There. Does that get your attention? There’s nothing “funny” about this title, but that’s the point. Others may argue about the “filthy” and “bitch” part. The lying is pretty well documented. Take umbrage to being called a bitch? Well, how do you think David Letterman feels when you call him a molester, you filthy, lying bitch. Shock words can go both ways. If you want to swing that gauntlet, don’t feign shock when it swings back in your direction. Don’t like my assessment what you are? Well, go fuck yourself.

It’s one thing to show your distaste for a joke involving your family, but to viciously LIE about the intention of that joke, and the target of it, and use it as a vehicle to destroy the reputation of a man who’s far more talented, intelligent and experienced than you will ever be - in every aspect of life - is sad.

Intelligent (and for that matter, unintelligent people) recognized that Letterman was directing that barb to the only daughter the public knows, Bristol. Having nothing else to offer the public than your division and passive-aggressive hate rants, I guess you saw this as another opportunity to take the spotlight for a while. You’ve already pimped out your children to further your naked ambition. Now you’ve got an issue when it backfires on you?

Well, I don’t really believe that’s the case anyway. I think you love this. I believe your concern for your children in the spotlight is a little bit false. I think it’s a far more cynical reason for your attacks. You were finding yourself unrepresented in the media and this was a convenient avenue back in. What does it matter if others are the casualties of your ambition. What does it matter if you can’t actually get press for something important - such as ideas. How important is it that you’re not intelligent or morally strong enough to get in front of the cameras and tell the truth rather than resort to easy lies to drum up support for your platform.

Heck, our last President lied about things far more important like the benefactors of the middle class tax cuts, the reason for starting a war with Iraq, the true laziness of his response to Hurricane Katrina, the real inner workings of Valerie Plame’s outing, the Justice Department firings, torture, etc. etc. etc.

Looks like you learned from the experts. And what did you learn? I’ll tell you. Repeat after me:

“I cannot win an argument based on my ideas or the facts. I do not have the articulation capacity to persuade anyone that my ideas have merit. I do not have the credibility to get anyone on my side because of my slim accomplishments and flighty past. So, in an attempt to overcome these obstacles, I will do the most politically expedient thing: I will lie as strongly as I need to in order to gain the upper hand. If my lies are not strong enough, I will lie some more - and do so in a way that will trigger emotions and press buttons - probably buttons that shouldn’t be pressed so casually. I will lie like this because I am insecure…and uneducated on what I’m talking about…and not up to the task. But maybe if I lie, nobody will see that.

Maybe if I lie, I can get my way like I used to when I was five years old. What does it matter whether I spilled the milk or not. My brother can get spanked for it, because, really, it’s all about me and my needs, isn’t it?

Current News republican lies, Sarah Palin

From CNN:

The GOP budget would repeal the entire $787 billion economic stimulus package except for an extension of unemployment insurance benefits. It also would roll back a recently passed 8 percent spending boost in the budget for the remainder of the current fiscal year.

At the same time, the federal share of Medicaid payments would be converted to block grants for the states. Medicare would be transformed for Americans younger than 55 by allowing them to choose from a series of preapproved private insurance plans, with premium payments from the federal government to insurers varying according to an individual’s age, income and health.

So the republican’s answer to our economic problems is…do nothing.

This proposal is pathetic and insulting. All it is essentially is extend unemployment benefits without any boost to the job market (because, as we know, the market knows how to regulate itself and create jobs and wealth on its own) and push the bullshit private investment plans for Medicare, an obvious attempt for the insurance lobby to muscle into the conversation.

Thanks, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. Thank you for letting the American people see what treasonous assholes you really are. All you’ve done is play to your small, but rich, constituents and all the lobbyists that no longer have a voice in the Obama administration. Your budget will do nothing to help our current crisis and I’m sure you know it. You also know it has no chance of being passed, but it does give you a chance to cowardly avoid doing anything for the country that involves a decision on your part.

Go screw yourselves, traitors.

Current News, Politics john boehner, mitch mcconnell, republican budget proposal, republican lies, republican losers

From the Cullman Times:

In front of a packed room, Shelby explained how he was a staunch proponent of fiscal responsibility and that he had opposed the $787 billion economic stimulus bill Obama signed into law earlier this week.

“If we (republicans) were in control, I would have been chairman of the banking committee … and I would have killed some bills,” Shelby said with a laugh.

When Richard Shelby opens his Jack Nicholson-joker-like mouth he spews the kind of garbage typical of someone who’s begrudgingly lost and is absolutely, completely unwilling to get along - or work with - the elected winner. Unfortunately, our financial well-being is in the balance.

I’ve made no secret of my disdain for this narrow-minded, childish partisan asshole. In truth, he’s a real piece of work. A former Bush lapdog, former member of the banking and Senate intelligence committees, Shelby is always on the wrong side of the argument and sometimes the wrong side of the law as well.

Regarding the stimulus bill, he sides against the taxpayers in offering no valid alternatives other than more tax cuts and a suggestion of banking regulations which Obama has already included. Take, for example, this exchange:

After noting that since previous administrations have already placed the country more than $10 trillion in debt, local resident Matthew Glover asked Shelby what would be the problem with another $1 trillion debt from Obama’s stimulus package.

“He said some stuff about dividends … but he never really answered my question,” Glover said.

No. And he never will, Matthew. Because what he also didn’t tell you was that those “previous” administrations included our last one, of which - with the exception of one vote (170: S 1307) he was lockstep all the way with the Bush Administration on all the key votes of the last five years.
What’s more, he still feels the need - at this late date - to keep false rumors alive:

Another local resident asked Shelby if there was any truth to a rumor that appeared during the presidential campaign concerning Obama’s U.S. citizenship, or lack thereof.

“Well his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven’t seen any birth certificate,” Shelby said. “You have to be born in America to be president.”

This is not a new statement by him, either. He’s been using this line for the last few months.

Also, lets not forget his treasonous act of leaking information about NSA activities:

From Washington Post,
Thursday, August 5, 2004

Federal investigators concluded that Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) divulged classified intercepted messages to the media when he was on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, according to sources familiar with the probe.

He also refused to take a lie detector test.

And, lastly, his well-known support for the Iraq war. It helps when you know the players in that war personally:

From Bob’s Links & Rants:

Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), supporting the Iraq war resolution in October, 2002:

That photo is from Joseph Wilson's The Politics of Truth

“I support this resolution because the threat posed by the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein is real, immediate, and growing.

The threat is real because Saddam possesses conventional, chemical and biological weapons. He is doing everything in his power to acquire the means to construct and field nuclear weapons.

The threat is real because Saddam has used his conventional and chemical weapons to attack his neighbors and his own people.”

So tell me, Senator, why were you holding hands with Saddam just three months after his chemical attack on Halabja?

Oh, how I wish someone would remove all the toilet paper from the bathroom before this guy takes his next dump.

Current News, Politics, War Bush administration, republican blockers, republican lies, republican losers, Richard Shelby

Courtesy CNN

From CNN:

Though they support some federal action to help their states recover from the recession, several Republican governors said Sunday they plan to turn down a portion of what’s offered in the stimulus bill that President Obama signed last week.

“If we were to take the unemployment reform package that they have, it would cause us to raise taxes on employment when the money runs out — and the money will run out in a couple of years,” Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

At issue is a portion of the unemployment assistance stipulated by the stimulus bill, which provides federal dollars to expand unemployment insurance in the states. In exchange for accepting that, states would have to expand the number of people who are given jobless benefits.

Once again, we have Republicans playing politics with our lives in the worst economy imaginable. Do they have any sense of proportion - at all? Are their petty, failed principles worth sacrificing the livelihood and survival of the people they’ve been hired to represent? I guess so.

I suppose their republican ideals - those ideals they were so quick to put aside when George Bush rolled his pork barrel into their states and let them pile on - are worth destroying lives for now that democrats are in office. Sure, they’ll try to make it seem like this is about more than their need to control the conversation and the legislation, but it’s not. It’s a temper tantrum - one that will cost many of us a great deal.

It cannot be emphasised enough that these people have squandered our futures with their dismal decisions. No one seems to realize that bad decisions have consequences. These people should learn this, but somehow it seems beyond that capability. Instead, they’ll spend their time (on your tax dollars) souring the conversation with partisan garbage that is largely opinion with nothing of fact to back it up. Besides, ask yourself this - when have these people been right about anything in the last decade? Any answers? Didn’t think so.

What they will do is turn down the unemployment provision and, when their state has more unemployed than employed, they will claim it’s due to the failure of the stimulus. Always blaming someone, this lot. Pathetic and unworthy of the offices they hold.

Current News, Politics republican blame, republican lies, stimulus, unemployment

From CNN today:

Top Republican lawmakers Sunday called on President Obama to change his political strategy, arguing that the passage of a massive stimulus bill on a party-line vote showed he has failed to deliver the “change” he promised.

“If this is going to be bipartisanship, the country’s screwed,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, told ABC’s “This Week.” “I know bipartisanship when I see it.”

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, said Obama was off to “a bad beginning,” out of step with the vow of bipartisanship both men made after Obama beat out the Republican presidential nominee for the White House in November.

“It was a bad beginning because it wasn’t what we promised the American people, what President Obama promised the American people, that we would sit down together,” McCain told CNN’s “State of the Union With John King.”

They must really, truly take the American people for fools.

The Republicans, once again, are trying to win over the small group of Americans who don’t actually follow the news. For the rest of us, what we’ve seen in the last three weeks from the GOP has been equal parts disgracefulness, dishonesty and cowardice.

Obama did not have to include them in the development of this bill. He did not have to listen to their concerns and their suggestions. They LOST the confidence of the American people after 8 years of failed policies, corruption and outright deception. But he did it anyway, and will continue to do so because that is the essence of what bipartisanship is - putting aside your differences to come together for the common good.

We know who the Republican leadership is and how that element of governing is missing from their diminishing set of tools. They are the people who walked lockstep behind George W. Bush his entire Presidency, with maybe a moment or two of disagreement not worth mentioning. They are the people who encouraged pushing the Democrats out of their discussions, the ones who called them traitors despite the fact that they went along with most of their bills, including Bush’s enormous tax cuts. They are the one’s who rammed through legislation in the past while threatening the “nuclear option” if democrats make any small attempt to foster a discussion through filibuster. They are the people who porked up legislation to the point where it was a party every time Bush signed them off.

They are the people who spend 8 years doing this, creating division, eating up the surplus, playing politics every step of the way. And they have the gaul to criticize Obama for not including EVERYTHING they wanted in the bill?

They got their tax cuts. They removed funding for green technologies and removed a good amount for education. Some of it necessary, but some of it removed through the ACTUAL bipartisanship offered by the democrats.

And still, after all that, they cowardly turn their backs on this bill - at a moment when the American people need help, any kind of help - because their politics will not allow them to seek the greater good.

McCain, Graham, Boehner and the like - you have severely worn out your welcome with us. You possess no moral authority to make any requests, let alone demands, regarding an economy you screwed up royally. All you seem to have left is your petty complaints and your inability to do anything but obstruct.

Well, we know what you’re doing. And it ain’t gonna work this time.

Bipartisanship is a two way street. When you set a line of fire between the two sides, you deserve to be ignored.

Politics bipartisanship, Lindsay Graham complaints, McCain, republican lies, republicans stimulus bill

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and Maine Sens. Olympia J. Snowe and Susan M. Collins are the reason we have a stimulus bill - and thank God for them. While the National Republican Trust PAC has put them on their “hit” list for serving the country before the GOP, I suspect in the long run these three will outlast the spineless many that have become our Republican representatives.

Or, as John Ridley of Huffington Post wrote:

Oh, sure, they talk up the swellness of President Obama every chance they get. And will continue to do so as long as his approval numbers are above fifty percent. But most GOPers tend to become like children who dance hysterically in a sandbox when it comes time to play with others.

Obama will rise out of this mess a more respected man, and I believe that while most bills that pass through our government are poorly managed and not exactly what the doctor ordered, there will be some recovery from this.

But what is most disappointing is the depth to which most Republican lawmakers obviously hate their country, or are simply indifferent to it. From the ground, we’re having a bad one here. We’ve gone from the point of knowing people who were laid off to knowing family members who have been. When you have the best healthcare in the country, limos taking you everywhere, money lining your pockets from the scores of people who want your attention and influence, and a future of sitting back and profiting from those connections, sometimes for questionable lobbies, you are not always in a position to understand what is really going on in your country. At that point, it comes down to your philosophy. Democrats, at the very least, have a philosophy that favors the individuals over the corporations. Republicans favor the opposite and, when push comes to shove, that’s not the type of philosophy that will help out the bulk of us, for if we go down, there will be no audience for the corporations to sell their wares to.

And the sad irony is that today we have the “new” Republicans - who fleeced us for 6 of the last 8 years by porking up every bill they rammed through the Congress and Senate (courtesy of a Democratic minority that could barely challenge a fillibuster and a President who, at the time, was allergic to the veto pen) - and suddenly - out of nowhere - become conservatives again.

This time it’s their philosophy stepping on our necks. And they will not change. They will continue to obstruct because it’s the only way a spoiled child knows how to play. If they don’t get their way, they destroy it all for everyone else. Sure, now and again they’ll fein bipartisanship to vote for something that in the fine print isn’t going to be risky for them, but people like Boehner will never, ever be anything but immature nasty assholes who can’t for the life of them put their politics aside and TRY to help govern for the masses.

Politics Arlen Spector, George W. Bush, john boehner, Olympia Snowe, republican lies, republican majority, stimulus bill, Susan Collins

President Obama made it very clear in his first-ever press conference that republican politics of old had no place in this new era of government.

“As we learned very clearly and conclusively over the last eight years, tax cuts alone can’t solve all our economic problems, especially tax cuts that are targeted to the wealthiest few Americans. We have tried that strategy time and time again, and it has only helped lead us to the crisis we face right now.”

Meanwhile, mental midgets like Richard Shelby yesterday called for the entire bill to be scrapped. Just as he had on the earlier TARP bill, he has decided to take Bob Dole’s old role of obstruction at all costs. The President made it crystal clear that the old conservative theories of stimulating the economy or doing nothing were unacceptable, the arguments of neanderthals still debating the necessity of the same type of programs during Roosevelt. 

I think Obama did himself a great service tonight by explaining to the many how and why this bill will work, the steps being taken to ensure it’s success, and the logic behind the approach. He also addressed that tired republican response suggesting all democrats are fiscally irresponsible, slather every program in pork, particularly this one. He called them on their lies and also didn’t pull punches when it came to pointing out the responsibility of our representatives as a whole.

“I can’t afford to see Congress play the usual political games.”

Good for him. I believe at the other end of this national crisis we should hopefully find ourselves with universal healthcare, an economy headed north and a political system that finds the old way of politics disgraceful. What a pleasure it is to have someone in office who actually gives a damn about the honesty of our system. Clinton worked within it, accepting it. Bush took us down it’s dark path, taking advantage of every vulnerability in the system, destroying what little confidence we had in government post-Nixon and creating a cynicism not seen since that time.

I raise my glass in hopes that the republicans of old find themselves in the wilderness long enough for them to starve an ideological death there and, hopefully, be reborn into the kind of party that doesn’t see government as a means to their own enrichment.

Politics Obama press conference, republican lies, Richard Shelby, stimulus, stimulus pork

From the article by YUVAL LEVIN titled “The Meaning of Sarah Palin”:

Sarah Palin embodied a very different notion of politics, in which sound instincts and valuable life experiences are considered sources of knowledge at least the equal of book learning. She is the product of an America in which explicit displays of pride in intellect are considered unseemly, and where physical prowess and moral constancy are given a higher place than intellectual achievement. She was in the habit of stressing these faculties instead–a habit that struck many in Washington as brutishness.

Ugghhh. Why do so many in this country champion mediocrity. When it comes to our athletes, particularly in our Olympians, we manage every two to four years to find people who are truly exceptional. These people train to exhaustion, settle for nothing less than perfection and sometimes achieve it.

In our politics, we go in the other directions, or at least some sector of the population does.

I think it’s a great achievement that we have a President who is intellectually superior to the average person. I don’t have insecurity issues myself, so I don’t feel threatened by his intellect, or shrug it off as arrogance because I might not understand the abstractness of a particular conversation. But, unfortunately, there are many who do. People who have been conditioned to see intelligence as dishonest and achievement as ugly self-promotion. I just don’t get it.

I must admit, I DO look askew at SOME people, not because of their intellect or lack thereof but due of their lack of curiosity. In George Orwell’s 1984 there is a passage that describes Winston, after a long trist with Julia, listening to a proletariat out the window of their private apartment doing her laundry and singing. The song she is singing is one commissioned by the government, which to them would make the mere existence of it distasteful. For this woman, those kind of ideas are foreign. She doesn’t question the meaning of things. It’s a song she knows and sings it.

The dead-ender neocons are very much like that. They sing the song their given, fear the fear they’re told to fear. Believe the talking points verbatum and question the truthfulness of anyone who merely asks a question. Take a look at the persecution of Scott Ritter and Richard Clarke, both men who as it happened were completely truthful. They were accused of lying for profit or just being insane. Many believed it, never questioned the gaping hole in logic and motivation that would easily exhonorate them.

Now, the argument from the other side is that we, the questioners, are the lemmings. We are the one’s screaming the talking points from our leftist leaders and declining any forethought. Fair enough criticism, but it doesn’t hold up. First of all, the democrats by nature are a fractured bunch. They are a wide spectrum of beliefs, from the blue dogs who are the equivalent of Presbyterian to Catholic - and the far right who are very socialist and whom no one really pays any attention to. To try and forge a movement with this group is laughable. Republicans are always on message and always subservient to the message. That was their greatest power for a while. The power of branding. Say something over and over again until others begin to believe it (well, that’s also the description of propaganda for the nazis as well).

Secondly - and I’ll frame this in regards to the Iraq war - WHEN has a population like ours gone from being pro to con unless the con has overwhelmed the pro. We’ve watched Bush’s approval rating and war approval dive - not due to some mind-controlling manipulation from the mass media, but due to the public’s digestion of the facts, large and small. What the majority of us discovered was there was a link between the bumbling of Katrina and the failure of the war, between the lies of the Valerie Plame fiasco and the lies that took us into Iraq, it all started to click.

For the dead-enders, their stubborness has developed into the opposite conclusion - that nothing is really that bad, the media has brainwashed everyone but them into being against the war and Bush, and that Hannity and Rush are the only truthful voices in a sea of lies. Try to put logic to these beliefs and they fall like a house of cards. But, just like some people who feel Darwinism is a threat to their belief system, they shut out these criticisms and blame someone else.

It’s a very familiar song, one they will ultimately keep singing until there is only one of their kind left. And they will keep on singing it about people like Sarah Palin, George Bush and others who’s motivations for higher office will not be questioned since they are “no better than you or me.”

Politics George Orwell, ignorant republicans, mediocrity in politics, Nazi propaganda, republican fantasy world, republican lies, Sarah Palin

From the Guardian:

Congressional Democrats today waded into the spat between President Barack Obama and conservative radio personality and blow-hard Rush Limbaugh, calling for a petition “to express outrage at conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh for saying he wanted President Obama to ‘fail.’”

Democratic congressional campaign committee chairman Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said in a statement:

Rush Limbaugh’s reprehensible remark that he ‘hopes’ President Obama fails to meet the extraordinary economic challenges Americas face has no place in the public discourse.

Mr. Limbaugh’s comments politicize the economic struggle of millions of hard working Americans. With the unemployment rate over seven percent, today’s news that 62,000 more Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, and millions of Americans struggling to keep their health care and homes, all Americans, regardless of their ideology, hope that President Obama succeeds in getting people back to work and turning our economy around.

Last week, Limbaugh said:

If I wanted Obama to succeed, I’d be happy the Republicans have laid down. I don’t want this to work. So I’m thinking of replying to this guy, say ‘okay, I’ll send you a response, but I don’t need 400 words, I need four: ‘I hope he fails’.

Once again, democrats fail to understand how to deal with a scumbag like this. Yes, scumbag. Rush Limbaugh has spent decades working large lies into small bits of truth and building a constituency of listeners who lap it up. Fortunately, his audience has diminished in the last year, but his ability to command the political stage has not - due in no small part to people who dignify his voice.

Public relations is very simple. Draw attention to your subject any way you can. If no one knows them, publicity needs to be molded carefully so bad first impressions do not stick. For those who are known - and trying to get noticed any way they can - good or bad publicity makes no difference. In fact, bad publicity can help to generate sympathy for said subject.

The best way for democrats and President Obama to get this fat drug-addled slob out of their hair is to either attack him directly (itemize his lies) or ignore him. Show him courtesy, and you’re his bitch.

Politics democrat weakness, neocons, republican lies, rush limbaugh