Losers of Limbaugh Land Link
Excerpt:
Though our Founders were well-educated and thoughtful men, this nation has a long history of anti-intellectualism. Rush Limbaugh taps into that vein daily, trading on the insecurities of his audience, a loyal core group of a loosely estimated 14-19 million listeners, mostly angry white males, who proclaim themselves to be "dittoheads" who give unthinking assent to just about anything Limbaugh says. If Limbaugh wants our new president to fail, so do they. If Limbaugh thinks women who seek equal rights are "femi-Nazis," then so do they. If Limbaugh says that the "Democrat" party is worse than Al Qaeda, they'll go along with that, too.
And when he refers to the "elites," he doesn't mean really rich people like himself; he means people like Obama or Bill Clinton, whose elitism can be traced to the fact that they followed the American dream out of the lowest economic strata of our nation to win recognition based on hard work and keen intelligence, overcoming obstacles of class and race to achieve the highest position in the land, unlike that "common man" and "regular guy", George W. Bush, who had things handed to him on a gilded plate, never worked very hard at anything, and was given the rich kid's pass through our most prestigious universities based on nothing more than family connections and money.
Shame on Harvard and Yale for each giving this uneducated monkey a diploma.
The word is out - if your Daddy is rich & connected - you're a Harvard and Yale graduate.
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I've had it with the earmark debate - Honestly:
And, to the embarrassment of Obama — who promised during last year's campaign to force Congress to curb its pork-barrel ways — the bill contains 7,991 earmarks totaling $5.5 billion, according to calculations by the Republican staff of the House Appropriations Committee.
Among the many earmarks are $485,000 for a boarding school for at-risk native students in western Alaska and $1.2 million for Helen Keller International so the nonprofit can provide eyeglasses to students with poor vision.
I thought it was stupid when Obama and McCain yanked each other around about it, I think it's stupid now. Congressmen and Senators are SUPPOSED to go get money for things their constituents need. Including volcano monitoring, beaver management, and Nancy Pelosi's gay San Francisco terrorist mice. We spend tons of money on much more stupid shit than a boarding school for at-risk kids, and glasses for the blind. For example, David Vitter is still getting his health care paid for.
Nobody really cares about spending except when it fails to make their lives better. It may play well in focus groups and people may crab, but when you get right down to it, they want their roads fixed and their bridges built and their blind kids given glasses. You can't reconcile those two conflicting positions except by concluding that "Washington spends too much money" is a bullshit thing people say because it's what they always say. What they really mean is that nobody's spending the way I want money spent, so let's just all of us (including you, Mr. President) admit that's the case and stop fapping around pretending that denying somebody money for mice is going to fix the economy.
(And for those who want to throw the Bridge to Nowhere Sarah Palin bullshit in my face, the problem with that whole thing was the way she handled it, not the bridge itself. Get a bridge if you want one, but then don't run around telling everybody you didn't support it and wouldn't let anybody else have a bridge either. As the Crack Den pointed out this morning, everybody's stuff is important to them. Is this really that hard to understand?)
Fun fact: of the 35 senators that voted against the omnibus bill, 28 had solo earmarks in it.
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The party of recycled ideas
Remember John McCain? He was that one guy who ran against Barack Obama. You know, the one who thought the moose lady would be a good pick for running mate. The one who admitted he couldn't remember how many homes he owns. The one whose big idea on dealing with the economy was to put together a 9/11 commission-style blue ribbon panel to study the problem. That panel idea struck a lot of people as an insanely and needlessly slow response to an economic crisis, so then McCain decided what the economy needed was a government spending freeze. The inevitable comparisons to Herbert Hoover followed.You might remember that these great ideas were rejected by the voters and John McCain lost. But, as they say, if at first you don't succeed, try again -- fail better. The rudderless Republican party needs a captain -- there's noise that Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele may face a no confidence vote - and Baghdad Johnny seems to believe that he's the man for the job. Not the official leader, mind you -- that job comes with some accountability. No, John's eyes are on Rush Limbaugh's position as the perceived leader of the GOP.
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Let's agree that there are four major categories that comprise Gross Domestic Product. They are:
Personal Consumption Expenditures
Gross Private Domestic Investment
Net Exports of Goods and Services
Government Consumption Expenditures and Gross Investment
Now, let's say that in the most recent quarter, the numbers shaped up like this:
| PCE | -3.01 |
| GPDI | -3.11 |
| Net Exports | -0.46 |
| Gov't | +0.32 |
So, consumers aren't spending, business aren't spending, exports have become a net drag, and the only positive contributor is the government, to the tune of +0.32.
Enter Boehner, Cantor, Pence and McCotter:
Rather than hastily forcing another massive, partisan spending bill through the House, we urge the Majority to allow the House to consider a spending freeze.
And it's not even April Fool's Day!
To recap: Consumers and business are not spending, exports are hardly going to save the day, and Republicans believe that the only entity that is capable of filling this monstrous void -- the government -- should similarly just stop spending money. If it weren't so damn sad, it would almost be comical.
Paul Krugman weighs in on this very issue.
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Israel Lobby Defeats Freeman Appointment: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/11-12
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Sy Hersh describes "assassination ring": http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5231653
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I think this is totally cool, and not just because I have a friend from Iceland
Check out the Icelandic Elf School where you can learn all about the classification and cultivation of various sorts of fairy-like entities.
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The memorandum that President Obama wrote on reversing the ban on stem cell research says that science is science and that's how it should be. Obama writes, "Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions...The selection of scientists and technology professionals for positions in the executive branch should be based on their scientific and technological knowledge, credentials, experience, and integrity."
There's no doubt that W and his band of plunderers regularly distorted, suppressed, or outright lied about scientific studies its own researchers were conducting. Actual research, done as honestly as possible, shows us how the world is, not how we might want it, the very notion of which flew in the face of the deluded pseudo-utopians in the previous administration.
To demonstrate how serious he is about the second thing up there - the selection of people - Obama nominated Shere Abbott as associate director of environment for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Abbott is big-time in the field of global sustainability and has worked extensively on climate change. In other words, Obama is walking the walk.
Take that, George Bush.
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Mustang Bobby, over @ Shakesville, on the eventual collapse of evangelicalism:
Just ask the American economy.
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Uh oh. US spills the beans on Israel nukes
US military document classifies Israel as 'nuclear power' confirming its possession of nuclear warheads. The document, approved for publication in late 2008 by the US Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), termed Israel "a nuclear power" on a par with Russia, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea, Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported Sunday.
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So what does the American public think of the Roadblock Republicans and their tactic of obstructionism? Hint: not very much.
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While rich Americans are responding to Administration proposals by threatening to "go Galt," Pastor Swank is planning to confront the evil head on, by putting guns in the proto-hands of zygotes and letting them shoot their way out of the womb:
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Kudos to Chris Matthews for this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKEjHa0_ZMI&eurl=http://www.americablog.com/
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From today's Times:
Roman Catholic and Orthodox Jewish officials in New York are mounting an intense lobbying effort to block a bill before the State Legislature that would temporarily lift the statute of limitations for lawsuits alleging the sexual abuse of children.
[....]
"We believe this bill is designed to bankrupt the Catholic church," said Dennis Poust, spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference, a group representing the bishops of the state's eight dioceses.
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So much for the romance of the century.
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Steele just said in an interview with GQ that he believes that abortion is an individual choice and that he believes being gay is not a choice.
Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?
Yeah. I mean, again, I think that's an individual choice.
You do?
Yeah. Absolutely.
And this:
Do you think homosexuality is a choice?
Oh, no. I don't think I've ever really subscribed to that view, that you can turn it on and off like a water tap. Um, you know, I think that there's a whole lot that goes into the makeup of an individual that, uh, you just can't simply say, oh, like, "Tomorrow morning I'm gonna stop being gay." It's like saying, "Tomorrow morning I'm gonna stop being black."
I may want to rethink when the GOP is going to pull the plug on this man.
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The federal agency that insures bank deposits, which is asking for emergency powers to borrow up to $500 billion to take over failed banks, is facing a potential major shortfall in part because it collected no insurance premiums from most banks from 1996 to 2006. The FDIC, which insures deposits up to $250,000, tried for years to get congressional authority to collect the premiums in case of a looming crisis. But Congress believed that the fund was so well-capitalized - and that bank failures were so infrequent - that there was no need to collect the premiums for a decade, according to banking officials and analysts.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/big-bank-strikes-again-by-dday.html
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Number of Americans who think global warming is exaggerated is increasing: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/11/poll-global-warming-exag/
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WTF is Nancy Pelosi's problem?
"It is my understanding there are no G5s available for the House during the Memorial Day recess. This is totally unacceptable ... The Speaker will want to know where the planes are."
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4,257 soldiers killed in Iraq; 662 in Afghanistan.
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