantastic post over at Digby's place. A sample:

Especially in the midst of this meltdown, we cannot sit back for a moment while the forces conspiring to maintain the failed status quo push ever forward. Forget about campaigning, this is governing. And while different rules apply, one thing is constant - nobody ever won the battle of ideas without speaking up.

Yet another Bush-era reversal we can all be proud of. Something tells me Monica Goodling's fingerprints are all over this one.

NPR:

On Monday, the Justice Department undid a small part of the damage that top officials caused in a scandal of politicized hiring and firing during the Bush administration. The department rehired an attorney who was improperly removed from her job because she was rumored to be a lesbian.

NPR first broke the story of Leslie Hagen's dismissal last April, and the Justice Department's inspector general later corroborated the report. Now, Hagen has returned to her post at the department's Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys.

In 2006, Hagen was the liaison between the main Justice Department and the U.S. Attorneys' committee on Native American affairs. The chairman of that committee, Tom Heffelfinger, described Hagen to NPR last year as "the best qualified person in the nation to fill that job." Hagen's performance evaluations had the highest possible ratings — "outstanding" in each of five categories.

The job came up for renewal every year. After the first year, Hagen was surprised to hear that she would have to move on.

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It was said in jest, sure, but does anyone here really doubt that treating Barack Obama (and his family) with a modicum of respect and fairness -- rather than, say, accusing them of being secret Muslin terrorists -- gets you some dirty looks in the FOX News break room? I mean, every good night for Obama throughout the campaign practically transformed the mood of the station into a funeral.

Wallace: You were widely quoted when you met with the House GOP caucus saying, "go ahead, feel free to whack me. I'll watch FOX News and feel bad about myself."

Obama: That one I did say.

Wallace: Perhaps, let me raise the possibility: Are you a trifle thin-skinned?

Obama: I said it in good humor. I think everyone understood that was a joke.

I think it's fair to say that I don't always get my most favorable coverage on Fox, but that's part of how a democracy is supposed to work. We're not all supposed to be in lock step here.

And you've always been very gracious to me.

Wallace: I don't know if that improves or hurts my stock at FOX News.

Obama: It may hurt it.

You can catch the entire interview here.

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James Carville tears into the pathetic GOP for bowing at the feet of a "self-discredited, drug-addled gas bag".

"He is the most exalted Republican. He is the leader of their party. They have submitted to him in the Congress. They quake at mighty Rush. And he's the one that's setting the Republican agenda. They don't care what Michael Steele says. He can go do anything he wants. And we just have to acknowledge that kind of awesome political power within the Republican Party where it exists. And I was acknowledging power and hypocrisy which is, you know, two things that are in abundance in Washington.

"These Republicans are scared to death of Rush Limbaugh because he is the most powerful person in that party. Which is kind of odd that a political party has a radio talk show host as its intellectual power house, but that's today's Republican Party, and we Democrats have to acknowledge that."

It's pretty sad to see an American political party fall all over themselves to please someone like Rush Limbaugh. Then again, if they want to follow that clown over the proverbial cliff, by all means be my guest.

Full transcript below the fold:

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