Headlines - Wednesday June 29

 

In Major Gaffe, Bachmann Confuses Ass, Hole in Ground

 

More lunacy from Michele Bachmann as she believes John Quincy Adams was a Founding Father

 

 

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Republicans selling snake oil

 

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True patriotism apparently now includes cheering foreign nations to shoot your fellow citizen.

Break out the foam USA #1 fingers everyone!

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"Sarah Palin said she did not quit her bus tour. She just had to go home early for jury duty. How can you be President if you're not even smart enough to get out of jury duty?" –Jay Leno

 

"Newt Gingrich said Republicans shouldn't be afraid to go into black neighborhoods and tell them Obama failed them. To which every Republican replied 'You first.'" –Bill Maher

 

"Sarah Palin must be looking at Michele Bachmann and feeling the way the Jonas Brothers felt about Justin Bieber.
       --  Andy Borowitz, in a tweet

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This man's blood is on the hands of every gutless coward in Congress who pissed their pants in fear when President Obama tried to bring them here for trials in civilian courts. "An Afghan man who was found hanging from a bedsheet at Guantánamo last month was held by the Pentagon as an "indefinite detainee" -- an Obama administration designation originally conferred on 48 captives at the prison camps in Cuba. ... Defense Department officials have not released the list of so-called indefinite detainees. Nor have they notified the men of their status as ineligible for either trial or release among the 171 captives currently held in Guantánamo. ... But a Pentagon spokesman, Dave Oten, confirmed this week that the May 18 death of a captive known to his lawyers as Hajji Nassim and to the Defense Department as Inayatullah lowered the indefinite detainee tally. ... "It's a sad case, a very sad case," said his Miami attorney Paul Rashkind on Tuesday. A federal public defender, Rashkind had been on the Afghan's case for about a year. He said, though he had never been told of his client's status as an indefinite detainee, he might have been able to persuade the government otherwise. ... "We were hopeful that we would be able to complete a psychiatric profile of him and present that information to the government in the hopes they would release him," said Rashkind."

 

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The Republicans have done an impressive job of blocking modernization of the US infrastructure system. They are the party of "no" after all. The rest of the world is not sitting still and they are investing. Five years after giving away the highway toll roads to foreign investors, GOP hero Mitch Daniels is somehow popular among his crowd for the short term cash hit. Drivers are now being blistered with outrageous toll increases and for the next seventy years, Indiana will get nothing. Brilliant. Unfortunately there are too many stories like this from around the US.

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Cross posted from Matt Browner Hamlin's blog "Hold Fast":

Back when the austerity (I mean, fiscal responsibility) debate was starting, it was pointed out that the United Kingdom went with a 2:1 ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases. The result has been disastrous for the UK economy and painful to working people there.

When President Obama kicked off his push, he proposed a 3:1 cuts to revenue plan:

Balance Between Spending Cuts and Tax Reform: The President's framework would seek a balanced approach to bringing down our deficit, with three dollars of spending cuts and interest savings for every one dollar from tax reform that contributes to deficit reduction. This is consistent with the bipartisan Fiscal Commission's approach.

Amazingly with the GOP walking away from talks, we now find out that a devastating 5:1 ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases was not good enough for them. Ezra Klein reports:

A bit more information has trickled out over the last few days detailing the exact state of the budget negotiations when they collapsed. Both sides, as they often said, were shooting for about $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years. They'd already agreed on around $1 trillion in spending cuts and were making good progress on the rest of it. But Democrats insisted that $400 billion — so, 17 percent — of the package be tax increases. And that's when Republicans walked.

This is bat shit insane. I hope someone on the Democratic side is pointing it out…

So basically, the Republicans keep saying "no" and the White House keeps offering them more and more cuts to programs, and fewer and fewer tax increases, while the Republicans simply keep saying "no."

Heck of a negotiation. The White House is simply negotiating with itself at this point. Lowering its bid, lower and lower, while the GOP does nothing. Guaranteeing that any final deal that is reached starts at a point so low that we're screwed no matter what the details.

Now, I'm sure the White House thinks it's going to win the battle by showing the American people how earnest the President has been in these talks, while the Republicans have been intransigent.  Yeah, fat chance.  That is all a matter of spin.  And the White House folks, and Dems generally, don't spin very well.  They need to hire someone who does, and empower them to win, rather than tying their hands in a never-ending desire to be nice to people who want to destroy you. 

 

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This is cool:

This is one dog whose bark is definitely worse than his bite.

Loukanikos, a stray who lives on the streets of Athens, Greece, has become an unlikely celebrity… for his dedication to anti-government protests.

The clearly opinionated mutt has been pictured on the front line of protests, dodging tear gas and barking at riot police, for the last three years.

Quite a contrast between the United States and Greece, isn't it? Here our manly men arm themselves to the teeth and act like stormtroopers, invading your home and shooting your dog while you sleep. Half the time they've charged into the wrong damned home.

There- they just ignore the damned dog.

Think about that the next time you hear some wingnut babbling about the freedom agenda.

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A Hint of Why Bernie Sanders is Our Best Living Senator

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Because changing Wikipedia is the same thing as changing history... Michele Bachmann was on Good Morning America Tuesday morning, her first national appearance on the teevee machine since her unintentionally-hilarious campaign launch in Waterloo, Iowa on Monday. Her GMA appearance was a gaffe-riot, but her assertion that the "founding fathers" struggled to rid the country of the scourge of slavery -- some of them may have been conflicted about the "peduliar institution," but they didn't do much about it -- because John Quincy Adams, a founding son, to be sure, but not a founding father, was a staunch abolitionist later in his life, when he sat in the House of Representatives. Bachmann supporters are as devoted -- and as silly -- as Palin supporters, swooping in on the JQA Wiki page to make edits that indicate he was, too, a founding father (by the way, Benen called this in advance). Never mind that niggling fact that he was nine years old when the Declaration was signed and soon thereafter left the country with his father to sail to France to represent the new, breakaway, American nation in dealings with Great Britain's mutual enemy, France, and did not return until after the war was over and the Constitution was drafted. But facts, schmacts. She has her story, a mish-mash of misremembered Barton revisionism, but her story nonetheless, and gosh-darnit, she's stickin' to it!

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Sarah Palin Grifts Over To Iowa For More Attention, Free Food

Insecure snowbilly vampire Sarah Palin has resurfaced from her Alaska lair to resume sucking up American media air time with her One Nation Bus Tour aimless cross-country grifting. Palin visited Iowa to attend the premiere of a documentary featuring endless footage of the stiff beehive hairdos she wore as Alaska governor, and for the massive free barbecue in her honor that she did not have to pay for. Anyway, absolutely no one cares about the movie. There is only one question, which every American child hears in her sleep by now: "For Christ's sake, is Sarah Palin going to run or not?" It is the only headline about Sarah Palin from now until she gives up wanting money, which is never. Even GOP operatives are tired of having to ask this dumb question at this point, because they have begun to sense she is, oh, a bit disingenuous?

She is either disingenuous or indecisive, or, as we vote, both.

Politico reports:

"Trying to figure out Sarah Palin reminds me of the ancient practice of extispicy, divination by examining entrails for meaning," said former New Hampshire GOP chairman Fergus Cullen.

"I've become convinced that there is no grand strategy behind Palin's activity," Cullen added. "There is no rhyme. There is no reason. The only common theme to her schedule of activities, statements and appearances is her seemingly unending ability to attract media coverage."

Looking for meaning in this deranged, needy woman's thought pattern is akin to letting Todd drive ATVs over your face a few times until your brains exploded out of your head. One of those "do not try this at home" things. [Politico]

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Glenn Beck Jeered By New York Crowd For Using Socialist Park

Ex-television clown Glenn Beck just wanted to go to a government-run socialist park to watch a free movie on the lawn with other liberal New Yorkers at Bryant Park, but apparently New Yorkers somehow found out that Glenn Beck is a fearmongering fanatic who thinks the entire American Government should be destroyed, and that all poor people and sick people should die in the streets, which also shouldn't exist because of No Government. And the New Yorkers ridiculed him, because he's a hateful asshole, and now he is sad about this. Why won't everyone love this race-baiting psychopath? READ MORE »

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Tea Partiers Storm GOP Re-Election Office Demanding Head of Orrin Hatch

A shrieking horde of Tea Partiers (they do not come in any other format) stormed the National Republican Senatorial Committee offices demanding that it stop supporting GOP senators, which is its job. HOH NOH, we do not want your terrible "moderate Republicans," they cried, especially this disgusting old Orrin Hatch person. (Haha, Hatch is a "moderate" in Utah because he still believes that you should just test welfare recipients for drugs instead of murdering them and has never tried to switch Utah to the gold standard.) Tea Party Patriots are not on board with your elitist, effeminate "polite phone calls and e-mails," so they will just be storming into any office with weak doors to make demands from now on. READ MORE »