Republican Rep. Tom Price, of Georgia, has introduced a House resolution that would, if passed, express the legislative body's "gratitude and appreciation" to Tea Party members who marched on Washington on Sept. 12 to "show their love of liberty and their grievance with recent government actions."
The proposed resolution is co-signed by more than 70 members of the House.
The proposed resolution would single for praise the "hundreds of thousands of American patriots, who refuse to sit idly by as the Federal Government advances skyrocketing deficits, taxpayer-funded bailouts, pork-barrel projects, burdensome taxes, unaccountable policy czars, command-and-control energy policy, and a government takeover of health care, came to Washington, D.C, to show their disapproval ..."
So let me get this straight...Price wants to pass a resolution that would praise anti-government, right wing extremists who want to overthrow their president? Really? If one single Democrat votes for this garbage, you can be sure we will call them out and ridicule them mercilessly.
Just to be clear, there weren't hundreds of thousands of people at that joke of a march on September 12th. And this was not an anti-tax march, this was a well funded hate-fest that was organized by Fox News and Glenn Beck.
You can read Price's entire resolution here. For added entertainment, click through to the original article and check out some of the comments. Didn't they learn anything from our Jon Perr's 10 Lessons for Teabaggers?
Tuesday morning on Morning Joe, CNBC host Donny Deutsch had a few choice words to describe Rush Limbaugh, including "megalomaniac" and a "scary, distasteful human being." He didn't stop there, though. He had another word in mind and let's just say, it wasn't pretty:
Then, a few minutes later, Scarborough and Deutsch discussed Limbaugh's potential part-ownership an NFL team and the comments that led to his departure from ESPN. During the conversation, the audio cut out while Deutsch was talking and Scarborough said, semi-laughing, "...bleeped that out again. Why did you have to do that? Why?" Donny later explained, "I called Rush Limbaugh a feminine hygiene product that starts with a D and sounds like my last name. It was bleeped you can't say that on TV." At the end of the program Mika Brzezinski claimed, "I learned that you can't do a show with Donny without him saying something perverted." Read on...
John Amato has forbidden me from using the "D word" to describe the likes of Limbaugh and Beck for years -- all for the better, no doubt. Should Deutsch have used the word on air? Probably not. Was he right? We report, you decide...
President Obama has been getting a lot heat since the announcement that the 2016 Olympics would not be coming to the United States. The right has rejoiced in our loss, and Fox News and other right wing media have gone berserk with stories about the Chicago Olympic Committee, and false claims of cronyism and corruption.
Lost down the memory hole was the shame and scandal that tainted the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. Eventually led by Republican Mitt Romney and his cronies, the 2002 games were plagued by fundraising woes, bribery scandals -- and the committee was also heavily infiltrated by Glenn Beck's Mormon Church:
Romney communicated his intention to take full command of the Olympics on his first day on the job in February of 1999. A century and a half after his ancestors trudged through Emigration Canyon to help pioneer the valley as a land of the righteous, Romney arrived in a cheerless ballroom in a Salt Lake City hotel. Immediately, he raised a rhetorical scythe at the trustees of the scandal-tainted organizing committee.
Much of the damage seemed to stem from decisions made by two previous executives on the Salt Lake City organizing committee, chief executive Thomas K. Welch and vice president David R. Johnson, who embraced the tacit form of influence peddling that greased the international selection process for Olympic sites.
Vowing not to be defeated again, Welch and Johnson funneled through the committee more than $1 million in gifts to numerous IOC delegates for the 2002 Games - a stunning trove of booty that included cash, college tuition, medical-care payments, jobs, lodging, beds and bedding, bathroom fixtures, Indian rugs, draperies, doorknobs, dogs, leather boots and belts, perfume, Nintendo games, Lego toys, shotguns, a violin, and trips to ski resorts, Las Vegas, and a Super Bowl in Miami. Almost no request from an IOC member went unmet.
Shamed by the scandal - in which 10 members of the International Olympic Committee would resign or be expelled for accepting gifts from the Salt Lake committee - Utah's power brokers believed they needed a new CEO wise in the ways of business, the law, and Mormonism.
Enter Mitt Romney, his buddies and the Mormon Church:
Almost as soon as Romney took the job, however, the Mormon Church's role in the Games became a source of contention - a dispute exacerbated by Romney's request for an additional $8 million in loaned property and cash from the church, among other contributions.
Utah's wealthiest businessman, Jon Huntsman Sr., the father of Utah's current governor, assailed Romney for exploiting his ties to the church. Huntsman himself is prominent in the Mormon Church, which is officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
''We've got a chairman who is active LDS, now we've got a present CEO who is active LDS,'' Huntsman was quoted in the Salt Lake Tribune as saying of Garff and Romney. ''They claim they're going out [to] really scour the world to find the best person, and Mitt brings in one of his cronies to be the COO. Another broken promise. Because we've got three LDS folks who are all cronies. Cronyism at its peak. ..... These are not the Mormon Games.' Read on...
Romney came in after the initial bribery scandal, but created plenty of controversy of his own.
In a remark extraordinary even by the standards of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio heavyweight declared on his program Wednesday that the United States needed to return to racially segregated buses.
Referring to an incident in which a white student was beaten by black students on a bus, Limbaugh said: “I think the guy’s wrong. I think not only it was racism, it was justifiable racism. I mean, that’s the lesson we’re being taught here today. Kid shouldn’t have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses — it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama’s America.”
A full transcript of Limbaugh’s comments on his radio show is available at MediaMatters.org.
Limbaugh’s comments came after a called complained to say that local law enforcement said the attack probably wasn’t racially motivated. The incident had been hyped by the conservative Drudge Report, which posted a video of the fracas.
“Police initially said the beating of the white student by two black students appeared to be racially motivated,” the Associated Press wrote. “But police on Tuesday backed away from that.”
That didn’t stop Limbaugh from making his comments Wednesday.
“In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, ‘Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,” Limbaugh also said. “I wonder if Obama’s going to come to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard.”
“White Americans are racists who have created what they call free markets that really just enslave the rest of America and her trading partners,” Limbaugh also mocked. “I mean, it was white Americans that ran off Van Jones. No, look, let’s just follow Eric Holder’s advice and not be cowards about all this. Let’s have an open conversation, an honest conversation about all of our typical white grandmothers. You had one, I had one. Obama had one. They’re racists just like our students are. ACORN — hey, nothing but racism fueling the pursuit of ACORN.”
Limbaugh also suggested that racism itself was acceptable.
“If homosexuality being inborn is what makes it acceptable, why does racism being inborn not make racism acceptable?” the talk show host asked. “I’m sorry — I mean, this is the way my mind works. But apparently now we don’t choose racism, we just are racists. We are born that way. We don’t choose it. So shouldn’t it be acceptable, excuse — this is according to the way the left thinks about things.”
Really, isn't it time that decent people just said NO to Rush Limbaugh?
One of the more laughable right wing attack lines against President Obama has been the number of "Czars" he has appointed. Of course, we know that former President Bush had more czars than Obama, but why would Fox News report that? During his health care reform speech last week, the president said "If you misrepresent what's in the plan, we will call you out"
Last week, when the President addressed the Joint Session of Congress in a speech on health reform, he referred to some of the untruths – okay, lies – that have been spread about the plan and sent a clear message to those who seek to undermine his agenda and his presidency with these tactics: "We will call you out." So consider this one of those calls.
Over the past several weeks, we've seen with increasing frequency and volume issues raised around the use of "czars" by this Administration. Although some Members have asked serious questions around the makeup of the White House staff, the bulk of the noise you hear began first with partisan commentators, suggesting that this is somehow a new and sinister development that threatens our democracy. This is, of course, ridiculous. Just to be clear, the job title "czar" doesn’t exist in the Obama Administration. Many of the officials cited by conservative commentators have been confirmed by the Senate. Many hold policy jobs that have existed in previous Administrations. And some hold jobs that involved coordinating the work of agencies on President Obama’s key policy priorities: health insurance reform, energy and green jobs, and building a new foundation for long-lasting economic growth
But of course, it’s really the hypocrisy here that is noteworthy. Just earlier today, Darrell Issa, a Republican from California and one of the leaders in calling for an investigation into the Obama Administration’s use of "czars", had to admit to Fox News that he had never raised any objections to the Bush Administration’s use of "czars". Many of these members who now decry the practice have called on Presidents in the past to appoint "czars" to coordinate activities within the government to address immediate challenges. What is clear is that all of this energy going into these attacks could be used to have a constructive conversation about bringing this country together to address our challenges moving forward – and it doesn’t take a "czar" to bring that about! Just some folks willing to act in good faith. Read on...
This is a blogger with a spine. The blog post was written by Anita Dunn, and she goes on to nail numerous right wing politicians and pundits, calling them out on the nutbaggery. It's worth clicking through to the original to read it all.
Rush Limbaugh has never hidden his bigoted beliefs, and on Tuesday he went on a racist rant about a highly disturbing incident on a school bus where a black student attacked a white student while other children cheered on. As Ben Frumin at TPM puts it, Limbaugh acts as though this is all the fault of President Obama:
Rush Limbaugh weighed in today on this video of a 17-year-old white Illinois student beaten up by two black classmates. Shockingly, his analysis doesn't reveal an even-handed understanding of our country's complicated racial history. In fact, not only does Limbaugh imply that this high school scuffle is racially-motivated -- but that somehow, it's the fault of President Obama.
"In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, 'Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on," Limbaugh said. I wonder if Obama's going to come to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard." Read on...
At some point, the hatred coming from the right and their mouthpieces on the radio will hit critical mass in this country. I'm all for free speech, but entertainers like Rush and Glenn Beck are walking perilously close to "yelling fire in a movie theater."
Let's make a distinction here. Yes, there's no question that the Tea Party movement is being led and manipulated by the usual right-wing suspects - but the individuals who are being led and manipulated, like most people, simply have no idea of the sophistication (and money) behind this "grassroots" machine.
Aboard the Tea Party Express (CNN) -- From the stage, Deborah Johns is the angry conscience of the tea party movement.
"Question everything your government is doing," she tells a crowd of about 100 from the bus's stage in the parking lot of the Winners casino in Winnemucca, Nevada.
Under a setting sun on the steps of the state capitol in Little Rock, Arkansas, Johns says: "Our men and women took an oath when they put on the uniform to defend and protect this country from enemies both foreign and domestic. I think we've got some domestic enemies in the White House."
On a sunny afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, Johns works the crowd of about 2,000 into a frenzy.
"The men and women in our military didn't fight and die for this country for a communist in the White House," she says, and the crowd erupts in a chant of "U-S-A, U-S-A!"
On the bus, Johns slips off her heels and slips on a pair of ankle socks. She curls up under a quilt her grandmother made. She favors skirts and cardigans -- a pit bull in cashmere.
She leads the rallies in each city with Mark Williams, a former talk radio host who now writes books and makes the rounds on cable TV chat shows. Both work for Our Country Deserves Better, the conservative political action committee sponsoring the Tea Party Express bus tour.
Deborah Johns, Deborah Johns. Where have I heard that name before? Here's what Hart Williams has found:
The officers of the Our Country Deserves Better PAC overlap extensively with current and former leaders of the pro-war organization Move America Forward (MAF). These include MAF co-founder and former chair Howard Kaloogian, who chairs the PAC; PR executive Sal Russo, who serves as chief strategist for both MAF and the PAC; Russo Marsh & Rogers principal Joe Wierzbicki, who serves as grassroots coordinator for MAF and coordinates the PAC; and Marine mom Deborah Johns, who is MAF’s director of military relations and the [new] PAC’s spokesperson.[2]
Sourcewatch continues:
Following the election of Barack Obama on November 4, 2008, the PAC put a poll on its website, asking supporters to weigh in on the group’s future. The poll asked the question, “Should we fight on for victory in 2010 and 2012?” and the possible responses were “YES – We must fight for victory!,” “NO – We should accept defeat and move on,” or “UNDECIDED/UNSURE.” [7]
In response to a blogger’s question, “What will the Our Country Deserves Better organization focus on now that Obama has won?,” Deborah Johns replied: “We do plan to be a watchdog for what happens in the Obama Administration, especially when it comes to matters concerning our military and national defense. We are also going to look at Congressional and Senate issues and hold them accountable as well.” [8]
Professional "Marine mom" Deborah Johns has been on this particular right-wing gravy train for a while:
* Spokesperson, "You Don't Speak For Me, Cindy" tour for Move America Forward and the "Support Our Troops" tour for which Hart Williams records indicating it was funded by the Department of Defense.
* Vice President, Our Country Deserves Better PAC, which oddly enough for a "grassroots" organization, registers its domain site through Australia.
This particular PAC spends quite a bit of money hiring Russo Marsh (the company which created it) to create astroturf campaigns and ads against Democrats. They also pay Deborah Johns "PAC consulting wages." (Oh, and the ever-elusive Endeavor Media, owned by Bobby Eberle, founder of Talon News, employer of one Jeff Gannon.)
Craig Holman, the watchdog group Public Citizen's campaign finance lobbyist, agreed that "there's a lot of commingling that goes on" between PACs and non-profit organizations -- also referred to 501(c)(3) groups -- though "there is supposed to be a very significant firewall between them." Under current rules, "the objective is to make sure that whoever's making the decisions and directing the PAC isn't also making the decisions and directing the 501(c)(3). If they're the same people, they've got the same knowledge, they've got the same objectives. To me, that crosses the line. ... But most of these groups realize that no one's going to go after them."
Americanrivercanyon, the Daily Kos diarist who did the very heavy lifting on this, concludes:
These anti-health care reform "grassroots" efforts are not just being organized and funded from the health insurance industry, pharmaceutical industry, etc. - but from Dept of Defense Contractors that depend on Republican earmarks for funding, and Big Oil, which is engaged in a power struggle with the rest of the nation as they fight against turning towards creating and using more renewable energy.
Even understanding that anything even remotely related to football in Texas takes on quasi-religious overtones, this might seem rather remarkably tone-deaf. But see, one involved a Texan and former president asking children to volunteer and the other involved a sitting president asking children to study hard and stay in school.
Get the difference? Nah, me neither. Unless it's because one of them is a colored fella?
ARLINGTON, Texas — Arlington Superintendent Jerry McCullough issued a statement Friday apologizing for how the district handled President Obama's live speech on Tuesday.
The decision not to show the speech live to school children became particularly controversial after it became known that the district had previous plans to bus about 500 fifth-graders to attend an event with former President George W. Bush. The event, which is scheduled later this month at the new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, will be an announcement about a volunteer initiative for the 2011 Super Bowl.
"In retrospect, I can see how the district's decisions concerning these two events could be seen as favoring one event over another," McCullough said in his written statement. He later said, "I apologize that my decisions on behalf of the district have disappointed or hurt people."
The district allowed students to miss half a day of school on Tuesday if they wanted to watch the event live elsewhere and recorded the speech for later use. McCullough noted that he is encouraging teachers to use Obama's speech in their classrooms when and how they deem appropriate.
Yes. Really. Disgraced Republican, and former Florida Rep. Mark Foley has his own radio talk show! I thought this was a parody at first, but according to ABC, it's true and the name of his show will floor you -- "Inside The Mind of Mark Foley"
Nearly three years after then-Congressman Mark Foley, R-FLA, saw his political career crumble following the revelation of his sexually explicit emails with underage congressional pages, he's garnering the spotlight once again: as a radio talk show host.
Foley, who resigned after ABC News' The Blotter broke the story before going to rehab in Arizona, is set to debut his radio show entitled "Inside the Mind of Mark Foley" on Sept. 22 on West Palm Beach radio station WSVU 960am.
When the page scandal broke, Foley was the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. He resigned hours after ABC News questioned him about the instant messages with former congressional pages, some of whom were under the age of 18 at the time of the exchanges. Officials in Florida announced a year ago that Foley would not face criminal charges because of "insufficient evidence." Read on...
Yikes! I'm not sure many people really want to know what's going on "inside the mind of Mark Foley." Once you get past the fantasies of sipping chocolatinis with young boys in their underwear, it's a good bet that all that's left in Foley's mind that could possibly be worked into a radio show are the same old, worn out right wing talking points. Because we need another right wing talk show.
There were signs comparing President Barack Obama to a Nazi and showing him with an Adolf Hitler-style mustache, but federal officials believe another sign referencing the president and his family went too far.
A man who was holding a sign reading "Death to Obama" Wednesday outside a town hall meeting on health care reform in Hagerstown, Md., has been turned over to the Secret Service.
Washington County Sheriff's Capt. Peter Lazich said the sign also read, "Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids."Read on...
As many have said on blogs and the tee vee, these protests have nothing to do with health care reform, and they never did. They are temper tantrums being thrown by small minded, uneducated, racist white people who are angry about having a black Democrat in the White House. I'm encouraged to finally see the Secret Service getting involved in a public way.
That sure doesn't sound like the Fox News of today which seems quite impressed by the GOP mini-mobs which have been formed expressly to heckler Democratic politicians who want to discuss health care reform with their constituents at town hall meetings.
But back in 2007, when anti-war protesters who make up Code Pink, made headlines by disrupting an official event, the Fox News morning team was seriously pissed off:
During a discussion about a Code Pink member heckling Hillary Clinton at a recent event, Fox News host Brian Kilmead said that people who confront politicians are “threatening” and should be Tased or “beaten to a pulp,” as the establishment media continues to sell the idea that anyone who disagrees with authority should be brutally punished. Read on...
Three companies who had run ads during Glenn Beck's Fox News show have distanced themselves from Beck, including LexisNexis-owned Lawyers.com, Procter & Gamble and Progressive Insurance. We're told a P&G spot inadvertently aired during a weekend Beck broadcast, but that the company never had a regular buy for the show.
The group ColorofChange.org called on their members to pressure advertisers to pull ads from Beck's show after he called Pres. Obama a "racist" who "has a deep-seated hatred for white people."
A Fox News spokesperson told TVNewser that the advertisers simply moved their spots from Beck to other programs on the network, "so there has been no revenue lost."
Okay, so the advertisers took money from crazy Peter to pay crazy Paul, but this is a good first step. Perhaps with the right motivation and enough racist, crazy controversies, these, and other companies will pull their money from Fox News altogether.
World Net Daily has done it! They've finally proven that President Obama was, in fact, born in Kenya:
The document lists Obama's parents as Barack Hussein Obama and Stanley Ann Obama, formerly Stanley Ann Dunham, the birth date as Aug. 4, 1961, and the hospital of birth as Coast General Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya. Read on...
Judge Samuel P. King who granted the divorce – last I heard was retired and alive (for now) in his 90s in Hawaii -- MAY or MAY NOT have asked to see the Marriage Certificate. BUT, I bet Judge King asked to see Obama JR's Birth Certificate to confirm Ann's claims that Obama SR was in fact the father. That is “standard” policy to have a Birth Certificate in case the mother asks for child support from the father (or Welfare) later after the divorce. Judge King probably told Ann to produce a birth certificate before or at trial, which would have been sometime in mid- to late-February 1964 HAD Obama SR answered his notice that was sent to Cambridge.
When Judge King wrote the order on Jan. 23, he had his clerk notify Obama SR via what's referred to as a "knock and nail". That is, the postman leaves the notification on the door for (generally) 10 days and retrieves it after that time passes -- signed or unsigned. That order was sent on Jan. 23 via airmail from Hawaii and was probably posted on Obama SR's door Jan. 27-28. Read on...
We talked with my parents about all kinds of these issues in advance - but they also changed their mind about some things as they got closer to the end. My mother died peacefully in her sleep, exactly as she wanted.
My father, on the other hand, died of cancer in the hospital, talked out of the home hospice care he would have preferred by his "pro-life" activist physician. ("You don't want that, they're a little too free with the drugs." You know, because God forbid you die a few hours sooner.)
Two days before my father died, I literally had to push his doctor up against the wall and harangue him to get him to authorize the morphine he needed. And you know what this tin god did? He left an order for morphine pills "on request." (Dad could no longer swallow, and was in so much pain, he was in and out of consciousness.)
I found out the next morning and told the nurse to get him on the phone. The weenie had his associate call back instead, and he said he couldn't override the other doctor's instructions. "As long as I have you on the phone, I have another question," I said sweetly. "Dr. X also left instructions that my dad was to be resuscitated, and he told us he didn't want that. My mother says that's not her signature on the request, so it seems to me we have something of a legal problem here."
All of a sudden, he became quite helpful and offered to prescribe a morphine IV for my father.
Now, I'm a fighter, and I'm effective. But not everyone is, especially when a parent is dying. And some of those seniors have no family left to fight for them. So regular counseling about this would be a very, very good thing.
A campaign on conservative talk radio, fueled by President Obama's calls to control exorbitant medical bills, has sparked fear among senior citizens that the health-care bill moving through Congress will lead to end-of-life "rationing" and even "euthanasia."
The controversy stems from a proposal to pay physicians who counsel elderly or terminally ill patients about what medical interventions they would prefer near the end of life and how to prepare instructions such as living wills. Under the plan, Medicare would reimburse doctors for one session every five years to confer with a patient about his or her wishes and how to ensure those preferences are followed. The counseling sessions would be voluntary.
But on right-leaning radio programs, religious e-mail lists and Internet blogs, the proposal has been described as "guiding you in how to die," "an ORDER from the Government to end your life," promoting "death care" and, in the words of antiabortion leader Randall Terry, an attempt to "kill Granny."
Though the counseling provision is a tiny part of a behemoth bill, the skirmish over end-of-life care, like arguments about abortion coverage, has become a distraction and provided an opening for opponents of the president's broader health-care agenda. At a forum sponsored by the seniors group AARP that was intended to pitch comprehensive reform, Obama was asked about the "rumors." He used the question to promote living wills, noting that he and the first lady have them.
Democratic strategists privately acknowledged that they were hesitant to give extra attention to the issue by refuting the inaccuracies, but they worry that it will further agitate already-skeptical seniors.
This afternoon, Bill Shine, SVP of Programming told TVNewser, "During Fox & Friends this morning, Glenn Beck expressed a personal opinion which represented his own views, not those of the Fox News Channel. And as with all commentators in the cable news arena, he is given the freedom to express his opinions."
Make no mistake, the powers that be at Fox News couldn't care less about Beck's statement. If they did, Beck would have been suspended, or at the very least, reprimanded. This kind of outrageous propaganda permeates their network and they use it daily to hold on to their racist viewers.
