(h/t The Plum Line)

Ah...Sharron Angle is the gift that keeps on giving. This is a classic. First she worries about the "lame duck Congress" and what they can "do to us" before they (the Tea Party) leave take office.

When questioned about the Tea Party 'giving up on America', she answers with this:

"I'm glad to be lumped with a crowd of mainstream Americans who believe, as they showed at the polls, that Senator Bennett has outlived his usefulness. I suppose he's not mainstream any longer. He has become one of those elitists that is no longer in touch with what the country is really thinking about in these economic times.

Then she says this:

We're tired of being waterboarded with high unemployment, high foreclosure rates, and high bankruptcy rates.

Waterboarded? Really? Sharron Angle is suggesting that the entire country is being waterboarded?

Well, we all know who the party of waterboarding is, now don't we? Here's George W. Bush last month:

"Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," Bush told a Grand Rapids audience Wednesday, of the self-professed 9/11 mastermind. "I'd do it again to save lives."

Only, no lives were saved. And if high unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcy rates are high, there's only one group to blame:

• Unemployment Insurance extensions denied? Republicans blocked.
• Foreclosure rates high? Irresponsible apathetic regulators allow mortgage industry to "police itself."
• Bankruptcy rates high? Consumers have almost no option but to declare bankruptcy after the Republicans "reformed" bankruptcy laws in 2005. Oh, and guess who supported that "reform"? That's right, banks and Wall Street.

Waterboarding indeed. Sharron Angle just flipped off an entire nation along with Robert Bennett. To her, we've ALL outlived our usefulness.

The despicable, un-American Arizona law really seems to have sparked a national backlash - and a strong push for immigration reform:

WASHINGTON — In protests fueled by anger over a tough anti-illegal immigrant law in Arizona, tens of thousands of demonstrators joined marches and rallies Saturday in cities across the country, calling on Congress to pass an immigration overhaul.

In Los Angeles, the police said the crowd had peaked at 50,000. Protesters numbered 25,000 in Dallas, more than 10,000 in Chicago and Milwaukee, in the thousands in San Francisco and here in Washington, D.C., according to the police and independent estimates. Organizers said rallies and vigils were held in more than 70 places around the country.

In Washington, Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, was arrested after staging a sit-in on the sidewalk in front of the White House with about three dozen other people, in front of a crowd of thousands.

At a rally before he was arrested, Mr. Gutierrez, speaking in English and in Spanish, evoked memories of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

“There are moments in which you say, ‘We will escalate this struggle,’ ” he said. “Today they will put handcuffs on us. But one day we will be free at last in the country we love.”

In all, 35 people were arrested in the sit-in, the United States Park Police said.

At rally after rally across the nation, protesters chanted “shame, shame, Arizona,” and carried signs saying, “Todos Somos Arizona,” or “We are All Arizona.”

The bigger demonstrations were far larger than planners had anticipated in March, when the events were first announced. The protests were originally called by immigrant advocates who had set May 1 as the deadline for Congress to introduce overhaul legislation that would include measures to give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants.

But organizers said the Arizona legislation, which was signed into law April 23, had been a watershed event for disparate advocate organizations, transforming them into something akin to a civil rights movement with a national profile.

DOWNLOADS: (1876)

PLAYS: (1379)

Embed

Yesterday on her Fox News show, Megyn Kelly thought it would be revealing in some fashion or another to run footage of protests from angry Latinos in Arizona, and run them side by side with footage from the Tea Party protests in Washington, D.C. in March.

Talk about selective footage: What they showed of the Arizona protests -- which indeed were largely peaceful -- were the moments when the rowdiness got out of hand and people were arrested. And of course, the footage they showed of the Tea Partiers was of moments when their protest was entirely peaceful -- not the ugliness that erupted when Democrats tried to walk through the crowd.

But it left me wondering: Why didn't Kelly and Co. do the same thing back in March when there were in fact immigration marchers in D.C. at the same time as the Tea Party protests on health-care reform?

DOWNLOADS: (1372)

PLAYS: (1470)

Embed

As I noted then:

Indeed, this crowd was significantly larger than the much-promoted "9/12 March on Washington" last September, even though that event was endlessly promoted for over a month by Fox News (I know, I know; they like to claim they had 1.2 million people there, but the reality was that it was actually about 70,000).

Yet, strangely enough, there was only ONE Fox News crew on hand to cover the immigration march today. I spoke with the reporter for this crew, and he told me Fox News had several other crews on hand today -- but they were all up covering the Tea Partiers and the health-care vote.

And in case you're wondering, there were exactly ZERO stories on Fox News reporting on this march in advance. ZERO. I couldn't find any at CNN or MSNBC either.

There was exactly ONE report on Fox News covering this rally -- because Fox was so busy covering the Tea Party protesters.

On its website, Fox carried only an AP report (now scrubbed) and a slide show. That was it.

The final estimate for this crowd was 200,000 people -- which dwarfed the Tea Party protests. And it was considerably more peaceful and civilized than the ugliness up at the Capitol.

Wonder why they didn't do a comparison/contrast back then, don't you?

DOWNLOADS: (894)

PLAYS: (1910)

Embed

The conservative movement will do everything they can to keep trying to paint Obama as a foreigner. The Birthers are still here as you'd expect because proof means nothing to them or most movement conservatives, but today Sarah Palin held up her part of the bargain by calling the president's policies "un-American."

"Is this what their 'change' is all about?" Palin asked a sun-splashed crowd of roughly 5,000 gathered just a mile from the site of the original Tea Party from which the movement got its name. "I want to tell them, nah, we'll keep clinging to our Constitution and our guns and religion – and you can keep the change."

Later she told the crowd, "I'm not calling anyone un-American, but the unintended consequences of these actions -- the results -- are un-American."

It's not that the president is un-American, it's that he does un-American things. All the time. And he loves the terrorists more than you and wants us to get hit with a Nuke too. It's classic College Republican stuff from the Jack Abramoff era.

Rolling Stone writes: Corruption and the College Republicans:

And as my pal Jon Perr emailed me and said:

Yup. It’s un-American for U.S. GDP to grow by almost 6% last quarter, the Dow up by 38% since Obama’s inauguration, 98% of working households to get a tax cut, an average refund from the IRS of $3,000 and 32 million more Americans to get health care.

By the way, the teabaggers were saying that they were going to have 10,000 people attending, but Greg Sargent says only about 3,000 showed up.

The ‘Cuda held a rally today in Boston that organizers predicted would attract up to 10,000 attendees. Alas, by one reckoning, roughly 3,000 showed up — decent turnout, but less than a third of the original estimate.

Let's see how many times the 10K figure is used in the media. I heard Chris Matthews use it on Hardball when he barely gave any airtime to Joan Walsh to participate in today.

(h/t ThinkProgress)

Even though the turnout was less than expected, as Rachel Maddow put it, what they lacked in bodies, they made up for in exclamation points. One of those politicos responsible for a quite a bit of the punctuation of the day was Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX). Gohmert, who you'll remember has previously insisted that private health insurance would be taken away from Americans with the passing of this bill and promised to cancel the stimulus bill if the Republicans retook the majority in 2010, had to ratchet up the crazy in order to keep up with Michelle Bachmann. And boy, did he go over the cliff into Crazy Town:

Gohmert elicited cheers from the crowd when he made a graphic and disturbing claim about the bill:

GOHMERT: I brought the bill that’s being talking about. Now I don’t want to offend anybody, I’m sure that there are people here who think abortion is okay, and I don’t want to make you sick, but I brought an abortion to show you today. [...]

There’s a whole lot of demons going on. There’s a lot of demons around here apparently.

Going along with my theory that everything Republicans accuse Democrats of generally is a projection of their own guilt, I think it's safe to assume that Gohmert is actually admitting to his own demonic possession. It's the only explanation that I can think of for his bombastic, lying, disgusting rhetoric.

Sadly, the larger meaning of this is completely lost on her fans:

Sarah Palin drew a straight line from Alaska to Alberta as she told a sold-out, largely adoring crowd in Calgary that the province gets her message of less government, lower taxes and development of natural resources.

In what was billed as her first Canadian appearance since stepping down as governor of Alaska last summer, Ms. Palin's trademark folksy charm was on full display Saturday night.[..]

The vocal opponent of health-care reform in the U.S. steered largely clear of the topic except to reveal a tidbit about her life growing up not far from Whitehorse.

“We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada,” she said. “And I think now, isn't that ironic?”

Well yes, Sarah, you could call it "ironic" that you feel no compunction about running across the border to avail yourself of the health care you fight and lie and propagandize against to keep your fellow Americans from enjoying. Or you could call it "grossly hypocritical." However, I prefer to think of it as "brainlessly missing the picture" and hoping to take a bunch a tea baggers down with you. If we indeed had "the best health care system in the world", why would anyone go to Canada?

Because it was free? Because you didn't need to decide whether the need for a doctor was important enough to pay the associated costs, even if it meant forgoing a few meals or a payment elsewhere? Because you felt you had a RIGHT to good health and the Canadian government agreed that it is in everyone's best interest?

Was the socialized medicine safety net of Canada frightening? Of course not. It was a social service that Palin used when she needed...even though she presumably paid no taxes into the Canadian system (remember how important it was to the GOP to make sure illegal immigrants couldn't milk the system).

But will any one of her fans or the nut case tea-baggers screaming about how Obama wants to turn us into some socialist state ever put two and two together and realize it's something we should aspire to?

Of course not.

You see why the bully boys of Wall Street dislike Sheila Bair - and Elizabeth Warren? Because they actually think of the people hurt by the financial industry's long, drunken binge and are trying to repair the damage. No wonder these women are unpopular with the in crowd:

FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair indicated Thursday that she is exploring the idea of reducing the principal on as much as $45 billion in mortgages her agency has acquired from failed banks.

That would be the first significant government attempt to employ a measure that some economists and consumer advocates have long argued is the only really effective way to stop foreclosures.

Although the $45 billion in mortgages only amounts to less than half of one percent of mortgages nationwide, the move would be significant because the idea of reducing principal has been all but dismissed for the last nine months by the Obama administration.

Economists like Yale University's John Geanakoplos, however, have argued that cutting the principal on delinquent loans should have been the administration's practice all along. For the nearly quarter of American homeowners who owe more on their mortgage than the house is worth, it's by far the best way to keep them in their homes and reduce foreclosures, Geanakoplos said in an interview last month.

Bair made her comments in an interview with Bloomberg News. She has not yet discussed her proposal with the Treasury Department, a senior administration official said Thursday in a brief interview. Though unfamiliar with the details of her proposal, the official said it was promising.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation no longer owns the mortgages directly; but when it sold them to solvent banks, it agreed to shoulder some of the future losses. Bair's move would effectively make sure that homeowners directly benefit from that guarantee, not just the lenders.

The Villagers obsess about the mythical "independent" voters. This time we have Tweety and his crew discussing over and under fifty five year old crowd. And guess where they stand.

Think Progress caught Fox News using old campaign footage of a McCain/Palin rally from 2008 to make it appear like the crowds she's drawing on her book tour are larger than they are.

Think Progress:

This afternoon, Fox News host Gregg Jarrett proudly announced that Sarah Palin is “continuing to draw huge crowds while she’s promoting her brand new book. Take a look at — these are some of the pictures just coming into us.” But the pictures that the network chose to display on-air appeared to be old file footage of Palin rallies from the 2008 presidential campaign. Individuals in the crowd are seen holding McCain/Palin signs, and others are holding pom-poms and cheering wildly. “There’s a crowd of folks,” an enthused Jarrett observed, referring to the old footage.

Media Matters followed up that report with more facts to support the claim, which in my mind should be called a HOAX.

Earlier, Think Progress caught Fox News showing what was clearly footage of 2008 Sarah Palin campaign rallies but claiming that it was video of "huge crowds" attending Palin's book tour.

But in case the McCain-Palin campaign signs and tee-shirts clearly visible in the footage Fox aired aren't enough to make Fox apologize, here's further proof.

Here's a screenshot of the footage of one of the rallies that Fox's Gregg Jarrett showed today and claimed was "just coming into us" as part of the book tour:

And here's a photo posted last year by Florida TV station CFNews 13 of a November 1, 2008, Palin rally in Ocala, Florida:And here's a video of that same rally that TPM posted way back in 2008 -- when it actually happened.

Fox News is not operating like a news organization. It was busted by Jon Stewart of the Daily Show when Sean Hannity used the same technique to make it seem like a tea party rally was bigger than it actually was. And you know Hannity was told to apologize by "legal" over the "Hoax" he tried to get away with. Inadvertent footage doesn't end up on a network show. That's a bogus explanation.

Please email any fake news segments you find to C&L.

I think it's time we started to take action and the first step is to file an FCC report here. Please join me.

I'm on Twitter too: http://twitter.com/JohnAmato

See that picture? That looks like a million people to G. Gordon Liddy's producer:

(T)oday’s anti-health care reform rally has been much more sparsely attended (than the 9/12 protests, but) that hasn’t stopped conservatives from inflating the numbers again. On G. Gordon Liddy’s radio show (Thursday), producer Franklin Raff, who was on the ground at the rally, told guest host Joseph Farah that the crowd is “just as big or bigger than” the 9/12 rally, which Raff estimated “at about a million.”

Uh yup. Rep. Eric Cantor dialed the number down, though not entirely into factual territory:

(S)hortly after addressing the crowd, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) actually blamed Democrats for the hateful images on display. In an interview with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, Cantor suggested that the signs were the mere result of "frustration" over the democratically elected majority's "extreme policies." Mitchell pushed him to say whether he's "comfortable with those attacks against the President of the United States," but Cantor quickly changed the subject:

CANTOR: Listen, I don't think we should engage in personal attacks. But I think, and what I take the message from the gathering of tens of thousands of people on the steps of the Capitol today, and the elections on Tuesday, is the fact that, you know what, we need some balance here in Washington.

You know what, Cantor? You and the rest of your willfully ignorant and fear mongering party (and that includes your mouthpieces at Fox News) own every one of those sickening, disgusting, inexcusable signs, not Democrats.

The Politico, treading gracelessly between their GOP advocacy position and whatever journalistic integrity they still imagine themselves to have put the number at 10,000. Actually, according to reality-based sources, the number was around 3,000 - 4,000.

There's a joke I could make on how sad it must be for their wives when they must continually overinflate numbers, but I think their massive overcompensation speaks for itself.