The outrages keep piling up, don't they. When we can't distinguish Rachel's reporting of the latest Republican outrage from the Cialis commercial, you know, the part where the horny couple smilingly tells us all the ways the little blue (?) pill KILLS dudes who can't get it up, then it's time for Uncle Mike's "have I said yet this hour how much I HATE these Republicans?" to kick in — for us to maintain our sanity. Here's Rachel cheerily reporting how ante-dilluvian Republicans want to remove fluoridation from our water supply, restrict our most sacred franchise, the right to vote, and effectively KILL women by denying them life-saving health services. This Republican HATRED for women, this open-ended misogyny, is virtually ignored or written off as a mild symbolic act of Republicans just being Republicans (hahaha) and it's no biggie because the Senate will never pass it. Andrea Mitchell, WHERE'S YOUR OUTRAGE?! The Beltway Media is so beneath contempt, it's effectively under the radar.
As if that weren't enough, the Republican Party inserted a poison pill back in 2006, in the Lame Duck session of Congress, before Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats took over, to KILL the U.S. Postal Service, privatizing it to swell the for-profit coffers of FedEx and UPS. And for you Constitution-loving Teabaggers, the Post Office is enshrined in and predates the Constitution, and Founding Father Ben Franklin was its first Postmaster-General. More to the point, the heavily Republican "Dogpatch" Tea Party rural enclaves, where Democrats are called "socialist" devils, prepare to be ROYALLY SCREWED by the Republicans, not only with higher costs (how many of you can afford UPS or FedEx?) but with the salient fact that, while the Post Office, which doesn't take a nickel from the taxpayers, is required by statute to service the smallest of backwaters, FULLY A QUARTER — 25% — OF RIGHTWINGVILLE IS NOT SERVICED BY FEDEX AND UPS.
FUCKING MORONS. SEE HOW MUCH YOU LOVE YOUR TEABAG ANTI-GOVERNMENT EXTREMISTS IN CONGRESS WHEN YOUR POST OFFICE IS CLOSED AND 120,000 POSTAL WORKERS ARE THROWN OUT OF A JOB, AND YOU HAVE TO DRIVE 90 MILES FOR POSTAL SERVICE AT A HIGHER COST!
Friday, October 14, 2011
Senior Statesman of The Protest Movements Decodes OWS
Keith Olbermann who has been on the vanguard of the Occupy Wall Street media coverage, not coincidentally the political story of the year (although you wouldn't know it watching the bloviators of the Idiot Punditocracy), elicited the wisdom and cutting edge analysis of the iconic Tom Hayden, one of the leading figures of the protest movement — writ large — of the Sixties. Indeed, one Tom Hayden segment is worth a thousand overwrought sputterings of the Beltway Media. Consider the various scenarios laid out by Hayden — in particular the suggestion that if 10 or 20 thousand protesters were arrested in a peaceful civil disobedience action, they could effectively grind the system to a halt simply by demanding individual jury trials of their peers. (Do you suppose Mayor Bloomberg was listening in when he backed down from a park eviction confrontation this morning?) Or the advice he has for President Obama, which seems to have eluded the White House politicos: End the wars — one trillion saved; end the Bush tax cuts — another trillion; a "special adviser" on Wall Street is good — how about a special prosecutor; and "laying down the gauntlet" which is another way of demanding from this President bold, decisive action on the domestic front, his carpe diem moment of which Ron Suskind (as I was saying, not having read the book) noted on Rachel, there are intimations, as yet unfettered.
The President and the Democrats need to step up to the plate. The people demand it. Comically, OWS has the Idiot Punditocracy and many Democratic politicians in knots because they don't have a neat little list of demands. Take a look around, imbeciles. What do you see? A ravaged middle class, bailed-out criminals on Wall Street giving themselves extravagant bonuses with our money and using it to purchase Congress while throwing millions from their homes and trampling on the "American Dream" for the rest of us. What's the PREGNANT question hovering above the OWS movement? Here's a hint, MORONS: "Where's the accountability, where's the justice?" And for the President to say in his presser, a question that went largely unreported by the Idiot Punditocracy, that "no laws were broken" just isn't good enough. We're still waiting on Eric Holder to show the same dedication he has chasing down terrorist plots from Iran to chase down the criminals on Wall Street. And don't give us insider trading convictions; that's tinkering around the edges. Don't ask us to applaud the SEC for once doing its fucking job! We're still waiting on our government to start taking concrete actions on behalf of the American people to right the wrongs that engendered the OWS movement. Otherwise the Ayatollah's claim, that the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in a D.C. restaurant is a ruse to divert attention from OWS, might even gain traction.
The President and the Democrats need to step up to the plate. The people demand it. Comically, OWS has the Idiot Punditocracy and many Democratic politicians in knots because they don't have a neat little list of demands. Take a look around, imbeciles. What do you see? A ravaged middle class, bailed-out criminals on Wall Street giving themselves extravagant bonuses with our money and using it to purchase Congress while throwing millions from their homes and trampling on the "American Dream" for the rest of us. What's the PREGNANT question hovering above the OWS movement? Here's a hint, MORONS: "Where's the accountability, where's the justice?" And for the President to say in his presser, a question that went largely unreported by the Idiot Punditocracy, that "no laws were broken" just isn't good enough. We're still waiting on Eric Holder to show the same dedication he has chasing down terrorist plots from Iran to chase down the criminals on Wall Street. And don't give us insider trading convictions; that's tinkering around the edges. Don't ask us to applaud the SEC for once doing its fucking job! We're still waiting on our government to start taking concrete actions on behalf of the American people to right the wrongs that engendered the OWS movement. Otherwise the Ayatollah's claim, that the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in a D.C. restaurant is a ruse to divert attention from OWS, might even gain traction.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
A Rational Person's Reaction As Rachel Reports One Pernicious Republican Outrage After Another
3 - 2 - 1 — GO MIKE!
[Insert latest Republican outrage here.]
READ ALL ABOUT IT! INSIDE "OCCUPY WALL STREET" ... O.M.G!
Here's an OCCUPIED Wall Street Journal I can support — and these talented kids cranked this knockoff out in no time flat; eat your heart out, Rupert Murdoch.
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Pay attention, Teabaggers ... Here's how a REAL GRASSROOTS demonstration takes flight. While you're wasting energy adjusting your fat asses on your lounge chairs and drinking beer off the cooler within walking distance of billionaire Koch-Bros funded buses and fattening fast food treats, these kids have a newspaper, a media center, a canteen, clean hand-me-down clothes for overnighters, and really creative NON-RACIST signs and posters ... Hmm. If banks/corporations are "people" what's their race and ethnic heritage?
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Hat tip to Telemann in NYC for on-the-scene coverage.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
NEFARIOUS IRAN PLOT: Hey, Isn't This "OCTOBER SURPRISE" One Year Too Soon?
Just saying. Hmm ... Democrats and their exquisite sense of political timing. Ah, never mind.
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191 Second FLAT Post-GOP Debate Analysis: Perry Makes His Case ... In Song!
For the GOP Dogpatch crowd, aka ... the TEA PARTY! With a little help from ... Newt?
What A REAL Democrat Sounds Like, And What The 60s Can Teach Us About Occupy Wall Street
Watching this AWESOME partisan takedown, I can't help but wonder what happened to today's Democrats, from the top down? Can you imagine how JFK would have reacted to today's obstructionist right wing Republicans and what he'd say about the CIRCUS spectacle witnessed last night in the Republican debate? It might go something like this:
And can you imagine President Kennedy EVER behaving as Mr. Obama has for the past two years toward these Republicans in Congress? They blame the President, unfairly, for the plight of the economy now, as we teeter on the edge of a double-dip recession, and desperately need another boost of Keynesian stimulus to the economy, a lá FDR's Works Project Administration. But no. The plutocrats and corporations are in charge. And they just LOVE using this country as a host for the Chinese infection.
Yet it was the President's passivity in the face of what many economists warned were half-measures on stimulus, and his terrible choice of an economic team, rewarding an arrogant sexist like Larry Summers and a Wall Street lapdog like Tim Geithner with the highest, most influential positions, while the guys who were REALLY right — Austan Goolsbee and Jared Bernstein — were benched, with no power even of the persuasive variety to influence policy, that has us in our current fix. The fix wasn't nearly big enough to fix the economy. History will show us, but it's clear already. And that's entirely on President Obama.
David Halberstam's seminal book The Best And the Brightest, chronicles the Kennedy-Johnson administrations' inexorable slide to war in Vietnam, a tragedy for which this nation paid with 58,000 American lives and which, in a way, opened the door to the right's power grab. Halberstam once described how one man within Johnson's inner circle tried unsuccessfully to pull us back:
The President, it seems, set aside the political instincts that served him so well during the 2008 campaign while comfortably ensconced in his fraternity of Harvard pals. Summers shut down all dissenting views and sneered at critics like Paul Krugman. (To be sure, a Nobel Prize for economics isn't in Summers' future.)
President Obama's handling (or mishandling) of the economy is analogous to Johnson's tin ear on Vietnam, surrounded by a coterie of Ivy League hawks with one sole outlier, George Ball. Jared Bernstein and Austan Goolsbee were the George Balls of the Obama administration, but with less influence. And they're gone now; defeated by the toxic climate in Washington, or the fact that Summers crapped all over the joint and waltzed right out of there leaving them to clean up the mess. Geithner remains. But he's like the President's little brother. Obama likes him, protects him — they're the same age — empathizes with the searing criticism Geithner takes from all sides. It's as if Geithner's the economic lightning rod that validates the President's economic policy (in his own mind), the old adage that if both sides are criticizing you, then you must be doing something right.
The President has often put it in these terms to justify his conciliatory approach as the correct one toward a nest of Republican vipers — encouraged by the Idiot Punditocracy, who can hardly wait for the chaos of a Republican in the White House. (If you look hard enough, you can actually see Chuckles Toddy salivating.) Mr. Obama is working hard to mend fences with progressives, years too late, and pushed back by multiple self-inflicted penalties to the one-yard line. He has frustrated and infuriated his liberal base (don't believe the polls, people are more complicated than that), who said all along he should fight back — like Kennedy. We were right, of course, and now he faces a long, hard drive to score his re-election.
Obviously, and truthfully, President Obama is no economist (which should have set off political warning bells in his mind like, e.g., "am I being rolled?") but he was comfortable in his Harvard fraternity of conservative economists — who had pushed for the very deregulatory policies that got us in this mess — just as Kennedy was when he assembled his own team around Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara, whose belated mea culpa over Vietnam was a singularly pathetic near-deathbed confession. But we never got to know whether Kennedy would pursue the same destructive escalation in Vietnam. There were tantalizing clues that he would have gotten us out of Vietnam.
For once, the Idiot Punditocracy is correct in its assessment that the state of the economy will determine whether President Obama is re-elected. Isn't it a bit premature for the President to claim no laws were broken by the Wall Street criminals (in the legal sense of the word) who brought this economy down? Maybe he was too busy to read Matt Taibbi's articles. The President should really get out of his "bubble" more often.
Chris Matthews hosted a couple of 60s revivalist segments on Hardball earlier this week, no doubt inspired by the sight of thousands of 21st century hippies on the streets of our nation, peacefully demonstrating against corporate greed, income inequality, and a host of other injustices. Very much like the 60s demonstrations. Chris could have booked any number of objective Republicans (like his buddy Ed Rollins, for instance) but instead, quite deliberately I think, he gave free rein to GOP attack dog Ron Christie to launch into a stream of 60s-like establishment slurs against the peaceful, diverse, middle class Occupy Wall Street demonstrators:
FYI, Chris, while the demonstrations have been orderly and peaceful, right wing provocateurs have infiltrated them to cause disruption and then blame the chaos on OWS. The same pattern occurred in Wisconsin, and everywhere people have gathered to rage against the corporate right wing machine that is destroying their lives. Keith has covered this, and Rachel too, showing Breitbart protegé James O'Keefe walking the crowds looking to promote trouble for his heavily edited video hit jobs. Hardball? Crickets. That is, until a wingnut provocateur creates an incident, in which case Chris will go hysterical. After whimsically declaring his faux flower child bona fides, Chris goes Archie Bunker ... and good on Ron for replying in kind:
When Chris, the Zeitgeist sponge, said "... nor do I want political flourishes — gestures that give joy to the left or the right"... perhaps he was referring to Congressman Alan Grayson's takedown of his buddy, P.J. O'Rourke. Well, you know, Chris — when you host a ratbastard like Ron Christie, who comes on your show to insult the 24 million Americans who can't find a fulltime job and who now swell the throngs of the OWS demonstrations, the minute you cut Christie his "political analyst" check, in effect doubling down on the insult, that's something for which you and MSNBC ought to be ashamed.
And can you imagine President Kennedy EVER behaving as Mr. Obama has for the past two years toward these Republicans in Congress? They blame the President, unfairly, for the plight of the economy now, as we teeter on the edge of a double-dip recession, and desperately need another boost of Keynesian stimulus to the economy, a lá FDR's Works Project Administration. But no. The plutocrats and corporations are in charge. And they just LOVE using this country as a host for the Chinese infection.
Yet it was the President's passivity in the face of what many economists warned were half-measures on stimulus, and his terrible choice of an economic team, rewarding an arrogant sexist like Larry Summers and a Wall Street lapdog like Tim Geithner with the highest, most influential positions, while the guys who were REALLY right — Austan Goolsbee and Jared Bernstein — were benched, with no power even of the persuasive variety to influence policy, that has us in our current fix. The fix wasn't nearly big enough to fix the economy. History will show us, but it's clear already. And that's entirely on President Obama.
David Halberstam's seminal book The Best And the Brightest, chronicles the Kennedy-Johnson administrations' inexorable slide to war in Vietnam, a tragedy for which this nation paid with 58,000 American lives and which, in a way, opened the door to the right's power grab. Halberstam once described how one man within Johnson's inner circle tried unsuccessfully to pull us back:
We hope President Obama may be more successful winding down our devastating involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ironically, though, while the President is intent on not repeating the errors of Vietnam, it is on the domestic front, the don't rock the boat or upset Wall Street economic de-escalators on the President's team who are most responsible for our current economic downward drift. Goolsbee and Bernstein played George Ball's role in this administration, with the same result. They were unsuccessful in moving policy toward stronger economic stimulus — the imperious Larry Summers ignored them, and worse, female economic advisers were to be seen and not heard."George Ball was the number two man in the State Department in the Johnson years. He had been a lawyer in France during the first part of the Indo-China War when the French were fighting the Vietnamese and losing. And it made him very wary of American intervention there and as such, he made a strong case against sending combat troops. It was a lonely business; he believed that Johnson was listening to him and taking him seriously but in the end, the forces for escalation were too strong."
The President, it seems, set aside the political instincts that served him so well during the 2008 campaign while comfortably ensconced in his fraternity of Harvard pals. Summers shut down all dissenting views and sneered at critics like Paul Krugman. (To be sure, a Nobel Prize for economics isn't in Summers' future.)
President Obama's handling (or mishandling) of the economy is analogous to Johnson's tin ear on Vietnam, surrounded by a coterie of Ivy League hawks with one sole outlier, George Ball. Jared Bernstein and Austan Goolsbee were the George Balls of the Obama administration, but with less influence. And they're gone now; defeated by the toxic climate in Washington, or the fact that Summers crapped all over the joint and waltzed right out of there leaving them to clean up the mess. Geithner remains. But he's like the President's little brother. Obama likes him, protects him — they're the same age — empathizes with the searing criticism Geithner takes from all sides. It's as if Geithner's the economic lightning rod that validates the President's economic policy (in his own mind), the old adage that if both sides are criticizing you, then you must be doing something right.
The President has often put it in these terms to justify his conciliatory approach as the correct one toward a nest of Republican vipers — encouraged by the Idiot Punditocracy, who can hardly wait for the chaos of a Republican in the White House. (If you look hard enough, you can actually see Chuckles Toddy salivating.) Mr. Obama is working hard to mend fences with progressives, years too late, and pushed back by multiple self-inflicted penalties to the one-yard line. He has frustrated and infuriated his liberal base (don't believe the polls, people are more complicated than that), who said all along he should fight back — like Kennedy. We were right, of course, and now he faces a long, hard drive to score his re-election.
Obviously, and truthfully, President Obama is no economist (which should have set off political warning bells in his mind like, e.g., "am I being rolled?") but he was comfortable in his Harvard fraternity of conservative economists — who had pushed for the very deregulatory policies that got us in this mess — just as Kennedy was when he assembled his own team around Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara, whose belated mea culpa over Vietnam was a singularly pathetic near-deathbed confession. But we never got to know whether Kennedy would pursue the same destructive escalation in Vietnam. There were tantalizing clues that he would have gotten us out of Vietnam.
For once, the Idiot Punditocracy is correct in its assessment that the state of the economy will determine whether President Obama is re-elected. Isn't it a bit premature for the President to claim no laws were broken by the Wall Street criminals (in the legal sense of the word) who brought this economy down? Maybe he was too busy to read Matt Taibbi's articles. The President should really get out of his "bubble" more often.
Chris Matthews hosted a couple of 60s revivalist segments on Hardball earlier this week, no doubt inspired by the sight of thousands of 21st century hippies on the streets of our nation, peacefully demonstrating against corporate greed, income inequality, and a host of other injustices. Very much like the 60s demonstrations. Chris could have booked any number of objective Republicans (like his buddy Ed Rollins, for instance) but instead, quite deliberately I think, he gave free rein to GOP attack dog Ron Christie to launch into a stream of 60s-like establishment slurs against the peaceful, diverse, middle class Occupy Wall Street demonstrators:
Then the next evening Chris tried to make amends for his reactionary verbal bacchanalia with Ron Christie by hosting Ron Reagan, a really lovely guy, to speak some more of the OWS demonstrations. But not before injecting his bias with this inflammatory tease:I guess my first emotional response is, I feel your pain. I understand where you're coming from, but GO GET A JOB.
I think when you find a lot of people who are coming to New York City, college Students who are out having sex on the lawn, people who admit that they`re there just to be part of a good time, people who are taking drugs, people who are breaking the law, yes, I think they need to go get a job.
MATTHEWS: You first, Ron. You smelled the crowd, you saw them. You know what we're talking about visually, right?
CHRISTIE: Yes, I do. And it's just a disgrace. I think people have the obligation, if they're upset with the government, they have the lawful petition right to say, hey, this isn't right. But they don't have a right to urinate on the lawn. They don't have —
MATTHEWS: Yes, but they're not mad at the government, they're mad at Wall Street. They seem like they're mad at the business people.
CHRISTIE: Well, their anger is misplaced. But if they actually really want to be angry at somebody, I would suggest their elected officials in Washington, D.C. who can't get it done. I'd be angry at this administration —
MATTHEWS: You know, Ron, there's really a historic precedent for this. I mean, going back to the beginning of our republic, people from the West have mistrusted the big New York bankers, I mean, as Andy Jackson stuff. This isn't un-American, is it? But how do you put it in our history? The stuff in New York right now?
CHRISTIE: I don't think it's un-American. I think, frankly, of our history, this looks a lot to me like 1968 -- a lot of people coming out against the Vietnam War, a lot of people protesting. The difference here, though, when you look at Eric Cantor's use of the word "mob," Chris, I looked it up on Webster's before I came on tonight. A mob, according to Webster's, is a large and disorderly crowd. What you have in New York City is a large group. Some of these folks have been disorderly. By definition, that's a mob. You didn't see the same sort of activity with the Tea Party. [Huh?! Whaaa ...? Excuse me?!]
And this allegation that Nancy Pelosi just had me that had me so angry, I was at that Tea Party rally when she said that members of Congress were spat upon. I was standing right there, I saw these members of Congress, who are the members of the Black Congressional Caucus, I didn't see a thing. [Right. HEAR no, SEE no ... but speak plenty of EVIL on Hardball.]
So, if she's got some proof, I'd like to see it. But denigrating the Tea Party, who have been largely peaceful in their demonstrations, is nowhere near analogous to what we're seeing in New York. [Huh?! Whaaa ...? Excuse me?! Are we going to relitigate what we've all seen on tape, despite Andrew Breitbart's attempts to whitewash it?]
MATTHEWS: OK. You may be right, [No, Chris. You brought this asshole on to insult tens of thousands of your viewers, with impunity. It's your responsibility to set the record straight.] but you're wrong about the 60s. I loved them, they were fabulous. And I love -- I didn't like the assassinations, obviously. But the other part of the '68 experience was incredible. [To quote Christie, "if you've got some proof, I'd like to see it." I think the 60s you're talking about — Summer of Love in San Francisco, 67 — is all in your head, pal.]
What's really creepy about comments like these, coming from Beltway luminaries like Chris, is that it shows just how brainwashed they are by the right wing hysteria over the OWS demonstrations. I'm convinced Chris internalizes this shit from Bill O'Reilly and other wingnut propaganda sources, and then spouts them on his show, on a supposedly "liberal" network. It's just one more example in hundreds, daily, of how much the Beltway Media is in the thrall of Fox right wing propaganda."Can the Democrats embrace the Occupy Wall Street protesters? Should they? If they jump in, as one person pointed out, what happens if the protesters start throwing garbage cans through the windows, or worse?"
FYI, Chris, while the demonstrations have been orderly and peaceful, right wing provocateurs have infiltrated them to cause disruption and then blame the chaos on OWS. The same pattern occurred in Wisconsin, and everywhere people have gathered to rage against the corporate right wing machine that is destroying their lives. Keith has covered this, and Rachel too, showing Breitbart protegé James O'Keefe walking the crowds looking to promote trouble for his heavily edited video hit jobs. Hardball? Crickets. That is, until a wingnut provocateur creates an incident, in which case Chris will go hysterical. After whimsically declaring his faux flower child bona fides, Chris goes Archie Bunker ... and good on Ron for replying in kind:
I thought Chris was a guard, or something, during the 60s. To be fair, he did the Peace Corps too, which is a great thing. But as far as Chris's political "evolution" (watch out for people whose views "evolve" or who switch horses in mainstream, well into their adult lives) to the "40-yard line" or whatever, well, that's anyone's guess. Here's how I see Chris in the 60s, face-to-face with Bobby Kennedy. Chris plays the part of the sheriff:MATTHEWS: Ron, what are your impulses when you watch those people up in New York. I mean, we have gotten different pictures of them. Do you feel for them? Do you think — do you wish like, in the summer of 67, we all felt we were all out in San Francisco? Is this something you wish you were a part of? Do you sense there's a downside for the Dems if this stuff gets more rowdy, if you will, rougher up there and other places besides New York?
REAGAN: Well, yes. Imagine — imagine what would happen if people at these Occupy Wall Street groups should start showing up with assault-style weapons and talking about Second Amendment solutions. Yes, then I`m sure the roof would come off, wouldn't it?
When Chris, the Zeitgeist sponge, said "... nor do I want political flourishes — gestures that give joy to the left or the right"... perhaps he was referring to Congressman Alan Grayson's takedown of his buddy, P.J. O'Rourke. Well, you know, Chris — when you host a ratbastard like Ron Christie, who comes on your show to insult the 24 million Americans who can't find a fulltime job and who now swell the throngs of the OWS demonstrations, the minute you cut Christie his "political analyst" check, in effect doubling down on the insult, that's something for which you and MSNBC ought to be ashamed.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
It's Because You "Aim So High" That We LOVE You, Rachel
And also because Glenn Beck seems to bring out the totally adorable in you. Watch this segment, folks, and I challenge you not to go "YES!" with a fist pump and your own celebratory end zone dance. Because, you know, I've never found wingnut comedians like P.J. O'Rourke very funny. Their brand of "comedy" relies on a meanness which makes light of the struggles of the least fortunate and most vulnerable among us which is really ugly. Not funny, pal. Just plain ugly. Watch the takedown. It's awesome and it got a standing O from the audience and a "TOUCHDOWN!" sign from Bill Maher, which was SUPER COOL. Watch; this is just great:
Monday, October 10, 2011
Chris Matthews Remedial Ed: Get Some Better Guests, Willya ...
Chris:
(a) It's Demo-CRATIC National Committee, NOT Demo-CRAT — shame on you;
(b) If you're going to bring on a WINGNUT shark, LIAR, SOPHIST, like Ron Christie to smear the OWS demonstrators while you stand by like a dolt, at least match him up with a WORTHY opponent. Steve Kornacki?! Gimme a fucking break. You know, Joan Walsh is from Salon too; top-level, for a reason. Plus, she ALWAYS gets the best of Christie and totally UNHINGES him. She speaks well for progressives, has one of the best BULLSHIT radars around, and ALWAYS sets the record straight. Look at it this way: At least it makes for good TV.
What, now you have wingnuts booking your guests, too? That was a shameful segment worthy of Fox, but not Hardball standards, such as they are (which seem to be slip-slidin' away.):
(a) It's Demo-CRATIC National Committee, NOT Demo-CRAT — shame on you;
(b) If you're going to bring on a WINGNUT shark, LIAR, SOPHIST, like Ron Christie to smear the OWS demonstrators while you stand by like a dolt, at least match him up with a WORTHY opponent. Steve Kornacki?! Gimme a fucking break. You know, Joan Walsh is from Salon too; top-level, for a reason. Plus, she ALWAYS gets the best of Christie and totally UNHINGES him. She speaks well for progressives, has one of the best BULLSHIT radars around, and ALWAYS sets the record straight. Look at it this way: At least it makes for good TV.
What, now you have wingnuts booking your guests, too? That was a shameful segment worthy of Fox, but not Hardball standards, such as they are (which seem to be slip-slidin' away.):
Notes From The Fringe: Krugman, Fat Cats, Hitler, et al ...
The other day I stopped by my bank and while doing my banking asked my friendly banker whether they would raise fees for the "privilege" of using their money machines. He was evasive, said he didn't "hear" or "know" of anything (which usually means the opposite in such situations), then said "blame the government" for Bank of America charging five bucks a pop at the ATM machine. Thankfully, I'm not a BofA customer but once something sets me off in the realm of politics and its offspring, Fairness and Justice, it's hard to shut off the spigot.
So I checked my politics at the door, talked nice weather with my nice banker and took my leave. It never ceases to amaze me how liberals manage to exist, happily, in a state like Oklahoma. I couldn't do it. I have a hard time as it is living in a Blue state.
I remember going off on a political dissertation with my insurance agent, a single mom who should by rights be a Democratic voter but all she kept bringing up was anecdotal hearsay about poor people gaming the system. Divide and conquer. Our cultural and political conversation is so skewed to right wing nostrums that the truth — just the truth and the facts, ma'am — has an almost impossible time punching through. It takes time to knock down, to debunk, sound bite sophistries repeated as lies with buzz words like "class warfare" and "hard left" — where did Matthews come up with this bullshit? Then it hit me, of course, he watches Bill O'Reilly. Here's Bill-O The Clown browbeating, or rather, bullying the president of the AARP charging, idiotically, that it's a "left wing" organization.
Chris Matthews reminds me of the elder pundit who is revered for having 40 years' "experience" in politics when it seems, as Damon Runyon famously said in another context, it's one bad year's experience forty times over. The Michael "they keep pulling me back in" Corleone of political punditry deserves points at least for trying hard. Even as Bill O'Reilly keeps pulling him back, keeps him stupid. It's not easy being a liberal, a progressive, having history on our side. There is something to be said for ignorant bliss. Although the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression should be able to focus even the dimmest minds ... there are still so many of Lincoln's fools in this country. And they're mostly in the Republican/Tea Party ... and in MSNBC studios.
But at least we've got Paul Krugman on our side. Paul has been on a tear of late, for a political commentator, that is. Here's one more reason why he's the best of the best, in this observer's opinion — on the Wall Street/right wing/Fox propagandists hysteria over the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. Isn't it amusing how these ratbastards embrace their gun-toting, racist Teabagger hordes as "patriotic Americans" but when a true grassroots movement of the left (which is really the middle and really progressive) emerges with its clarion call to Occupy Wall Street it's a "mob" that's "pitting American against American" (yeah, Cantor you scumbag, the 1% against the 99ners) and "class warfare" (of the rich plutocrats against the rest of us) and a sinister Democratic conspiracy, according to the Pizzaman, who was fine and dandy sitting at the back of the bus as civil rights history passed him by right under his nose:
Kudos to Chris Hayes for slamming CNN's alpha-bitch Erin Burnett, another idiotic woman who uncovers her ignorance of everything political with a Fox blondie 'tude and lotsa cleavage:
Is it just me, or did the obnoxious libertarian sophist, liar, dissembler, neurotic politico Dylan Ratigan and MSNBC outlier from the CNBC wingnut stable —whose talking heads said the OWS protesters “let their freak flags fly” and are “aligned with Lenin” — dodge a left hook to the jaw from Big Eddie because they were at different locations for color commentary on the President's recent presser? It's too bad, because Ratigan used his MSNBC platform to promote the Tea Party and convince low information voters (can you blame them, given the crap they're fed daily?) to bring to power one of the most right wing reactionary Congresses in history, with all the attendant misery for the 99ners. Now he's trying to glom onto OWS with his hidden agenda, which includes 100,000+ signatures for a constitutional amendment to "get the money out of politics."
That's something all progressives support, in principle, except Ratigan wants to use it as a springboard to a third party, libertarian. Hosting his hero Ron Paul — another reactionary who was the original Tea Party creator/Kock money fundee — Ratigan tried to get him to sign on, musing that it's somehow related to small government. How public funding of campaigns, which progressives fully support, and is the way elections are run in social democratic European countries, amounts to "small government" escapes rationality. It isn't "big government" either; it's good government. But that's just another example of how much the asshole who hisses under his breath about the "lefty agenda" (whatever that means) is secretly committed to his own weird libertarian "agenda." You are what you are, pal. Spell it out instead of trying to make nice with liberals and progressives, whom you obviously loathe.
Remember that football coach who stood on the sidelines and tripped an opposing player as he was streaking down the playing side of the line toward a sure touchdown? That's Ratigan and his brand of destructive politics. Libertarians are sideline court jesters and trippers who acidly criticize those who are trying to move this country forward, but have nothing to show for it, because government is "the enemy." As I've said before, the reason they hate liberals is because we have a great pedigree. We built this country. We established the ground rules which allowed them to prosper. There are enduring monuments to this country — of good, inspired government and brick and mortar too — built in our name that they will never have, except in novels. Or in comedic entertainment, or less talented political agitation, like Ratigan's and Paul's. They hate liberals because we've achieved great things and they haven't. And they know it. Their irrational ideology continues to tread water, so they project. Such are the burdens of arrogant elitists.
Are you ready for some racism!?!!? Not on Monday Night Football anymore, now that ESPN (with a reluctant Fox, I suppose) made its firing of MNF racist intro songster Hank Williams Jr., has-been country third-rater and Tea Party devoteé, permanent. One, two, three (like a typical Teabagger, Williams can't count) you're outta there! Good guy Michael Smerconish is an honest independent who eloquently expresses the view of the great majority of decent Americans:
Proving there are always basement "class" acts in America, this unfortunate talentless dim son will be trying to make hay out of Hitler on The View and maybe, if he's lucky — FOR HIRE: Racists, religious fundamentalists, wingnuts in general - Rick Perry campaign — he lands this new "official" political gig:
So I checked my politics at the door, talked nice weather with my nice banker and took my leave. It never ceases to amaze me how liberals manage to exist, happily, in a state like Oklahoma. I couldn't do it. I have a hard time as it is living in a Blue state.
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Chris Matthews reminds me of the elder pundit who is revered for having 40 years' "experience" in politics when it seems, as Damon Runyon famously said in another context, it's one bad year's experience forty times over. The Michael "they keep pulling me back in" Corleone of political punditry deserves points at least for trying hard. Even as Bill O'Reilly keeps pulling him back, keeps him stupid. It's not easy being a liberal, a progressive, having history on our side. There is something to be said for ignorant bliss. Although the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression should be able to focus even the dimmest minds ... there are still so many of Lincoln's fools in this country. And they're mostly in the Republican/Tea Party ... and in MSNBC studios.
But at least we've got Paul Krugman on our side. Paul has been on a tear of late, for a political commentator, that is. Here's one more reason why he's the best of the best, in this observer's opinion — on the Wall Street/right wing/Fox propagandists hysteria over the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. Isn't it amusing how these ratbastards embrace their gun-toting, racist Teabagger hordes as "patriotic Americans" but when a true grassroots movement of the left (which is really the middle and really progressive) emerges with its clarion call to Occupy Wall Street it's a "mob" that's "pitting American against American" (yeah, Cantor you scumbag, the 1% against the 99ners) and "class warfare" (of the rich plutocrats against the rest of us) and a sinister Democratic conspiracy, according to the Pizzaman, who was fine and dandy sitting at the back of the bus as civil rights history passed him by right under his nose:
What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.
Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.
This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren.
So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth.
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Is it just me, or did the obnoxious libertarian sophist, liar, dissembler, neurotic politico Dylan Ratigan and MSNBC outlier from the CNBC wingnut stable —whose talking heads said the OWS protesters “let their freak flags fly” and are “aligned with Lenin” — dodge a left hook to the jaw from Big Eddie because they were at different locations for color commentary on the President's recent presser? It's too bad, because Ratigan used his MSNBC platform to promote the Tea Party and convince low information voters (can you blame them, given the crap they're fed daily?) to bring to power one of the most right wing reactionary Congresses in history, with all the attendant misery for the 99ners. Now he's trying to glom onto OWS with his hidden agenda, which includes 100,000+ signatures for a constitutional amendment to "get the money out of politics."
That's something all progressives support, in principle, except Ratigan wants to use it as a springboard to a third party, libertarian. Hosting his hero Ron Paul — another reactionary who was the original Tea Party creator/Kock money fundee — Ratigan tried to get him to sign on, musing that it's somehow related to small government. How public funding of campaigns, which progressives fully support, and is the way elections are run in social democratic European countries, amounts to "small government" escapes rationality. It isn't "big government" either; it's good government. But that's just another example of how much the asshole who hisses under his breath about the "lefty agenda" (whatever that means) is secretly committed to his own weird libertarian "agenda." You are what you are, pal. Spell it out instead of trying to make nice with liberals and progressives, whom you obviously loathe.
Remember that football coach who stood on the sidelines and tripped an opposing player as he was streaking down the playing side of the line toward a sure touchdown? That's Ratigan and his brand of destructive politics. Libertarians are sideline court jesters and trippers who acidly criticize those who are trying to move this country forward, but have nothing to show for it, because government is "the enemy." As I've said before, the reason they hate liberals is because we have a great pedigree. We built this country. We established the ground rules which allowed them to prosper. There are enduring monuments to this country — of good, inspired government and brick and mortar too — built in our name that they will never have, except in novels. Or in comedic entertainment, or less talented political agitation, like Ratigan's and Paul's. They hate liberals because we've achieved great things and they haven't. And they know it. Their irrational ideology continues to tread water, so they project. Such are the burdens of arrogant elitists.
Are you ready for some racism!?!!? Not on Monday Night Football anymore, now that ESPN (with a reluctant Fox, I suppose) made its firing of MNF racist intro songster Hank Williams Jr., has-been country third-rater and Tea Party devoteé, permanent. One, two, three (like a typical Teabagger, Williams can't count) you're outta there! Good guy Michael Smerconish is an honest independent who eloquently expresses the view of the great majority of decent Americans:
Proving there are always basement "class" acts in America, this unfortunate talentless dim son will be trying to make hay out of Hitler on The View and maybe, if he's lucky — FOR HIRE: Racists, religious fundamentalists, wingnuts in general - Rick Perry campaign — he lands this new "official" political gig:
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