Robert Gibbs’ Strange Outburst at the “Professional Left”

It’s much ado about nothing in the grand scheme of things. Mostly, it’s one of those stories that resonate inside the beltway, like a giant particle accelerator whipping overheated matter and energy around the nation’s capital before dissipating of its own accord. As beltway particle accelerator stories go, this one fell short of the breathless POLITICO feverish critical mass and Armaggeddon standard.

Still, while generally a yawner, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’s General McChrystal moment last week had its teachable nuggets. For the Left, “professional” or not, there was mostly bemusement at gaining such an elevated station in Gibby’s eyes. Michael Moore said it was the first time he’d heard the Left referred to as “professional” so he wasn’t sure he’d take offense. Gibby said he watched too much cable (‘because he had to’?), hence that nasty MSNBC trio (who else is there?) must be responsible. Although I’m not quite sure where Gibby heard President Obama compared to George W. Bush. For once, Gibbs left the wingnuts speechless when he said we ought to be “drug tested” and would only be satisfied if “Dennis Kucinich was president.”

Gibbs cried into his beer that we in the Left weren’t being good little foot soldiers like the Fox-Republican-wingnut axis when the Unitary Executive-Patriot Act torturers were in power. As if to justify the White House selling out to corporate interests, Gibbs was dismayed that we might look favorably on Canadian-style (Medicare) universal healthcare. Why is the happiness index of Canadians and every other country that provides universal healthcare to its people higher than the U.S.’s? And they live on average three-to-five years longer than us, too. Only in this country would aspiring to the pursuit of happiness, the American Dream, stolen from us by modern, healthy, affluent, HAPPY 21st Century states be considered a sign of drug-induced madness. We get the fife-and-drum crowd with the powdered whigs (sp. intentional) -- but Robert Gibbs?

Ultimately, Gibbs’s frustration is one of perception. He thinks that the non-professional coalition of netroots, young people, students, and community activists differs in its attitudes from the so-called “professional Left.” Well, he’s wrong and he needs to step outside and test the winds. Just because we like the President personally and write nice things to him on his birthday doesn’t mean we agree with the White House when they continue to push half-measures and incremental change, while caving to those who wish only to see the President fail.

There was calculation in Gibbs’s outburst. It wasn’t entirely spontaneous. The next day he did not apologize or walk back his remarks. But he’s miscalculated the level of discontent out in the netroots that were key to the President’s election. And Robert, FYI, Firedoglake is the libertarian “Left” and Jane Hamscher’s patron, MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan, is a libertarian conservative with an agenda that is closer to the Pauls (Ron and Rand) and Republican Ayn Rand follower Paul Ryan’s slash-and-burn voodoo economics than to the President’s.

So you might have your labels mixed up if you believe a wingnut site’s hilarious labeling of Ratigan as a liberal. Ratigan has so much wingnuttery bottled up inside just waiting to burst out that he lashes out at the White House in barely coherent rants while the Mike Pences of this world suck up to him as an expert on economics. The absolute pits is Ratigan appropriating a Truman quote to spread his libertarian bullshit. When Truman said, “I don’t give ‘em hell; I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell” ... he was attacking a Republican Congress not unlike the GOP bastards who populate it today.

If that’s Robert’s complaint, then I’m totally with you, pal. Labels don’t matter much, it’s true, unless you totally get them wrong.

TEA PARTY Update: Randie On the Hot Seat Over Kidnapping Charge, AQUA BUDDHA Worship

Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, darling of the TEA PARTY, had more embarassing questions to answer about his alleged college prank involving the kidnapping of a female swim team colleague, making her bow down at a creek to worship the AQUA BUDDHA while high on pot -- they were, she refused to take bong hits at their apartment.



Following is a recreation of the AQUA BUDDHA worship mantra as Randie and his NoZe brother tried to take their kidnapped female subject to a higher level of consciousness:

'What Me, Worry? Let's Play Another 18.'

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Tan Man Who Would Be Speaker:

Adventures in TEA PARTY Campaigns: Rand Paul’s Sane and Lucid College Daze

He’s a wild and crazy guy now:

He wouldn’t have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because he thinks business owners should discriminate against patrons on the basis of race. Tell that to a black family driving through the heart of Dixie who can’t find a restroom to relieve their bladders, (Ayn) Rand. Following the West Virginia and Kentucky mine tragedies, Paul would oppose regulating the mines. He also said mountaintop removal isn’t too bad: “Most people would say the land is of enhanced value.”

More rapid-fire looniness from Rand Paul, the wingnut: He claims smoking in restaurants is a “God-given liberty;” shunned MTP to go on a 9/11-conspiracy show, Russia Today; he came out in favor of repealing the 14th Amendment; said President Obama was “un-American” for criticizing BP; and so on.

Back in college, though, Rand Paul almost straddled the line of normalcy. In this endearing article by GQ, we learn that while a student at Baylor (he dropped out) Randy (as he was known then) belonged to a “secret society” called the NoZe Brotherhood. According to a Baylor president, NoZe brothers practiced “lewd, crude, and grossly sacrilegious” activities. The Brotherhood was suspended from campus and anyone discovered to be a NoZe brother was automatically expelled. One of Paul’s former brothers said they liked tweaking the school’s religiosity and “aspired to blasphemy.” (Now there’s something Sister Sarah and Sharron Commandment can get behind.) Cool!

But then Randy got into some extra weird stuff like, oh … alleged kidnapping:

“The strangest episode of Paul's time at Baylor occurred one afternoon in 1983 (although memories about all of these events are understandably a bit hazy, so the date might be slightly off), when he and a NoZe brother paid a visit to a female student who was one of Paul's teammates on the Baylor swim team. According to this woman, who requested anonymity because of her current job as a clinical psychologist, “He and Randy came to my house, they knocked on my door, and then they blindfolded me, tied me up, and put me in their car. They took me to their apartment and tried to force me to take bong hits. They'd been smoking pot.” After the woman refused to smoke with them, Paul and his friend put her back in their car and drove to the countryside outside of Waco, where they stopped near a creek. “They told me their god was 'Aqua Buddha' and that I needed to bow down and worship him,” the woman recalls. “They blindfolded me and made me bow down to 'Aqua Buddha' in the creek. I had to say, 'I worship you Aqua Buddha, I worship you.' At Baylor, there were people actively going around trying to save you and we had to go to chapel, so worshiping idols was a big no-no.”

Nearly 30 years later, the woman is still trying to make sense of that afternoon. “They never hurt me, they never did anything wrong, but the whole thing was kind of sadistic. They were messing with my mind. It was some kind of joke.” She hadn't actually realized that Paul wound up leaving Baylor early. “I just know I never saw Randy after that—for understandable reasons, I think.”

When I asked [Paul’s campaign manager Jesse] Benton late last week if Paul remembered any of these episodes from his Baylor days, he replied in an email: ‘During his time at Baylor, Dr. Paul competed on the swim team and was an active member of Young Conservatives of Texas.’”

Interestingly, the Paul campaign never denied the episode until the next day. Were they trying to get all their ducks in a row with frantic calls to NoZe brothers -- the old “her word against ours” defense? “Randy” was still vague about his alleged excellent kidnapping/bong adventure: “Well, I'm not really going to try to go back 27 years and remember everything I did in college…. I don’t think that really politicians should be asked to answer anonymous accusers from 27 years ago,” Paul said. “But I will categorically deny that I ever kidnapped anyone or forced anybody to use drugs.”

Here is exclusive video of Rand Paul and NoZe sidekick listening to their favorite Rush tune, “The Spirit of Radio”... getting in the spirit. No? But the link came from Breitbart.



Rush, a great progressive Canadian rock trio, is furious and demanded that the Paul campaign stop playing its songs.

TEA PARTY Continues To Create Havoc ... YAY!

In Colorado, Ken Buck formed the third leg of the terrible three -- Rand Paul in Kentucky and Sharron Angle in Nevada, the first two -- as the Tea Party Axis of Evil angles to terrorize the nation and wreack havoc with the political establishment. In a sense, one can say that the Tea Party is getting some wins as a counterinsurgent, counter-revolutionary movement in sliming the millions of voters for change who turned out to elect our first African American president, simply by occupying a vaccuum (90% of life is showing up, as they say). With the administration failing to deliver the change people voted for, the forces of reaction, well funded by corporate money, stepped into the breach like modern-day brown shirts brandishing copies of the Constitution eight years too late, as Gibby bitched about the “professional Left” (“I’m not sure I should take offense at that,” quipped Michael Moore) and the punditocracy elites bemoaned the Left’s impatience with incremental steps (Jon Alter) that look like a sellout to Republicans and corporate interests from where we stand.

And Gibby, it’s not that the President is like George W. Bush. It’s that he’s too much like Adlai Stevenson, the wonkish professorial liberal who twice carried the Democratic banner in the 50s against Dwight Eisenhower -- and lost. The Kennedys mocked him for not being tough enough. In the last century, there were only two Democratic agents of change -- real change: FDR and RFK. President Obama is like neither, although Jonathan Alter may disagree. It’s inconceivable to progressives that Bobby Kennedy would have caved to Republicans and corporate interests as often as President Obama has. Bobby would never have given up on the public option -- ever. And he would have called the Republicans on the carpet for obstructionism and the teabaggers for racism without hesitation or prevarication. Progressives are pulling for President Obama, waiting for more of that Trumanesque fire on the stump, railing (rightly) against a “do-nothing Congress.” We’ve given up on anything approaching FDR or RFK proportions -- which is a shame.

Meanwhile, “numbers guy” Chuck Todd was making silly predictions (if Obama’s candidate loses -- he didn’t ... then, “ekes out a win” -- he didn’t ... in what planet is 54-45% a squeaker? Only in the jaded world of the A-holes at POLITICO) to gin up MSNBC’s ratings with mischief-making. The low-down on the “authoritative” Chuck Todd is whatever he predicts, take the opposite view and you’ll be closer to reality. Todd was last seen mangling an interview with a Republican supply-sider in which he bought the “historical” fantasy that deficits do not grow under Republicans as a result of tax cuts for HIS tax bracket, and that such tax cuts would produce significant jobs and economic activity. Mr. Todd needs serious schooling in economics from Nobel laureate Paul Krugman and Robert Reich. It’s not hard; all he has to do is read Krugman’s analysis of the economic disaster that began with Reagan’s tax cuts for the rich and subsequent exploding deficits. Then, he might mention that Bill Clinton, a Democratic president, raised taxes on the rich, created 22 million jobs, and left GWB a surplus.

Speaking of 2012, Todd joked with a Democratic analyst, I take it you'll have “no horse in this race” (of course not, since the President is surely running for re-election). But it does point to an obnoxious pattern in Todd’s mischief-making M.O., which is to hope for maximum political disruption, and almost wistfully, for a Republican tsunami, because it’s good for his business and bottom line. And for his tax bracket, too. But, in fairness, he’s not any different from the vast majority of the useless punditocracy (with a few notable examples).

If anyone wants to know who’s in it for the right reasons, check out journolist. End of rant.

AWWW … “One Day, Son, You’ll Be the Lion King”

This is too CUTE to pass up: Lion and his baby cub survey same terrain that inspired Disney’s “The Lion King.”

“Standing tall this proud lion leads his cub over their home terrain. His mane streaming back in the breeze, the father looks over his tiny cub as they stand on a barren rock in Tanzania. The little cub -- just old enough to walk -- took his first steps following his father on the Serengeti plains.”

Adventures in TEA PARTY Campaigns: Sharron Angle's COMMANDMENT Unto the Rest of Us

Thou shalt not worship a false God, the god of government, so said Sharron Angle: “And these programs that you mentioned -- that Obama has going with Reid and Pelosi pushing them forward -- are all entitlement programs built to make government our God. And that’s really what’s happening in this country is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We’re supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government.”

According to “Tea Party” orthodoxy, government is our enemy, tyrannical, with those evil entitlement programs –- Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid -- the teabaggeers rely on. The “Tea Party” doctrine says, do away with government, even if it means large classroom sizes, laying off teachers, firefighters, and police, unpaving our roads, turning off our lights, allowing the interstate highway system to go to rot, defunding the Department of Education, the EPA (who needs safe drinking water and unpolluted air and streams –- let the corporations decide what are necessary safety regulations (for their bottom line) –- what’s a few worker deaths and higher cancer rates to thin out the herd of liberals, not to speak of the uninsured, in the bigger scheme of things…?), and last but not least, garbage disposal.

For Sharron Angle this would mean shutting her up, which is an infringement on her “god-given” First Amendment right to make a fool of herself. After all, in the teabaggers’ revisionist, Texas textbook history, Jefferson never said there was “a wall of separation” between church and state.

One could mention most of the other Commandments, too:

Thou shalt not kill, except in the prosecution of unnecessary wars in which the innocent dead are “collateral damage;”

Thou shalt not commit adultery, except that Sharron’s prospective caucus colleagues John Ensign and David (diaper boy) Vitter in the “family values” party didn’t get the memo from on high;

Thou shalt not steal, and teabaggers opposing stricter regulation of lobbyists and corporate contributions really moves the ball forward on this Commandment;

Thou shalt not bear false witness … hmm, where to begin, teabaggers collecting Social Security -- ON MY DIME -– calling the president a socialist, or Sharron Angle LYING about her extremism;

Covet thy neighbor’s house, or Senate seat -– why is Angle running to be part of a tyrannical government? – Is it her Christ complex and missionary zeal to cast out of the Temple all those who “sold and bought” in it … psst Sharron, best to start with your own party and vote straight line Democratic;

... wife (covered), nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass (hmm … covered (?)).

Sharron Angle and her extreme religious fundamentalism is the reason the Founding Fathers fought so hard to separate religion and state. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in his Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom:

“Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that it would read ‘A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;’ the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.”

Beck's Latest Racist Rant Scrubbed by Fox

I have a question for Glenn Beck fans. I’d really like to know how you can justify his latest racist rant:



Planet of The Apes? How can you justify this and continue patronizing this paranoid lunatic, this untrammeled racist? I honestly don’t get it. Beck may call the AFL-CIO and unions “special interests” because they represent millions of workers, contribute to political campaigns, and lobby Congress. But unions are much more than that. They represent and protect working people from abusive employers, negotiate contracts, monitor safe working conditions, and fight tooth-and-nail to keep jobs in America.

Some special interest. Setting aside the despicable racism, this is an ironic (and predictably stupid) line of attack from Beck, given that President Obama’s camp had named unions “special interests” during the 2008 primary campaign -- a real no-no for a Democrat. Had Beck done his homework, he could have properly criticized the President for hypocrisy without the incendiary language, and worse, plunging headlong into the racism gutter.

Even Fox News recognized the racist nature of Beck’s statement and scrubbed the language from its website; it’s amusing how they haven’t caught on to YouTube. This is the second time in so many weeks YouTube’s burned Fox News. Fox’s posture is not to acknowledge the truth of Beck’s racism. Rather, Fox wants to limit the number of eyes that can actually read it, by scrubbing the original language and substituting it with something innocuous and false (because it’s not what Beck said).

Goebbels and the Nazis were pretty good at such deception, but this can’t be mentioned in polite society because it’s supposed to be over the top, even if it’s a spot-on target critique. So much for political correctness on the LEFT giving the RIGHT cover to be outrageous racists and Nazi re-enactors. Progressives should stop behaving like ninnies and call a spade a spade. The right wing is populated with fascists imbued with the rhetoric of fascism, and proto-Nazi eruptions in symbiotic “Tea Party” fringe supporters. Just pick up a book and read about the weak Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazi Party. The historical comparisons between our current political climate and Weimar Germany are trenchant.

The truth is, Glenn Beck lacks the character and intelligence to make cogent critiques that will actually advance our political conversation. So, to those who continue to watch Glenn Beck’s racist, paranoid rants uncritically (because an ounce of skepticism and a sense of fairness would keep you away): Shame on you.

Great Scott! NOT ...

Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts is a lightweight and a jerk. The former COSMO playmate played a role that no doubt comes naturally, that of escort, to “uphold a long-standing tradition by introducing Elena Kagan of Massachusetts to the [Judiciary] Committee.” The moussed-hair Senator –- a style favored by that other ladies man, John Ensign -- made full use of his face-time on national TV. Scottie rambled that it was an “honor” to introduce a nominee with such an “impressive legal resume.” He was “very proud that our nation’s first female Solicitor General has such deep roots in Massachusetts,” adding “If confirmed, Ms. Kagan would be the third woman on the Supreme Court and only the fourth in the history of the court.”

Quite an endorsement. Except when it came time to confirm Elena Kagan, Scott Brown voted NO. (Kagan’s confirmation was never imperiled and moved quickly through the Senate, as these things go, so Brown’s vote other than a courtesy to Ms. Kagan was meaningless. After all, it was Ms. Kagan who gave him the opportunity to get his face out there.)

Brown’s lame reason: Elena Kagan lacks courtroom experience. As Rachel Maddow likes to say, “bullpuckey!” (Ed: shit, for the uninitiated.) Here’s Media Matters:

“Media figures have advanced the myth that judicial experience is a pre-requisite for a Supreme Court justice. In fact, two of the last four previous chief justices -- William Rehnquist and Earl Warren -- had no judicial experience when first nominated to the Court by Republican presidents. Neither did other famous justices, including Felix Frankfurter, Louis Brandeis, and John Marshall, known as the "Great Chief Justice.”

Scott Brown came to the Senate unprepared, with little grasp of the issues, a total 360 compared to his predecessor. He gets his cues from corporate lobbyists and contributors as to what stands to take. Brown underwhelmed observers with lazy work habits, inarticulate comments and a shallow, narcissistic public posture. In short, the guy’s an idiot, a happenstance who landed through Democratic incompetence and complacency on the vacated seat of the late, lamented Lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy. Hopefully if not Ed Markey then Ted Kennedy Jr. will take back the seat for the Democrats from this arriviste.

But that’s the least of it. To top things off, the guy has some kind of problem with women. First, he did a truly snarky, underhanded thing to Rachel Maddow, using her name in a fundraising pitch by fueling the outlandish rumor the Massachusetts Democratic Party had approached her to challenge him for the Senate. Then, after saying “I’m sure she’s a nice person” (Kagan is “pleasant”) Brown proceeded to trash his fictitious opponent, calling her a “rubberstamp” of Democratic Party bosses in Massachusetts with a “a nightly platform to push her far-left agenda.” Raising the specter of Maddow, Brown made his pitch for citizens to join “in rallies and petitions that challenge President Obama and Nancy Pelosi’s healthcare legislation, supporting campaigns against the tax-and-spenders or by donating time and money” TO ME. Rachel tried in vain to get him to stop sliming her.

That’s three prominent women –- Maddow, Pelosi, and Kagan -– Scott Brown has trashed gratuitously since sauntering about the Senate halls with his bow legs like a modern-day Stan Laurel, yucking it up about his SNL skit, in which he was portrayed (realistically) as a mysoginistic dud/stud.

SCOTT BROWN = FAIL!

LIE TO ME, GO AHEAD REPUBLICANS, LIE TO ME

The Republicans are shameless, despicable, and un-American. They just keep throwing outrageous numbers around about the economic impact on the top 2% of American earners of letting the Bush tax cuts for them expire, hoping some of it will stick. Mitch McConnell said it’s 50% of small businesses. Paul Ryan, the “objectivist” Ayn Rand cult worshipper who keeps stacks of Atlas Shrugged in his office for staffers (required reading) and select visitors, claims it’s 75%. Lies, all LIES.

Only 2.5% of people declaring small business income (24% of all filers) would pay higher tax rates if the Bush tax cuts expire. TWO-POINT-FIVE PERCENT. Capisce?

It’s amazing to watch old white people standing around Mitch McConnell, millionaires many times over, as he LIES on their behalf. John Kyl, an utterly detestable human being and a political expediency racist right along with John McCain, has that arrogant, lopsided grin of the plutocrat’s agent putting one over on the electorate who don’t march in lockstep and refuse to bow before the ruling oligarchs. Lamar Alexander has a stupid smirk on his face of one who’s playing an 800-plus billion deficit-exploding practical joke on the American people -– and cannot hide that he knows it. And Lisa Murkowski has that perpetually haunted, deer-in-the-headlights look, like she’s one step ahead of the law and about to be cuffed and Mirandized at any moment for violating her sacred constitutional trust to the American people.

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And worse, they are incredibly irresponsible and selfish, as if intent on destroying this country for succeeding generations by, in their words, “starving the beast” of big government, no matter how much destruction of people’s lives it causes along the way. These Republicans care more about transnational corporations than they do about 20 million unemployed Americans. By borrowing money from the Chinese to line their pockets and seed their Swiss bank accounts with more and more millionaire tax cuts, they have effectively ceded our national sovereignty to the Chinese. There is a word for such people: traitors.

What’s the Matter With the TEA PARTY?

For starters, tossing overboard good public servants like Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) and Senator Bob Bennett of Utah. Their sin? Not being conservative (to use an inadequate Tea parlor term) enough, and refusing to lie and pander to the extremist elements to the right of the Republican Party (which is as fringe as fringe can be). Inglis happens to be a fairly normal, mainstream, honest conservative. The type of lawmaker who could disagree with his adversaries without being disagreeable, who knows how to build bridges across the aisle, and gets things done for his constituents.

So what do they do? They toss him. At least those extremists who often hold sway in Republican primaries, because Mr. Inglis would most likely win easy reelection in the general. And why did they toss him? Well, he called on Joe Wilson to apologize for yelling “You lie!” then told people to stop watching Glenn Beck: “They say, 'Bob, what don't you get? Barack Obama is a socialist, communist Marxist who wants to destroy the American economy so he can take over as dictator. Health care is part of that. And he wants to open up the Mexican border and turn [the US] into a Muslim nation.’”

What would you do in Mr. Inglis’s place, listening to such ignorant tirades? I’d tell these Teabagger jackasses to stop watching Beck, too, read some history suggested by reputable sources such as the Smithsonian or any number of universities … then if they have health insurance, or are recipients of hugely popular socialist government programs Medicare and Social Security, to consult a psychiatrist. (But I’m not running for anything.) Mr. Inglis clammed up. But he also refused to describe the President as a socialist. “It's a dangerous strategy to build conservatism on information and policies that are not credible...This guy is no socialist.”

He REFUSED TO LIE because he is a man of integrity. Are there Republicans of integrity? Not so many in office. Or, like Bob Inglis and Bob Bennett, they’re being excised from government by the extremist elements that control their party. Most Republicans pander shamelessly to the extremists. Those who take up the Tea Party banner and run with it are being defeated. Most voters, even Republicans, aren’t stupid. They’re slow on the uptake, many are fooled by the propaganda, but many take the time to scratch below the surface platitudes. And the more they look, the less they like. They may be for smaller government conceptually, and for tackling deficits, but they’re not for privatizing Social Security, defunding Medicare, or abolishing the EPA and the Department of Education, among many issues. And most Americans are decent people who abhor racism.

The extremism on the right that has defined the Tea Party movement is not where the American people are. Recent election results demonstrate this, as the Tea Party candidates have been shellacked by the voters –- Republican voters. It’s too bad they weren’t around or didn’t turn out to give Bob Inglis a vote of confidence. Democrats and progressives may not agree on a single issue with Mr. Inglis. But no one can ever question his honesty and integrity.
Each time ideology –- a sick and ignorant one at that –- trumps honesty and integrity in politics, we are diminished, no matter what side of the fence we happen to be on. This is why turnout and voting are so important. The lunatics may rule the asylum, but they can only take over town hall if we stay home and let them.

Adventures in TEA PARTY Campaigns: The Great International BICYCLE CONSPIRACY!

Jeez … Ain’t nothing sacred! Now the Teabaggers have dragged America’s cyclists, minding their own business, pedaling along the nation’s bike trails, into a SINISTER UN SOCIALIST CONSPIRACY. KO Explains:

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Adventures in TEA PARTY Campaigns: TEA PARTY Books Next “Uni-TEA” Venue

When free water bottles on ice go untouched in mid-Summer, Oh Tea Party, YA GOTCHA problem … Latest word on the crowd count was 300 – yep, 300 … And they weren’t dressed as Spartans, either … I don’t think Leonidas had a beer belly.

Happy 49th Birthday, Mr. President

For once the Republicans were good-natured with vestigial signs of humor as they pulled back their claws for one day. Here’s my favorite mock Republican birthday card for our President:


Sadly, most political attacks on our President the other 364 days of the year are vicious racist datribes that question his patriotism, manhood, and birthright.

I added my heartfelt birthday wishes for our President:

All Americans want President Obama to succeed, don’t they?

This Just In: Same Sex Marriage Ban (Prop 8) in California Overturned

This is good news for common sense, decency, and basic human rights, the pursuit of happiness, and a blow to bigots and religious fundamentalists everywhere. This fight -- things we should not even be arguing about -- is never over, but it is one more small step on the path toward a more tolerant and just society. As with racism, the young people demographics are genuinely puzzled, if not baffled, by such social kerfuffles. More and more, bigotry of all kinds seems to be an older population disease. Another notable fact, is that the distinguished lawyers arguing for overturning the gay marriage ban -- liberal David Boies and conservative Ted Olson -- were once adversaries in Bush v. Gore.

Palin’s Wailin’ Wassila Wall

Not all is guns ‘n roses in the Sarah Palin online shrine known as her Facebook page. As SNL’s fake Rahm Emanuel said:

“You come after me on facebook? What, are your fourteen? Here's a status update: Grow the fuck up! Poke me again, and I will write shit on your wall so obsene your computer will cry. Go back to the tundra, you fucking gimmick!”

Indeed, the censored (recovered) comments on Palin’s Facebook wall present a picture closer to the fake Emanuel’s threat of making it a Palin Wailin’ Wassila Wall than the carefully choreographed and screened vehicle designed to massage her image with the public while bypassing that pesky “lamestream media.” What do commenters really think of Sister Sarah? Here’s a look behind the curtain of her Facebook wall. Not so saintly Sister Sarah.

They're Really Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel ...

… Trying to find evidence of that elusive vast left wing media conspiracy. I’m no big fan of Katie Couric (I stopped watching after she brought Rush Limbaugh on as a commentator), but this vapid attack on Couric by right wing blogger Jim Treacher is quite hilarious:

“It’s interesting to watch Katie Couric drop her pretense of impartiality
| Published: 8:50 AM 08/04/2010 | Updated: 9:00 AM 08/04/2010

August 29, 2008:


Pretty mild, compared to some of the stuff that’s been said about Sarah Palin and her kids. But, as with JournoList, it’s nice to have solid confirmation of what we’ve long suspected. These gatekeepers, these guardians of the truth, consider most of us unworthy of anything but casual contempt. And their ratings plummet, and their companies are sold off for pocket change, and they learn nothing from it.”

… Because it only serves to remind us of this:



Parenthetically, it’s interesting to watch the right wing’s vain and pathetic attempts to reach for some kind of equivalency. First it was the NAACP resolution calling on the Tea Party to drop its racist elements, answered by Andrew Breitbart’s smear of a USDA official with false allegations of racism. Now Treacher digs up a 2008 Couric outtake so insipid even he has to admit it is “pretty mild.” And Jim, as to your familiar victim whine –- “these guardians of the truth” who “consider most of us unworthy of anything but casual contempt” –- after reading the contemptible comments on the YouTube clip you posted, would you care to revise your remark?

GOP Supply-Side Voodoo Economics For DUMMIES

A Big YES From the ...

... PARTY OF NO!

Adventures in TEA PARTY Campaigns: FOX IS PRAVDA And Sharron Angle RUNS For SOVIET POLITBURO

Ah, this is RICH! The Hits just keep on coming for Sharron Angle, Tea Party darling opposing Harry Reid for Senate in Nevada. Back in the days of Soviet Russia, PRAVDA was the OFFICIAL PARTY ORGAN (media organization) and Communist Party Politburo members would have their pre-screened interviews and campaign pressers sanitized, censored, and approved for printing by (substitute Communist for TEA) Party apparatchiks.

It’s not that “the fix is (SUDDENLY) in” with Fox “News” playing Party propagandist and mouthpiece for Tea Party and GOP (they’re largely –- but not entirely –- one and the same) candidates; it’s that even the MOST OBTUSE Teabaggers in on the game are expected to understand the ‘wink-and-a-nod’ aspect of it!



Along comes Sharon Angle, extremist par excellence, to throw a bag of tea in the works and leave her Fox News HANDLER RED-FACED and blathering. Wouldn’t you like to be a fly-in-the-wall of this particular post-production debrief:

“Tell me that TEABAGGING IDIOT DIDN’T MAKE THIS INDECENT PROPOSAL!” Screams Faux Fox “News” Director. “DON’T SHE KNOW OUR NEWS CRED IS ON THE LINE? FIRST THEY CATCH BREITBART, NOW SHE OPENS HER MOUTH ON BACKGROUND, OFF THE RECORD STUFF!”

Sister Sarah’s Missing Brain FOUND: Pair of Caribou Cojones

Sister Sarah claims the President lacks the cojones (balls) Gov. Jan Brewer does (?) to enforce immigration. It makes good copy in RightWingVille, but the question must be asked: How much cojones (political courage) did it take Jan Brewer to sign SB 1070, Arizona’s racist and unconstitutional anti-immigration law? (1) It’s popular not only in Arizona, but in national polls generally; and (2) it’s an incompetent bureaucrat’s ticket to election (Brewer occupied the office vacated by current Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano).

And how much cojones does it really take to beat up on Latino immigrants? A bullet was fired through the office window of Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva. He’s still waiting for the Governor, Senators Kyl and McCain, each of them demagogues and LIARS, to condemn this act of violence.

Take away SB 1070 and Jan Brewer is a big fat ZERO; a nothing, a nobody, what she is in reality. The President has actually enforced the immigration laws more stringently than his predecessor. That is a fact. That it has become a Republican political football to spread fear of foreigners and dark people among whites is nothing new. It’s part of the Republican playbook. Why don’t you come out and play, Caribou Barbie, give some interviews to the MSM outside the Fox propaganda echo chamber. Then we’ll see whose 'virtual' cojones you can match, missy.

Paul Predicts End of Mullah Rule, Iran President Ahmedinejad Goes Berserk

If he did, he’s not telling the world, it’s classified until Wiki Leaks releases the “Paul Files.” But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad sure got the message as he launched into an anti-Paul rant. It looks like the aquatic Nostradamus has gotten himself into the dictator’s head, and under his skin. Paul, screeched the dictator, is a symbol of decadent “Western propaganda and superstition.” Look out, Mahmoud, Paul’s gonna getcha, he’s gaining on you, disguised as a mullah!

Madness, Republican-Style

The nearly unhindered, deranged, and un-American Republican push to extend the Bush tax cuts for the super rich is the very definition of madness: a return to the runaway deficit train and one step from the precipice of total economic collapse that eight years of George W. Bush wrought. Why haven’t they encountered more resistance?

Three corporate conservative Democrats in the House of multi-millionaire Lords known as “the Senate” are peddling this voodoo economics. North Dakota’s useless Democratic Senator, Kent Conrad, is on board while his colleague, good guy Byron Dorgan is not. Dorgan predicted the Republican economic depression earlier than anyone else in the Senate, voting against gutting Glass-Steagall and deregulation of the banks pushed by former Texas Senator Phil Gramm and his wife, Wendy, then Chair of the CFTC. Byron Dorgan is retiring from the Senate in no small measure, perhaps, because people like the three Democratic defectors, Senators Conrad, Ben Nelson, and Evan Bayh are such goddamned selfish weasels.

I have little faith the media will cover this story as it should, for one simple reason. Most of them, especially in television news are in the affected tax bracket. Think about it. If you earn $200,000 or more ($250,000 as a couple), placing you in the top 2% of earners, your tax liability will increase by about 4%. Even if intellectually you agree this is the right thing to do for the country and the middle class, personally you may not be happy about experiencing even the tiniest squeeze in your lavish lifestyle, where before you were completely insulated from the economic downturn. This isn’t about ideology, it’s about class -- a stratified oligarchy that rules and owns this country -- and the other 98% of us. Oh, there will be outliers in the media coverage, to be sure. The media has a class (caste?) system, too. Bloggers and netroots keep self-described “bourgeois” media types honest.

As Uncle Joe Biden said:



To show just how bankrupt the Republicans are, two icons of conservative laissez-faire economics, former Ayn Rand groupie Alan Greenspan and David Stockman, architect of the original Reagan voodoo economics, came out in vehement opposition to extending the Bush tax cuts. David Stockman was Reagan’s wunderkin who started cutting taxes for the rich and implementing the Laffer napkin “supply-side” economics. Stockman was as responsible as any person for 20 years of disastrous Republican economic policies, which gutted our manufacturing base and shipped millions of good-paying jobs overseas, never to return.

Stockman later recanted “trickle-down” and admitted it was a fraud. Alan Greenspan has a similar story. After decades pimping laissez-faire, deregulation, exotic financial instruments, downplaying deficits and singing the praises of “self-regulating” markets, he appeared shell-shocked as he tried to account for the economic collapse during a Congressional hearing. Stockman and Greenspan are atoning for their sins, which is little comfort to the millions of lives they helped destroy. It’s a process reminiscent of McNamara’s mea culpa on Vietnam; at least they have an important perspective to contribute to the historical record.

In truth, allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire isn’t really that much at all to ask the gilded class -- America’s oligarchy -- to give up in order to save the middle class and maintain our economic recovery, that we may prosper as a nation. Actually, it’s the patriotic thing to do. Shameless, selfish, greedy Republicans keep playing the same damn broken record after throwing the country into the ditch by voting for the original tax cuts using reconciliation. Remember how they were screaming last year that reconciliation to pass healthcare was undemocratic, an abuse of power, the end of the Republic, etc.? Well, that’s how they passed the tax cuts for their rich friends 10 years ago, and because they used reconciliation, the tax cuts had a ten-year expiration date. Well, the results are in: The Clinton surplus turned into a trillion-plus dollar deficit, close to zero job growth after 23 million jobs created under Clinton, and a near-economic collapse which shrank 6% in Bush’s last year and was bleeding 170,000 jobs a month when President Obama took office.

If Teddy Roosevelt were around to see what these Republicans are doing, and attempting to do, he’d call them malefactors of political power and traitors to the public good and the Constitution. He would be enraged. And with good reason.

Dems Get Their Mojo Back As President Obama And World’s Scrappiest Congressman Lead the Way

I. President Obama closed the week on a high note. His appearance on The View was terrific, followed by a real barnburner at a Detroit Chrysler plant, where he rolled up his sleeves and came out swinging against “the party of NO.” Watching the President, I kept thinking, “there’s a Democrat in the Kennedy-Truman-FDR mold.” I’m sure FDR was looking down on the 44th President and tossing his head back in that characteristic gesture of infectious joy at being the people’s president. Let Democrats be Democrats and good things will come the party’s way in November.



This guy from the Detroit Free Press writes that the auto industry’s recovery looks like a “flat-out miracle.” It’s no miracle, sir. It’s a direct result of Democratic Keynesian economics stimulating a key and vital American industrial sector that resulted in the Big 3 posting profits for the first time since 2004.

II. Gotta love Anthony Weiner.

This guy is a ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’ every day of the week. He was enraged over Republican obstructionism blocking a bill to provide health care for 9/11 first responders. Rep. Weiner in interviews later said, “this is not a game, this is about people’s lives; people are sick and dying, over 900 of them have died since 9/11.” Mr. Weiner represents many, many of these people; they’re police officers, firefighters, EMS personnel, who risked their lives on that fateful day, and kept digging in the days that followed until the bodies of the victims were recovered. They were sickened by toxic pollutants in the air, that Christie Whitman’s EPA had deemed safe to breathe.



The Republicans and President Bush were all over the rubble, with the cameras on. Once the cameras were turned off they turned their backs on the sick and dying 9/11 first responders. Gotta love Anthony Weiner; his constituents are really lucky to have him as their representative. Mr. Weiner just demonstrated the blueprint for Democratic success this November. No more Mr. Nice Guy, call the Republicans’ bluff, and force them to take responsibility, own up to their obstructionism. In a memorable phrase, Anthony Wiener said, “Sometimes as Democrats we come to knife fights carrying library books.”

With their latest ad, President Obama’s great couple of days on The View and hitting the campaign trail, the Democrats are fighting back, and the people are wising up to the Republicans. They may not like Nancy Pelosi, which is stupid –- she’s one of the greatest Speakers in the nation’s history –- until considering the alternative: John Boehner, the Tan Man about town, barfly extraordinaire, dumb, lazy and dour. It always comes down to a choice, and Democrats have the best programs and a story of accomplishments to tell.

Despite the smugness of the punditocracy –- “things have gelled” and “the cake may be baked” regarding voter trends –- I see a reversal as people pay attention, the more alarmed they become with Republican voodoo economics of exploding the debt by extending the Bush tax cuts for the top 2%, the more they’re willing to give the Democrats a chance. Just as they did for Abraham Lincoln in 1864. Lincoln had his finger on the people’s pulse when he famously said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

Republicans last obstructed unemployment extension, heartlessly kicking millions of Americans like political footballs in their partisan games. Their hypocrisy is hiding in plain sight in their orgasmic defense of extending billionaire tax cuts and the Paris Hilton estate tax that would explode the debt by trillions. Yet they called 2.5 million unemployed Americans “deadbeats” and “drug addicts” and “spoiled” while lining their multi-millionaire pockets with unmitigated greed. Fondly recalling the people’s senator, Ted Kennedy, berating Republicans in defense of working Americans: “How much more greed is enough!”

Not nearly, as Republicans this week blocked:

• The Disclose Act

• Small Business Lending bill – 30 billion for community banks; and

• Health Insurance for 9/11 victims, which tipped Anthony Weiner over the edge.

Democrats, you need to follow Anthony’s lead and become Ninja Dems. Then you’ll be just fine in November. Fuggeaboutit.

Chuck Todd's OK, And a Quick Study

Nice to see the current generation of news dudes tell it ‘the way it is.’ All’s I have to say.

Shirley Sues, Chris Matthews Takes Temporary Leave of His Senses … Recovers In ‘Hardball, The Director’s Cut’

Ha. If I were sitting in one of those “dinner table conversations” that Chris advertises as helping us know where the American people stand, he’d be right about one thing: “It’s not a calm” event. In fact Chris practically guarantees that a food fight ensues. Despite Chris’s inchoate rant that Andrew Breitbart had the entire tape on his website (NO, HE DIDN’T CHRIS!) the Big Story is Shirley Sherrod striking back for every person maligned by the right wing, defiantly refusing an apology from Fox and Breitbart.

She’s determined to sue. YES!

After Andrew Breitbart blogged a misleading excerpt of a 43-minute speech by Ms. Sherrod, Fox News intoned it’s “what racism looks like.” Really. Frank Rich of the New York Times said, “her talk was an uplifting parable about how she had risen above her own trials in the Jim Crow South to aid poor people of every race during her long career in rural development.” Fox would have known that had they had the journalistic integrity to check. But they are not journalists.

As for Breitbart, his history as right wing slime merchant and destroyer of honest people’s careers will be revealed in all of its disgusting cravenness, including, in addition to the sliming of Ms. Sherrod, the smear of ACORN, and the accusation that civil rights giant John Lewis lied about being called “nigger” at a Tea Party rally in Washington D.C. Breitbart produced a video purporting to catch Lewis in a lie that was “so bogus” even Fox wouldn’t touch it.

If Shirley Sherrod goes forward with her lawsuit she has a good chance of prevailing, in my non-lawyer’s opinion. Ms. Sherrod was terribly wronged and damaged by Andrew Breitbart and Fox News, which collaborated with Breitbart in disseminating his sliming of her as well as of ACORN, with trumped-up video clips. No wonder a Fox executive admitted there was “a breakdown in the system” when his “advice” was not followed: “Let's take our time and get the facts straight on this story. Can we get confirmation and comments from Sherrod before going on-air. Let's make sure we do this right.”

Hmm … has anyone of you Fox hounds out there ever heard of Michael Clemente, Senior Vice President of News? No; well, right now he’s the only mitigating factor standing in the way of Fox getting slammed along with Breitbart for sliming Ms. Sherrod. It seems the big egos over there didn’t pay much attention to Clemente’s word of caution. Or maybe he said it with a ‘wink and a nod’ after hitting the audio record button. Making sure “we do this right” would be more believable if this was an isolated case rather than business-as-usual at Rupert Murdoch’s ‘Ministry of Truth.’

We sincerely wish Ms. Sherrod well in forcing Andrew Breitbart to pay steeply for wronging her and his despicable sliming of ordinary, hard-working people who lack the means or intestinal fortitude to take on such a scum-sucking bottom-feeder. This time it might be different: The moment Ms. Sherrod produces all the poor white farm families she helped stay in their homes throughout her honorable career, culminating with the family she mentioned in her speech, it will be all over for Breitbart and Fox. As Frank Rich said, “The smear might well have stuck if the white octogenarian farmer saved by Sherrod 24 years ago was no longer alive and if he didn’t look like a Norman Rockwell archetype.”

Michele Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus (And Friends) Hold Their First "Be-In"

... And they have their anthem, too:



STRANGE BREW – THE TEA PARTY CAUCUS (MICHELE BACHMANN) ANTHEM -

by Eric Clapton, Gail Collins and Felix Pappalardi

Strange brew -- kill what's inside of you.

She's a witch of trouble in electric blue,
In her own mad mind she's in love with you.
With you.
Now what you gonna do?
Strange brew -- kill what's inside of you.

She's some kind of demon messing in the glue.
If you don't watch out it'll stick to you.
To you.
What kind of fool are you?
Strange brew -- kill what's inside of you.

On a boat in the middle of a raging sea,
She would make a scene for it all to be
Ignored.
And wouldn't you be bored?
Strange brew -- kill what's inside of you.

Strange brew, strange brew, strange brew, strange brew.
Strange brew -- kill what's inside of you.

DAY 100, Ambiguous News Alert: Where Has All the Oil Gone?

It’s good news, of sorts: The oil on the surface is disappearing, and seems to be dissipating. After 12 days of a capped oil gusher, Mother Nature has finally caught a break, has had a chance to take a breath and fight back. Some scientists speculate that part of the oil has evaporated, and all those oil-feeding bacteria bred by the constant gusher are now going after the remnants of the spill. But out of sight is not out of mind. In this NYT interactive map, you can follow the expansion and eventual contraction of the spill. Click the play button.

The Best Defense Is Offense: Could Democrats Be Learning, At Last?

Gotta love this ad by the DNC, if only because as the party in power they are finally going on the attack, rather than try to simply defend their majorities. VOTERS RESPECT A PARTY THAT FIGHTS FOR ITS PRINCIPLES AND COMES OUT SWINGING AGAINST THE BAD GUYS (GOP, WINGNUTS, TEABAGGERS)!

Also, gotta LOVE the ponderous, slightly sinister 'Nightmare On Elm Street' meets 'Jaws' soundtrack:

Judge Blocks 'Show Me Your Papers' Arizona Law

Anyone who labored under the delusion that it would be otherwise, and that Arizona SB 1070 would become law today as scheduled, is a fool. The law is now caught up in the courts and facing stiff legal challenges after a preliminary injunction issued by a federal district judge. In the judge’s reasoned opinion, “preserving the status quo through a preliminary injunction is less harmful than allowing state laws that are likely pre-empted by federal law to be enforced.”

“There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens,” she wrote. “By enforcing this statute, Arizona would impose a ‘distinct, unusual and extraordinary’ burden on legal resident aliens that only the federal government has the authority to impose.”

In other words, immigration law is a federal jurisdiction, and no state can suddenly decide to go rogue and pass its own laws running afoul of the Constitution. The judge blocked the most controversial parts of the law that required police to check a person’s immigration status and persons, immigrants or not, illegal or not, to carry their “papers” at all times.

And for those who wrongly believe illegal aliens pay no taxes, they pay their taxes across the board: In sales taxes, in property taxes deducted from their rent payments, and by filing income taxes with taxpayer ID numbers. A recent NYT study estimates that illegals are carrying the rest of us in Social Security taxes, which they will never be able to benefit from, to the tune of $7 billion.

Council of Conservative Citizens, Descendants of the KKK, Urge Tea Party to Flaunt Its Racism

What tangled webs the right wing weaves. The NAACP issued a resolution urging the Tea Party to reject its racist elements. Ben Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP, explained its position on Hardball with Chris Matthews, noting that the infamous Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist group that traces its lineage to the KKK, boasted of its influence within the Tea Party.

JEALOUS: — you know, and you see those old themes and then you go to the Web site of the Council of Conservative Citizens, which is a — which is (INAUDIBLE) —
MATTHEWS: Well, that is an old — that‘s an Dixie crowd, obviously. Yes.
JEALOUS: I mean straight up. They say that black people are not genetically equipped to participate in democracy.
MATTHEWS: But that — but that group isn‘t associated with the Tea Party. That‘s the old like —
JEALOUS: Yes, they are. No, no. Yes they are.
MATTHEWS: I thought that was the old White Citizens Council with a new name.
JEALOUS: Exactly. And you go online and — and they celebrate their participation in the Tea Party.
MATTHEWS: OK.
JEALOUS: And (INAUDIBLE) —
MATTHEWS: Let‘s get to some elected officials here.

Here is a typical CCC-Tea Party entry:

Leftist Florida state attorney fires prosecutor for speaking at TEA Party rallies.
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

Skip Jarvis ordered a prosecutor to stop speaking at TEA Party rallies and then fired her when she refused. Skip Jarvis issued a textbook Soviet style statement declaring that state employees “can’t take a position against the state!” Soviet Commissar, I mean Florida State Attorney, Skip Jarvis Phone: ———

Matthews treated mention of the CCC like a hot potato. If anyone doubts Jealous, simply research the issue, you know, journalistic due diligence, that sort of thing. In response to the NAACP resolution, wingnut smear merchant Andrew Breitbart released a phony, heavily edited videotape purporting to show “reverse racism” by Shirley Sherrod, a USDA official.

This is but one example of how Andrew Breitbart, the wingnut blogger who ambushed Shirley Sherrod, influences the debate on race against the truth and a cowed MSM. Breitbart fed Fox News the phony video, and Fox being Fox ran it unquestioningly. Breitbart refused to apologize for nearly destroying an honorable woman’s career. He even had the audacity to claim innocence of the practice. To date, the only Fox News host to man up and apologize for running the phony story is Bill O’Reilly.

This is part of a pattern of fabricated Fox “news” sowing fear in its lily-white audience (fewer than 2% of Fox viewers are black) against African Americans. Only Rachel Maddow has given this practice, blowing the lid off the faux toxic “journalism” of the right, the coverage it deserves. The Tea Party racism and its associations with extremist fringe racist groups is not a matter of speculation. Yet Breitbart’s aggressive smoke-and-mirrors right wing pushback has succeeded in neutralizing one of the most disturbing aspects of the Tea Party from objective and thorough coverage in the MSM. What Breitbart does isn’t journalism; it’s right wing advocacy propaganda. By injecting a false equivalence into issues of vulnerability to the right, its propagandists (Breitbart, Fox, Limbaugh, et al) obfuscate the issue sufficiently that truth is the ultimate casualty.

And it’s not the first time Breitbart has done this. Dumping ‘Fox Lies and Videotape’ on a jittery MSM cowering in the corner is part of his MO. He loves bullying and browbeating liberals into submission. After his yelling match with David Schuster, in which David was screwed by MSNBC management, some MSNBCers (except their primetime trio of Ed Schulz, Keith Olbermann, and Rachel Maddow) seem skittish around the Breitbart story, echoing their MSM colleagues.

Big Eddie fears no one, and that’s what progressives admire most about the combative, take-no-prisoners populist fighter for the middle class. Eddie said he cornered Breitbart out in the hall and invited — challenged — him to go on ‘The Ed Show.’ Breitbart weaseled out claiming to be “tired” or busy or … whatever. This is typical of how bullies behave. If you show them any weakness a la Tamron Hall rolling over for a racist Son of the Confederacy (“I really press them for an answer” –- yeah, right), the Breitbarts of this world with their keen smell for fear, will pounce. The minute you look bullies in the eye the way Big Ed did, and say “put up or shut up, asshole,” they wilt. Because that’s what bullies are: They’re cowards who prey on the weak. I challenge every one of MSNBC’s hosts to do as Big Eddie: Issue an open invitation to Andrew Breitbart to come on and explain himself, no holds barred — not only about Shirley Sherrod, but about the ACORN tapes and his role in other likely illegal ventures.

Your move.

Adventures in TEA PARTY Campaigns: BALKANS TEA

Republicans don’t quite know what to do about the TEA PARTY. The extremist gaggle of KNOW-NOTHING groups, most of them ASTRO-TURF, corporate-funded but hardly corporate-controlled and coordinated, most of them harboring, or led by, racist elements is leading the GOP straight down the path to self-destruction in November.

Florida is already lost, unless mainstream Republican Charlie Crist, forced by the Tea Party to run as an independent, totally implodes. In Pennsylvania the Tea Party knocked off Arlen Specter from the GOP primary forcing him to run as a Democrat. Specter lost a relatively safe Republican seat. Problem is, the Teabagger candidate, Pat Toomey, is too far right to win statewide in Pennsylvania. Democrat Joe Sestak stands an excellent chance to turn the Specter seat Democratic. And in Nevada, Teabagger Sharron Angle is so extreme that she is running away from her stated positions and the local media just as fast as she can, but steadily losing ground in the polls to Harry Reid, who has savaged her for wanting to abolish Social Security and Medicare, the Department of Education, the EPA, and worst of all, criminalize alcohol consumption in the state where “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

Now the Colorado Tea Party is about to help another Democrat get elected governor by Balkanizing the center-right political fringe. TEA PARTY anti-immigrant nutcase Tom Tancredo has decided to enter the race as an independent. His argument seems to be that the other Teabaggers are nuttier than he is. It’s hard to argue with that logic, even though Tancredo is the phobic anti-immigrant flamer who recently advocated a “literacy test” for voters at the TEA PARTY Convention -– a measure that if adopted would ironically erode much of his support among the sizable contingent of spelling-challenged Teabaggers.

Just call it BALKANS TEA: A Democratic beverage that drives Teabaggers to cannibalism.

Adventures in TEA PARTY Campaigns: KEN BUCK CATCHES TEASTROKE!

Ken Buck, darling of the Tea Party set in Colorado, IS CAUGHT ON TAPE (AGAIN!) TRASHING THE BIRTHERS by calling them “dumbasses.” Listen here.

Ken Buck ‘STOPS SOMEWHERE ELSE’ is suffering from a new illness recently identified, which afflicts only TEA PARTY candidates: OVERBREWED LATENT EXPOSURE SYNDROME (OLÉS). The TEA PARTY DISEASE can result in fatal political TEASTROKE.

According to experts at the CWDC (Centers for Wingnut Disease Control) this malady infects Tea Party candidates who venture outside the friendly confines of Fox News and heavily media-sanitized Teabagger events. However, CWDC experts note, the advent of alternative Tea Party media infectious agents –- YouTube, Twitter, cellular recording devices -– makes the suppression of EXTREMIST TEABAGGER POSITIONS virtually impossible, even from gullible low-information voters.

As of this writing, the Republican Party national leadership is feverishly working on a vaccine to innoculate TEA PARTY candidates throughout the nation. So far, all efforts at containing the disease, including the scrubbing and sanitizing of ENTIRE WEBSITES, as well as the refusal to take questions from non-FOX/Breitbart media have failed miserably.

In this classic sketch, Ken Buck (Tea Party candidate for Colorado governor) competes for how many “The View” fans and women voters he can turn off in one sitting. Apparently Buck had confused the Teabaggers’ aspiration for Constitutional authenticity –- you know, repeal of those extraneous post-Constitutional Convention amendments, such as the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote, ratified only 90 years ago –- AS REALITY! Watch:



BULLSHIT TALKS AS BULLSHIT WALKS! ACTUALLY, THE WAY BUCK BACKPEDALS HE’S A PRIME CANDIDATE TO WEAR HIGH HEELS WITHOUT MISSING A SINGLE STILETTO BEAT.

BP-Dee and BP-Dum

Tony Hayward, the British invasion re-enactor is about to be yanked as BP CEO in favor of an American-born Benedict Arnold re-enactor. Clearly, U.S. nationality is accidental in the globalized corporatist world. On the other hand, a U.S.-based BP CEO won’t require a “Green Card” to direct the next phase of BP’s litigious screwing of its victims in Big Oil-friendly Louisiana and Texas courts.

Hayward gets his “life back,” lots more sailing forays around the Isle of Wight in his yatch, and a golden parachute which includes a year’s salary (he made $6 million last year). Shifty-eyed Texas-based Bob Dudley succeeds the imperious Hayward as disinformation point man in all BP oil catastrophe matters. Dudley, whose body language screams evasiveness, was apparently viewed favorably by BP’s Board and Chairman Karl-Henric Svanberg as a perfect Hayward successor to fool all those dear devastated “little people” in the Gulf states. He’ll have to work on his Southern drawl, though, which should improve once he holds closed-door meetings with Joe Barton, David Vitter, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, et al to dish out BP campaign contributions. Doubtless, Dudley’s outrageous on-camera dissimulations, particularly in the safe corporate-underwritten environment of the PBS NewsHour, fielding “viewers questions” in which he managed to say absolutely nothing in the presence of a host-facilitator who never challenged him, impressed the BP Board, its shareholders, and its largely Republican Party clients.

Here’s Dudley pretending he doesn’t know how much oil was actually spilled, carefully parsing his words so they don’t come back to bite him in the ass. They do, but still they’re not necessarily actionable in court. This guy’s outrageous disinformation is a howl -– “exaggeration and scaremongering … 5,000 barrels a day is the best estimate of the industry experts.” The best estimate from the U.S. government Flow Rate Technical Group is between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels per day. Watch:



This dude is a good politician. Here is Dudley in full campaign mode, shedding crocodile tears as he plays the “people at BP” are “deeply affected” victims role. Was Dudley already campaigning for Hayward’s job? Hmm …