Just when you think wingnuts couldn't get any stupider.

1. It's not called the "debt limit" -- it's called the debt ceiling.

2. The debt ceiling is raised to pay expenditures already committed to, not future ones.

The process of setting the debt ceiling is separate and distinct from the regular process of financing government operations, and raising the debt ceiling does not have any direct impact on the budget deficit. The US government proposes a federal budget every year, which must be approved by Congress. This budget details projected tax collections and outlays and, if there is a budget deficit, the amount of borrowing the government would have to do in that fiscal year. A vote to increase the debt ceiling is, therefore, usually treated as a formality, needed to continue spending that has already been approved previously by the Congress and the President.

You'd think someone who served in the White House would know this stuff. Then again, it was the Bush White House, so...

I knew that sooner or later, it would come out that some professional wingnut was behind the little love match between the Susan G. Komen Foundation and anti-Planned Parenthood VP Karen Handel. Surprise! It's Ari Fleischer:

Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for George W. Bush and prominent right-wing pundit, was secretly involved in the Komen Foundation’s strategy regarding Planned Parenthood. Fleischer personally interviewed candidates for the position of “Senior Vice President for Communications and External Relations” at Komen last December. According to a source with first-hand knowledge, Fleischer drilled prospective candidates during their interviews on how they would handle the controversy about Komen’s relationship with Planned Parenthood.

Fleischer’s relationship with Komen and the Planned Parenthood controversy was previously undisclosed. He confirmed to ThinkProgress his recent role in filling a key communication position at Komen. Fleischer stressed, however, another communications firm (Ogilvy PR) was retained by Komen to deal with crisis communications over the last few days and he has not been involved.

In November, Komen advertised for a top level communications position in Roll Call. Promising applicants received a call from Fleischer. The advertisement is no longer posted on the Roll Call website, but a portion is accessible via Google:

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According to a source, during at least one interview, Planned Parenthood was a major topic of conversation. Fleischer indicated that he had discussed the Planned Parenthood issue with Komen’s CEO, Nancy Brinker, and that she was at her wits end about how to proceed. Fleischer described himself as a longtime friend of Brinker.

Fleischer confirmed to ThinkProgress that he would receive a fee from Komen when the search is complete. Fleischer did not specify the amount of his fee but said it would be “substantially below the normal placement fee charged by executive search companies” because “they’re a charity I believe in.”

With U.S. gas prices above the $3 level, the conservative echo chamber is in overdrive. While the Heritage Foundation warns "Obama will make you pay more at the pump" and Americans for Limited Government decries "Obama's war on energy," Brent Bozell's Media Research Center simply asks, "How does Obama plan to raise prices?" Of course, as Paul Krugman pointed out this week, stagnant production and accelerating global demand for oil as the world recovers from the 2008 economic meltdown have much more to do with price increases at the pump. That, and oilman turned President George W. Bush's utter failure to "jawbone" his friends in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia into opening the spigots.

On May 7, 2001, Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer was asked "does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?" Fleischer's infamous response made clear energy conservation was off the table for President Bush:

"That's a big no. The President believes that it's an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life."

Instead, George W. Bush promised to get biblical on OPEC.

His pledge to persuade, cajole and other twist arms dated back to his first run for the White House in 1999. As oil prices rose to the then-alarming level of $30 that December, then Governor Bush said President Clinton "must jawbone OPEC members to lower prices." At a New Hampshire Republican debate the next month, Bush claimed the mantle of the Great Persuader. Contending that his days in the West Texas oil fields made him uniquely qualified for the task, Bush proclaimed:

"What I think the president ought to do is he ought to get on the phone with the OPEC cartel and say we expect you to open your spigots...And the president of the United States must jawbone OPEC members to lower the price...

...I used to be in the oil business. I was little oil -- really little oil. And so I understand the -- I understand what can happen in the marketplace."

By June 2000, the Bush jawbone pledge became a standard on the stump. As the New York Times reported, Bush foreshadowed future expenditures of political capital he would fail to accumulate:

"I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply," Mr. Bush, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, told reporters here today. "Use the capital that my administration will earn, with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis, and convince them to open up the spigot."

That November, of course, the American people were persuaded. Despite Bush's own personal record of busts and bailouts in the business, his family's close ties to Prince Bandar and the Saudi royal family, Americans must have reasoned, should count for something.

As it turned out, not so much.

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There's been a titanic shift in the way MLB and the players are attacking the stain that has attached itself to the game of baseball since Jose Canseco outed the massive use of performance enhancing drugs that permeated Baseball since the late 1980s. And since the outing came, the MLB has not been sure how to respond to the public at large. I mean, we all know players cheated in the end to get massive paydays from the owners in the end and be the best they could be, right? Jason Giambi came out in 2005 and said he was sorry to the fans, but he really didn't say what he was sorry for.

Giambi could have been a child finally summoning the courage to tell the truth to his father. But he kept his composure, and continued. "I accept full responsibility for that, and I'm sorry," he said. What he did not fully say, however, was what he was sorry for.

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Still, he did not directly admit to steroid use. "I know the fans might want more," Giambi said. "But because of all the legal matters, I can't get into specifics. Someday, hopefully, I will be able to."

ARod's presser was almost a complete disaster, and his admission was bizarre, but at least he didn't say that steroids had nothing to do with his performance. With a ton of names out there still waiting to be leaked to the media identifying players who have tested positive for PED's, something had to be done. Enter the ex-Bush communications man Ari Fleischer. He stood in front of the White House press corps and answered questions day in and day out for the troubled Bush administration. Recently he joined forces with the powerful IMG

Here's a little about Ari's new venture:

IMG, the world's premier sports, entertainment and media company, and Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary and leading sports industry communicator, today announced the formation of a new joint venture: Ari Fleischer Sports Communications.

The New York-based consultancy company will offer management advisory services, including media training and interview preparation, image management, crisis management and media relations to a wide range of athletes, coaches and high-profile sports industry executives. Fleischer will serve as the company's President. Sandy Montag, Senior Corporate Vice President of IMG Sports & Entertainment, will serve as COO of the company.

It's not a coincidence that IMG has Major League Baseball as a client and why McGwire went on the MLB Network to break his story. I first saw a new approach taken by the players with David Ortiz. After it was leaked to the press that Big Papi failed MLB's drug testing in 2003, Oriz used a different method to try and protect his legacy. What Ortiz did differently is question what substance he actually was busted for taking and since that information was not available to the press and possibly to the leaker it gave him some room to try and deny that he was a serious user.

In a statement, Ortiz insisted he only learned of his 2003 positive test on Thursday - and claims he does not know what the substance was.

Instead of denying that he took PED's, he questioned the substances that might make a player test positive. It's a joke to believe that an elite athlete has no idea what he or she put in their body as it relates to any form of drug or vitamin because they make their living off of it, but that's the line he was able to use to draw some sympathy from the sports media. And to an extent it did work, but now a new stage of the game is being orchestrated by Ari. McGwire, while admitting that he took steroids for a decade played the victim card and said he wished he never played during the steroid era (poor him) and then went on to say that it didn't help his performance at all.

It was brought to my attention that it was going to help me heal faster, make my body feel back to normal."

Asked repeatedly by Costas if he believed that his statistics and records were legitimate in light of the disclosure, McGwire did not budge.

"Absolutely," he said. "I truly believe so. I was given this gift by the man upstairs. My track record as far as hitting home runs ... my first at-bat in the league was a home run. They still talk about the home runs I hit in high school. They still talk about the home runs I hit in [American] Legion. They still talk about the home runs I hit in college [USC] -- I led the nation in home runs. They still talk about the home runs I hit in the Minor Leagues.

Is he serious? No, I'd say delusional. Many baseball players and writers backed up Big Mac after he came "clean" (so to speak) and some people even think McGwire should still go into the Hall of Fame. If you had the chance to see ESPN's Baseball Tonight on Mac's big day or MLB's Hot Stove, you would have been shocked by the reaction of the players and pundits who were so happy for him that he finally got the monkey off his back.

But now we are seeing a new narrative come forward: That players were already so talented and gifted by the man upstairs that steroids really had no impact on their careers or their statistics. Barry Bonds was an excellent player before he took 'roids so why would you think he couldn't have hit 73 f*&king HR's without them? Any player that tells you PED's didn't help their performance should be laughed out of sight. It makes you stronger, faster, bigger and heal quicker after injury. Take a look at the stats of Sosa, Palmiero, Bonds and McGire and see what they look like after steroids kicked in.

Ari Fleischer's plan has just started to take form. It's the players who are the victims of their times, and their talent is the only thing that counts no matter what your own eyes tell you. If McGwire thinks steroids didn't help him perform, then why did he apologize to the Maris family for breaking the single-season HR record?

Goose Gossage is a lone wolf out there saying what all baseball players and pundits should be saying. Gossage wants dopers barred from Hall of Fame:

Baseball Hall of Fame reliever Goose Gossage says there should be no place in the hall for Mark McGwire or any other player who used performance-enhancing drugs.

“I definitely think that they cheated,” Gossage said on Tuesday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “And what does the Hall of Fame consist of? Integrity. Cheating is not part of integrity.”

Gossage was reaction to McGwire’s admission on Monday that he used steroids in the 1990s to break the single season home run record in Major League Baseball.

For Gossage, Hank Aaron still holds the career record of 755 home runs and Roger Maris owns the season record of 61. The Goose tosses out the fantastic figures posted by Barry Bonds(notes), McGwire, Sammy Sosa(notes) as part of a “cheating era.” He equated them with Pete Rose, barred from the Hall ballot because of his lifetime ban for betting on Cincinnati while managing the team. “The integrity of the Hall of Fame and the numbers and the history are all in jeopardy,” said Gossage, inducted two years ago. “I don’t think they should be recognized. Here’s a guy Aaron, we’re talking about the greatest record of all records. And he did it on a level playing field. He did it with God-given talent. And the same with Maris, absolutely. These are sacred records and they’ve been shattered by cheaters

It's real simple. If you get caught cheating with steroids you cannot be voted into the HOF. It's that easy. Forget the numbers and who else cheated.

I hope America isn't fooled by Ari's PR campaign to salvage these cheaters. McGwire came forward now because he wanted to get back into baseball and the statute of limitations ran out so that he can't be prosecuted in a court of law. The Cardinals had a major investment in Mark and want to be able to recoup what they can, and any player who has cheated wants to find a get-of-jail-free card as the years move forward.

Fleischer has helped dupe the American people into much worse situations than this while being part of the Bush White House. (You may remember the Iraq war.) I only hope that the American people and the sports media won't get duped again.

I do think it's rather silly for the Democratic Party to pledge money and support for (D) Arlen Specter to run in 2010, especially when it involves the Employee Free Choice Act and his career was hanging by a thread. I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday's coverage of the Republicans spinning in circles trying to come up some kind of coherent response to Specter's defection. If you watched FOX News at all they acted like spoiled little children who didn't get their candy as they lined up Bush thug after Bush thug to refute him starting with Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer and so on. They literally were dumbstruck by the fact that he left the GOP behind. A bigger problem I have is that Specter will be given a huge megaphone by the Villagers to voice his "independence" and denounce any policy he so chooses whenever he wants without a second thought about it. He said over and over again that John Kennedy believed the party can ask too much of you. He'll have more power as a new Democratic politician than he ever did as a Republican. As Digby says:

I confess that I'm more than a little bit irked that the Democratic Party has already pledged to support Specter against a primary challenger. It's fundamentally undemocratic, not to mention dumb. Specter now has carte blanche to remain an incoherent obstructionist for the next two years when they could have at least let us pull him to the left with a primary challenge.

My pal Adam Green has a good idea.

On the very day Arlen Specter became a Democrat, he lamented that not enough right-wing Bush judges got confirmed, he opposed workers' right to organize, and he compared himself to Joe Lieberman. The DSCC and Pennsylvania Democratic Party will be supporting Specter in the primary. If there is a potential progressive challenger to Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania, they are probably scratching their head right now asking, "Would I have any chance at all if I ran, or is the fix in?" What can progressives to do create an environment where this person feels they can run?

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We made a mistake the other day when Paul Begala left Ari Fleischer dumbstruck by saying:

BEGALA: We -- our country executed Japanese soldiers who water- boarded American POWs. We executed them for the same crime that we are now committing ourselves. How do you defend that?

We chided Begala slightly because we thought he wasn't quite right on the facts:

Actually, Fleischer could have countered Begala by pointing out that we didn't actually execute the Japanese soldiers convicted of the war crime of waterboarding American prisoners -- we just sentenced them to 15 years' hard labor.

But now, Begala makes clear he knew whereof he spoke:

But I was not referring to Asano, nor was my source Sen. Kennedy. Instead I was referencing the statement of a different member of the Senate: John McCain. On November 29, 2007, Sen. McCain, while campaigning in St. Petersburg, Florida, said, "Following World War II war crime trials were convened. The Japanese were tried and convicted and hung for war crimes committed against American POWs. Among those charges for which they were convicted was waterboarding."

Sen. McCain was right and the National Review Online is wrong. Politifact, the St. Petersburg Times' truth-testing project (which this week was awarded a Pulitzer Prize), scrutinized Sen. McCain's statement and found it to be true. Here's the money quote from Politifact:

"McCain is referencing the Tokyo Trials, officially known as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. After World War II, an international coalition convened to prosecute Japanese soldiers charged with torture. At the top of the list of techniques was water-based interrogation, known variously then as 'water cure,' 'water torture' and 'waterboarding,' according to the charging documents. It simulates drowning." Politifact went on to report, "A number of the Japanese soldiers convicted by American judges were hanged, while others received lengthy prison sentences or time in labor camps."

The folks at Politifact interviewed R. John Pritchard, the author of The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Complete Transcripts of the Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. They also interviewed Yuma Totani, history professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and consulted the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, which published a law review article entitled, "Drop by Drop: Forgetting the History of Water Torture in U.S. Courts."

We apologize to Begala for the error.

We'll be waiting a long time, I expect, for all those right-wingers out there who claim waterboarding isn't torture to apologize to the world.

The truth may set you free, but not if you're a Republican and the subject is taxes. After all, 95% of American families as promised received a tax cut from the Obama stimulus package. And while three-quarters of Americans support President Obama's proposal to roll back the Bush tax cuts for those earning over $250,000 to their Clinton-era levels, it turns out that affluent voters, too, chose Barack Obama over John McCain. Making matters worse, a Gallup poll Monday revealed that Americans' "views of income taxes among most positive since 1956."

So as their furious followers head off to their April 15th orgy of tea-bagging, the leadership of the GOP and its amen corner in the right-wing media have instead turned to tall tales on taxes.

Here, then, are 10 Republican Tax Day lies:

1. President Obama will raise taxes on small businesses.
2. The estate tax devastates small businesses and family farms.
3. 40% of Americans pay no taxes.
4. Tax cuts always increase revenue.
5. The GOP is the party of fiscal discipline.
6. Ronald Reagan was the greatest tax cutter of all time.
7. FDR caused the Great Depression, or at least made it worse.
8. Obama's cap-and-trade plan will cost each American family $3,100 a year.
9. Obama's tax proposals will undermine charitable giving.
10. The rich pay too much in taxes already.

For the details behind each of the GOP's Tax Day deceits, continue reading.

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Our new C&L pal Jon grabbed this video from CNN and it's pretty awesome. As the panel was discussing Micheal Steele's idiotic critique of President Obama. (You remember how the extreme right wing lunatics like Sean Hannity dishonestly edited Obama's words so they could misquote his speech to Europe?)

Begala: I'll give Michael Steele a pass on this.

Blitzer: But you're not giving Ari Fleischer a pass.

Begala: Ari just helped Ruin The Country, Michael Steel is trying to save a dying party...

Ari had no response to that charge because he's "guilty."

You Tube [H/t Heather]

Oh, this one was fun to watch. Ari jumped onto the ice with a Hypocrisy Double Axel, immediately attacking the Obama administration and the "Democrat" party for... wait for it... being childish!

Yeah, Ari, because calling the Democratic Party the "Democrat Party" is so awesomely mature. (I know you are, but what am I?)

But that was just the beginning. Ari was spinning and leaping all over the place as he clutched his pearls, wondering over and over what happened to the "post-partisan" Obama? To hear him talk, he was puzzled and hurt by the vicious slash and burn tactics of the president and his party, and kept repeating how "childish" it all was.

Shuster wouldn't stand for his nonsense, though. He cited chapter and verse, including the time Ari attacked Move On and the entire Democratic party as "unpatriotic" over the General Petraeus ad.

Just go watch it. If this is the best media spokesperson the Republicans can throw at us, we're in good shape.

Even Ari Fleischer and Marlin Fitzwater are piling on the pudgy, Nam-avoiding, tough guy. Plus, it turns out Katharine Armstrong--whose family owns the ranch where the vice-president capped that dude--is a lobbyist whose father helped Karl Rove set up his first business. Cheney must be stopped....there are so many ways he can kill you!

Body and Soul: Bastards...

Booman Tribune: More Abu Ghraib photos released

Shakespeare's Sister: Question of the Day

MaxSpeak, You Listen! Don't call it a trade deficit

must be stopped....there are so many ways he can kill you!

Body and Soul: Bastards...

Booman Tribune: More Abu Ghraib photos released

Shakespeare's Sister: Question of the Day

MaxSpeak, You Listen! Don't call it a trade deficit