Headlines - Saturday September 17

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8 lies Republicans want us to believe.

 

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Crime wave!

These hardened, Amish criminals were arrested for not putting modern reflective triangles on the backs of their buggies. Let that be a lesson to you Amish thugs, this will be on their permanent record and could cause them trouble in finding jobs later.

The Swartzentruber Eight

 

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Wisco: Hot Water for Walker

 

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Wingnut GOP Rep. Steve King says if you don't work, you shouldn't eat. Unemployment benefits and food stamps only encourage laziness. So starve, you good for nothing slackers!

 

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 Jeb Bush (R-FL) is definitely not running for president, as he has instead chosen to head up a new disaster capitalism for-profit disaster-response firm.

I'm sure the business of disaster response is good business in this era of local government cutbacks, crumbling infrastructure, and climate change which the Bush Dynasty and all of its subsidiaries ushered us into.

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Marc Perkel: The President and Congress have said that in order to cut the deficit that "everything" has to be on the table. Does "everything" include the pensions that members of Congress get? It seems to me that if anyone should get their pensions cut it should be Congress because they are the ones who passed the unbalanced budgets that created the debt in the first place. They want us to put Social Security on the table.  The way I see it if Congress doesn't cut their pensions then not everything is really on the table.

 

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Pushing back on Conservative "Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme" Framing

 

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WTF?

 

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The next Middle East disaster 

When we block this:

The Palestinian president announced Friday that he would seek recognition of a Palestinian state at the Security Council of the United Nations next week, a move strongly opposed by Israel and the United States and adding significant tension to one of the most intractable conflicts in the Middle East.

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The United States has said it would use its veto power at the Security Council to stop any Palestinian statehood bid, adhering to the American-Israeli view that the only way to achieve peace is through direct talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. Each side maintains that the other presents the obstacles to negotiations.

A veto of the Palestinian bid for membership will serve as another blow to American credibility, as the Obama administration tries to place itself on the side of protesters across the Arab world seeking freedom, justice and a notion of dignity. For many in the region, the plight of Palestinians, under more than four decades of occupation, encapsulates those ideals.

Despite the fact that we continue to do Israel's bidding to the detriment of our own international standing, Dan Senor will pen more commentary about the grievous insults Obama has made towards Israel, and Ed Koch will continue to campaign for wingnuts because Obama hates Jews.

Why aren't we allowed to treat Israel like every other nation in the world and do what is in our best interest, not theirs?

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Apparently a UBS trader lost $2 billion in unauthorized trades and lost a ton of money for the Swiss bank. When UBS found out, they sought to have him arrested and brought to justice.

Where are the Wall Street indictments?

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Jill: What does the U.S. look like if the Tea (Republican) Party wins?

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Gosh, Why Don't People Like Those Wonderful Republican Presidential Candidates?

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"Aren't dems tired of always being the bottom with never a reach-around?"

Digby:

Michael Tomasky does an interesting analysis of the congressional support for Bush vs Obama. He discusses a number of high profile votes and crunches the numbers, coming up with this:

Here's how it all adds up:

Average Democratic Senate support for Bush: 45.5 percent.
Average Democratic House support for Bush: 36.8 percent.
Average combined Democratic support for Bush: 41.1 percent.
Average Republican Senate support for Obama: 8.8 percent.
Average Republican House support for Obama: 2.7 percent.
Average combined Republican support for Obama: 5.75 percent.

It's fairly clear that the "both sides do it" trope is nonsense. And to my eyes, knowing the kind of centrist and right wing policies the president has proposed, it shows just how radical the Republicans have become.

However, judging from how the Villagers have interpreted this sort of result in the past rather than it being proof that the Republicans are mindlessly obstructionist, it proves that the country is "center-right." The point isn't that Republicans refuse to vote for a "liberal" president's proposals, it's that all those Democrats voted with President Bush. That's how you "get things done in Washington."

And they're not entirely wrong, unfortunately. The fact is that in Washington the only things that are even contemplated in the first place are center-right or right wing policies and the only way to "get them done" is to let Republicans do them with Democratic help. Anything else is considered out of the mainstream, regardless of the substance.

Still, it's good to see the numbers laid out so starkly. There can be no doubt of the imbalance. The only question is what it means.

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Your "What the Fuck?" moment for today that will have you shaking your head all weekend."You might remember the story from last month where four people died when a festival tent at Pukkelpop in Belgium collapsed during a severe thunderstorm. ... Naturally, the festival organizers had insurance to cover these sorts of catastrophic things.  So if you're the adjuster assigned to the case, to what would you assign blame?  The tent manufacturer? Those who erected the tent?  Perhaps those in charge of supervising the tent? ... No.  You blame illegal file-sharing. ... Here's the insurance companies' reasoning:  Illegal file-sharing has led to fewer CD sales.  Fewer CD sales have forced artists, managers and labels to emphasize the live music experience--including festivals, of course--to make up for the lost revenue.  Emphasizing live gigs attracts people.  And should a thunderstorm strike, those people risk being killed or injured. ... Bottom line?  If people didn't trade music illegally online, then none of this would have happened. ... I shit thee not."

 

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Mitt Romney/Notorious Psychopath Dick Cheney 2012!

 

 

Mitt Romney is struggling desperately to shore up his lagging popularity with the far right-wing base of teabagger idiots who still harbor a delusional nostalgia for the shadow presidency years when Dick Cheney spent actual trillions of dollars driving up America's debt to wage torture and war across the entire planet, so Mittens told an audience of these people (in Arizona, natch) who asked him about his potential veep choices that he'd be just tickled to restore Dick Cheney's undead corpse to the throne. 

The NY Daily News reports:

Romney made the declaration at a town hall meeting in Arizona when asked if he'd consider having a Tea Partier on his ticket.

The former Massachusetts governor didn't answer the question directly, but said, "I think it was last weekend I was watching C-SPAN, and I saw Vice President Dick Cheney, and he was being asked questions about a whole host of issues: following 9/11, the affairs in various countries in the world."

Romney continued, "And I listened to him speak and said whether you agree or disagree with him, this is a man of wisdom and judgment, and he could have been President of the United States. That's the kind of person I'd like to have – a person of wisdom and judgment."

Good call, Mittens. There are probably a few little brown kids running around in Nicaragua somewhere that Dick Cheney didn't have the chance to firebomb with his "wisdom and judgment." [NY Daily News]

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