Nancy Pelosi Launches Campaign To Stop Stephen Colbert And Super PACs

Posted by on February 9, 2012 at 3:49 pm. 6 Comments :

The Democratic Leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has just launched a campaign to “Stop Colbert,” as in Stephen Colbert, the acerbic incarnation of right-wing blowhardism. The first shot in this battle, for which a brutal retaliation from Colbert can be expected after he gets back from vacation, is this video that Pelosi posted yesterday:

The issue is one that has become an integral part of this election year that has seen income inequality, corporate abuse of power, and fair elections, take precedence over almost every issue other than jobs. Pelosi sums up her position saying that…

“…House Democrats are reintroducing the DISCLOSE Act today to get unlimited, secret donations out of politics. The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United opened the floodgates to unrestricted special interest campaign donations in American elections—permitting corporations to spend unlimited funds, directly or through third parties and Political Action Committees organized for those purposes, to influence Federal elections and opened the door for the emergence of Super PACs.”

It is Colbert who has succeeded in making Super PACs one of the most reviled political devices ever conceived. And he did it by starting his own (Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow) and demonstrating how easy it is to collect huge sums of money from secret sources and spending it on self-serving activities without any unaccountability whatsoever.

The issue made headlines this week when President Obama announced that he would not oppose the formation of Super PACs to support his reelection. Republicans immediately pounced on the announcement, portraying it as a flip-flop of his previously expressed position against Super PACs. Of course, Obama did not flip-flop at all. He is still against Super PACS, he has just resigned himself to the fact that they are a part of the electoral process as it currently exists and that abstaining from using them would amount to a unilateral disarmament that would permit Republicans to vastly outspend Democrats this year.

Obama and other Democrats still intend to pursue an agenda to bring an end to the practice as quickly as they can get support from enough members of the GOP to pass legislation like the DISCLOSE Act which Pelosi is addressing in the video above. It is only by the obstructionism of the GOP that the bill has not already become law.

Pelosi is firing both barrels at Colbert in the video. She hammers him for “taking secret money from special interests” and for being “out of control.” And she nails him for his hatred of kittens. As an aside, she zings Newt Gingrich with what could be a fatal blow by referring to him as her friend. If Gingrich’s campaign weren’t already dead, this would surely kill it.

Still, this campaign aimed at Colbert is a big step for Pelosi and company. It was not that long ago that one of Pelosi’s top lieutenants in the House was advising Democratic members to refrain from appearing on The Colbert Report. Rahm Emanuel was the Democratic Caucus chairman before leaving to become Obama’s Chief of Staff, and then mayor of Chicago. But back in March of 2007. while still a member of Congress, Emanuel told his colleagues to “steer clear of Stephen Colbert.” That advice was widely ignored, to the dismay of many congressmen with deficient senses of humor.

The DISCLOSE Act is an important first step in restoring the power of people over corporations and wealthy special interests. Pelosi’s efforts on behalf of this bill are welcome. But in this topsy-turvy world it may turn out that Colbert will wield more influence over the matter in the long run. His brilliant comedic sensibility and fearlessness in injecting his satire into the real world is having an impact that could never have been anticipated. And as Pelosi says, He.Must.Be.Stopped!

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Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Obama Downgrade Threat

Posted by on February 9, 2012 at 10:59 am. 1 Comments :

Once again Fox News has twisted the facts of a breaking story beyond all recognition. The headline on their Fox Nation blog reads: S&P Threatens Obama With Another Downgrade.

Fox Nation

The Fox Nationalists link to an article on Zero Hedge where the original headline says: S&P Threatens US With Another Downgrade. That is an obviously more accurate representation of the opinion expressed by S&P’s John Chambers, who was not threatening Obama at all. The prospect of another credit rating downgrade was directed at the United States, not the White House. Furthermore, its impact will be felt by the nation as a whole, not by the President as an individual.

If anything, the threat was aimed more at Congress, because that is where the budget is drafted, and it is where S&P has previously laid the blame for the downgrade. In their decision last August to drop the U.S. from AAA to AA+, S&P hammered at the disfunctionality of the Tea Party purists in the House who seemed to hunger for an American default:

[T]he downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges […] The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.

Tea Party DowngradeChambers noted in his latest comments that the “political brinkmanship hasn’t gone away. That simply doesn’t happen in other AAA economies.” Indeed, the same intransigent Tea Party extremists are presently attempting to welch on prior agreements on payroll tax cuts and budget reductions stipulated by the failure of the so-called Super Committee to arrive at a compromise spending bill.

The absurdity of Fox Nation trying to suggest that S&P is threatening Obama makes more sense when you recognize that the mission of Fox News is to disparage the President at every conceivable opportunity. They don’t care whether or not the criticism is factual. The only thing they are concerned with is their obsession with personalizing every negative event as being solely attributable to Obama in particular and Democrats in general. That agenda is not only dishonest, but it is also harmful in that it distracts from the real concerns presented by potential occurrences that will affect the entire nation and every citizen in it.

Fox News doesn’t care about the harm it produces. It only cares about harming Obama and running him out of Washington. Never mind that even if they were successful it wouldn’t change the S&P analysis one bit since it is Congress who is responsible for the budget. The determination of Fox News to harm the country is evident everyday. It is evident in their lamenting of lower unemployment rates, which they dismiss as contrived. And it is evident in their disdain for improvements in American manufacturing in auto and other industries. If there is one thing that is clear about Fox News it is that they revel in bad news for America and they are willing to hurt the country in order to achieve their rightist political goals.


James O’Keefe Reaches New Heights Of Stupidity – And Irrelevance

Posted by on February 9, 2012 at 2:56 am. 2 Comments :

James O'KeefeThe biggest joke in the modern era of pseudo-reality television has struck again. Crockumentary videographer James O’Keefe posted a new video purporting to reveal the potential for voter fraud in Minnesota.

I’m not going to waste much space refuting the inane premise of his video. That has already been done quite well by Brad Friedman at the Brad Blog and Tommy Christopher at Mediaite. Suffice to say that O’Keefe’s escapade proved absolutely nothing.

The short story is that he entered a few Minnesota county offices and misrepresented himself as a “third party” who was interested in helping other citizens to register who were unable to do so themselves. All that this amounted to was collecting an application for an absentee ballot, which anybody can do. However, filling out and submitting the application must be done by the actual voter and requires identification or a verified witness. And voters who register this way must present ID when voting for the first time at a polling place. But, O’Keefe never went that far, nor mentioned those facts. He simply implied that picking up the application form was evidence of potential for fraud.

The only crime that may have occurred here is the videotaping that O’Keefe did without the permission of the subjects. O’Keefe, a convicted criminal himself, is already under investigation for that crime in other states. He is also being sued for having slandered people through the dishonest and deceptive editing of his video stings.

The whole gambit, like most of O’Keefe’s charades, was a pointless exercise that proved nothing. His intent was to validate the manufactured right-wing hysteria over voter fraud that is being used to promote the passage of voter ID laws that make it more difficult for seniors, students, the poor, and the disabled to vote. It is part of a coordinated campaign to suppress the vote of predominantly Democratic constituencies. It should also be noted that none of these voter ID laws would have prevented what O’Keefe is attempting to do in his video.

So it isn’t news that O’Keefe is distributing yet another fraudulent video that serves no purpose other than maligning the innocent and alleging non-existent atrocities. What’s news is that even fewer people actually care about any of the fakery he is spewing. His first phony (and thoroughly debunked) videos about ACORN were featured on Andrew Breitbarts’s BigJournalism blog and Fox News. More recently O’Keefe was only able to interest Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller. But this new video is going nowhere fast. The usual right-wing propagandists are steering clear. Perhaps even they are finally too embarrassed to be associated with this hoaxter.


Why Is The Media Pretending That Santorum’s Victories Mean Anything?

Posted by on February 8, 2012 at 3:32 pm. 5 Comments :

Yesterday there were another trio of Republican primary contests. They were held in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado. The surprising thing about the results is not that Rick Santorum finished first in all three, it’s that anybody cares at all about these results.

There exactly zero delegates awarded last night. Santorum’s prospects for winning the nomination are no better today than they were yesterday. And for the record, yesterday he did not have a tea bag’s chance in Jello.

Nevertheless, the media is awash in speculation that this meaningless sweep of delegate-free states has somehow turned the election on its ear. They are openly challenging what they previously proclaimed was the inevitability of Mitt Romney. But come Super Tuesday they will see that Romney is just as inevitable as he ever was. Romney will be the GOP nominee. The only scenario in which that will not come to pass is if he makes a phenomenal mistake, or there is a brokered convention led by a conservative delegate revolt.

So why is the media carrying on this way? Because they are placing their priorities where they always place them – on money. Contested elections are a steaming swamp of melodrama. The only thing about these races that make them interesting enough for most people to follow is their entertainment value, and controversy = entertainment. Therefore, the networks do not want the race to be over because it would put an end to the reason that anyone is paying attention. They certainly are not watching to hear for the 47th time that Obama is an incompetent, Soros-funded, Muslim, Alinskyite. And they aren’t watching to learn the candidates’ positions on abortion or taxes.

The only reasons that viewers tune in are: 1) To witness a horrifying train wreck, or 2) To keep up with the horse race. Since no one but the candidates have any control over the potential for train wrecks, the media has to keep the fallacy of a fluid horse race alive in order to continue to draw an audience. Consequently, we have this pointless discussion of Santorum as a viable candidate with a real chance of winning the nomination. He doesn’t. Neither does Gingrich. Neither does Paul. And the media knows it.

The audience is being played by a marketing machine that is only concerned with how many impressions they can deliver for the next Appleby’s commercial. It is a pathetic rejection of the sort of honest journalism that should be informing people about the real issues in the race. The sooner that people stop being excited about irrelevancies like primaries that don’t award delegates and endorsements from clowns like Donald Trump, the sooner we can focus on what’s important and on what will actually have an impact on our lives.


The Mitt Romney Gaffe That Everyone Missed

Posted by on February 6, 2012 at 12:09 pm. 6 Comments :

Over the past few weeks there has been a lot of attention paid to some questionable remarks by GOP frontrunner, Mitt Romney. The tone-deaf nature of his candid statements repeatedly paint a picture of an elitist multimillionaire who is dreadfully out-of-touch with ordinary Americans.

A political candidate ought not to say aloud that he enjoys firing people. Especially one that has a professional resume of doing just that as a corporate raider. Romney can’t claim that he is unaware of the optics of such statements because he already admitted his consciousness of the potential fallout when he responded to a primary debate question about hiring undocumented workers by saying that he couldn’t do such a thing because he’s “running for office, for Pete’s sake”.

Despite his alleged sensitivity to what his words might convey, Romney still let loose a series of eye poppers including his business friendly “Corporations are people, my friend,” his lament that “I’m also unemployed,” and his unwholesome desire to hang Obama with a misery index. Even Republicans’ jaws dropped when they heard Romney tell Soledad O’Brien that he is “not concerned about the very poor.”

Romney’s Nevada victory speech sought to repair some of that damage by telling his exuberant followers that “I’ve walked in Nevada neighborhoods, blighted by abandoned homes, where people wonder why Barack Obama failed them.” If that’s true he managed to do it after having ditched the press and his own PR staff, because there is no documentation of such a stroll, nor of gathering hordes of unfortunates disappointed in Obama. And as if that weren’t enough, Romney celebrated his Nevada victory by repeatedly coming perilously close to referring to Obama as “The Help.”

“Four years ago, candidate Obama came to Nevada, promising to help. […] his help was telling people to skip coming here for conventions. […] Mr. President, Nevada has had enough of your kind of help. […] Mr. President, America has also had enough of your kind of help.”

You can almost hear Romney adding, “If you want to help, Mr. President, bring out some more h’orderves, and give the Bentley a good wash and wax.”

The Help


Ayn Rand Redux: Atlas Shrugged Part 2 Set To Fizzle This Fall

Posted by on February 4, 2012 at 1:48 pm. 4 Comments :

The second installment of the threatened cinematic trilogy of Ayn Rand’s insipid novel Atlas Shrugged is set for release in October of this year, a month before the presidential election. The release date was deliberately chosen by the producers for its political significance despite the fact that they haven’t even begun production.

John Aglialoro and Harmon Kaslow, reprising their roles as producers, claim that part two is fully funded. And why shouldn’t it be? Part one, which ran for all of five weeks last year, was universally panned by critics and theater-goers, and earned back only one-fifth of what it cost to produce and distribute. This dismal performance was achieved despite a massive effort on the part of right-wing media and Tea Party activists to prop up the film.

Everyone from Andrew Breitbart, to the Koch brothers, and John Boehner, and, of course, Fox News, joined the hype campaign with the vain hope of turning this turkey into a hit. The day care kiddies at Fox & Friends spun the story so hard they must have gotten nauseous the next day when the producers contradicted their phony hoopla and publicly admitted that they had a bomb on their hands.

The hype has apparently already begun with an article by Paul Bond in the Hollywood Reporter that inexplicably describes Atlas Shrugged part one as having “earned a respectable $5,640 per theater.” Respectable to whom? That is an even lower take than the unmitigated theatrical disaster of Sarah Palin’s Undefeated, which pulled in only $6,500 per screen before shuffling off to an early video demise. By contrast, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth did $70,000 per screen; Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story did $58,000 per screen; Banksy’s Exit Through The Gift Shop did $21,000 per screen.

Adding to the irony is the fact that under Rand’s philosophy this film project should be abandoned. The obedience to free market principles demands that failures such as this be relegated to history’s garbage heap. But conservatives always exempt themselves from the rules they apply to everyone else. So the [dog and pony] show must go on. Here’s a peek at the promotional trailer just released that features absolutely nothing from the actual film:

Wow. Compelling stuff. The promo begins with Glenn Beck and features snippets from six people who don’t do much more than mention Rand’s name. Five of the six are Fox News personalities (how did Phil Donahue get mixed up in this?). Who do you suppose this film is being targeted at? The rest of the promo shows a clip of Rand that conveniently leaves out her notoriously anti-American, atheistic views. Perhaps this would have made a better promo:

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Glenn Beck Celebrates The Death Of A President

Posted by on February 4, 2012 at 9:06 am. 14 Comments :

For anyone who was wondering, yes, Glenn Beck is still around. He may have been ousted from Fox News and reduced to posting Internet videos from his basement, but he’s still out there spewing his hate speech and conspiracy theories.

Field Marshal Beck

It’s actually a pretty sad spectacle. He’s taken to dressing like a field marshal of some fantasy army, and he insists on referring to his pathetic home movies as a television network, despite the fact that it isn’t a network and it’s not on television.

On Friday’s episode of his radio program, Beck launched into a typically repulsive tirade against one of his favorite targets, President Woodrow Wilson, whom Beck regards as evil. As it turns out, today is special day for Beck:

“This is the happiest day of the year for me. Every single year I celebrate. I’m thinking about putting up a tree today. Today is the day that in 1924 Woodrow Wilson dies – that son of a bitch. And I’m happy.”

It isn’t often that you hear public figures express such joy over the demise of national leaders who were democratically elected by the American people, particularly when they are known for being so pretentiously patriotic that they break down sobbing at the thought of how much they love their country. Imagine Beck’s reaction if someone were to throw a party commemorating the day Ronald Reagan descended to his eternal resting place in Hell. But Beck has a palpable lust for this self-declared holiday of morbidity. And that isn’t even the worst part of his ravings. He went on to say that Wilson was…

“…one of the worst presidents in the United States. He’s one of the founding fathers of the new United States of America. Theodore Roosevelt was of them too. This guy that we have in office now … he’s doing the same thing.”

So let me get this straight. Beck thinks that Woodrow Wilson is an evil S.O.B. whose death is cause for celebration. And Barack Obama is doing the same things for which Beck hates Wilson. The clear message that Beck is sending to his rabid disciples is that Obama’s death would also be a cause for celebration. That’s the level of hostility that Beck projects almost every day. Let’s just hope that none of his followers are motivated by this disgusting rhetoric to attempt to impress Beck by carrying out his fantasy.


Now It’s A Holy War: The Fox Nation Launches A Crusade

Posted by on February 3, 2012 at 1:41 pm. 7 Comments :

Notice a pattern here:

Fox Nation Holy War

Fox News has been at war against Democrats and liberals since its inception. The have declared wars on Christmas, environmentalism, community organizers, students, seniors, the poor, and on and on. The election season has seen a ramping up of their instigation of class war.

None of that has managed to pick up support from the American people who are the real targets of these invented wars. The class war, in particular, has been a resounding failure for Fox because the country has consistently sided with the 99% over the GOP (Greedy One Percent).

So the Fox Nationalists are upping the ante by sending their troops on a mission to invade the Kingdom of Heaven. This is no longer a battle of mortals, but a celestial conflagration that they are blaming on President Obama.

Once again, the rightist crusaders are demonstrating their rank hypocrisy by lambasting the President for daring to quote scripture. Conservatives have built a cottage industry of forcing their religious beliefs into the political arena. They demand that Christian dogma be codified into law. They insist that Christian fables be taught as if they were historically affirmed. They falsely assert that the nation’s founders were devout Christians who intended their faith to direct the course of the country. They complain bitterly that Christians are the only group that are discriminated against. They are, to be succinct, delusional.

So it’s onward Republican soldiers, and marching lockstep with them are the Murdoch Militia, valiantly defending America from DemonCrats and spreading their message of an imminent Armageddon. And all because they can’t abide the fact that a Democratic President shares their faith.


IT’S OFFICIAL: Trumpney Is Born

Posted by on February 2, 2012 at 3:10 pm. 4 Comments :

Today will be remembered in the annals of political history as the day a hybrid presidential candidate was unleashed on America. A candidate that incorporates the wealth and breeding of a political dynasty with the riches and elitism of a casino boss.

Trumpney

Mitt Romney and Donald Trump have much in common. They are both filthy rich. They have both presided over businesses that went bankrupt. They both like to fire people, as they have said:

Romney: I like to fire people.
Trump: You’re fired.

Perhaps the most significant of their shared characteristics is that they are both proud members of the GOP (Greedy One Percent). That affiliation has got to be the worst timing for a political campaign in a year when the abuse of wealth, corporate power, and the marriage of the two, has become such a volatile political issue.

Romney’s campaign is already hampered by the popular impression that he is an out-of-touch, elitist, multimillionaire. His previous comments about being one of the unemployed, defending the personhood of corporations, and casually making $10,000 bets, has already hurt Romney with middle-class and independent voters. And now, the day after he told CNN that he “doesn’t care about the very poor,” he hooks up with America’s prime example of extravagant excess. Couldn’t they have waited a week or two?

Not that that would have helped much. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, the Trump endorsement is toxic. The survey revealed that 20% of the respondents said that they would be “less likely” to vote for a candidate that Trump had endorsed. Indeed, the survey showed that Trump would scare off more voters than any of the other people tested.

Finally, Romney will have a lot to answer for. Some of the questions that should be put to him include:

  • Do you believe Obama’s birth certificate is real?
  • Do you believe Obama is a Christian?
  • Do you believe Obama wrote his own books?
  • Do you believe Obama earned his academic credentials?

Those are all issues that Trump has highlighted in his media escapades, and he has made it clear that he would answer every one of those questions in the negative. Where does Romney stand?

So Trumpney has been loosed on the world. And comedians everywhere are gasping for breath as they scribble feverishly in their notebooks. This campaign just keeps getting better. With the potential for endless hilarity, November will come all too soon.


Fox News Is SHOCKED That Obama Has Christian Values

Posted by on February 2, 2012 at 11:32 am. 4 Comments :

Seriously, Fox News? Are you seriously expressing disdain for President Obama’s remarks at the annual National Prayer Breakfast about how his faith has helped form his policy opinions?

Fox Nation

The arch-conservative, fundamentalists in America have spent decades insisting that America is a Christian nation and that the country must submit to their spiritual dogma. They have attempted to, and in many cases succeeded in, passing bills that legislatively adopt their religious principles, from abortion to creationism. And Fox Pews…I mean News has adopted the crusade of the religious right as their own.

The one Christian principle that is almost always left out of the fundamentalist agenda is the one that preaches compassion for the poor and Jesus’ admonition that “whatever you do (do not do) for the least of these you do (do not do) for me.” Now when the President articulates his principles of Christian faith at a prayer breakfast he is criticized for it with a distinct implication that it was somehow inappropriate.

OK, fine. Let’s all agree that injecting religion into public policy is inadvisable and promise to refrain from doing it. But that has to apply to all sides. The Christian Taliban can no longer try to shove its philosophy down the throats of their fellow citizens. There will be no more sermonizing on God’s alleged will. No more phony wars on Christmas. No more prayers to open congressional hearings. And if the right will not agree to these terms, then they have to shut up when the President makes barely religious comments like this:

“When I talk about our financial institutions playing by the same rules as folks on Main Street, when I talk about making sure insurance companies aren’t discriminating against those who are already sick or making sure that unscrupulous lenders aren’t taking advantage of most vulnerable among us, I do so because I genuinely believe it will make the economy stronger for everybody. But I also do it because I know far too many neighbors in our country have been hurt and treated unfairly over the last few years. And I believe in God’s command to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.”

[…] “I actually think that is going to make economic sense, but for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that ‘for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.'”

Unfortunately, the Evangelicans will never surrender their arrogant superiority long enough to permit America to have true freedom of religion. And they will likewise refuse to refrain from castigating Democrats when they exercise their religious liberties. That’s just the nature of the sanctimonious hypocrisy embraced by the practitioners of religious tyranny.