Beware of the Cowardly Deficit Vultures and Peacocks

Beware of the Cowardly Deficit Vultures and Peacocks

There's an invasive species in our national discourse, a recent arrival in our civic forest. It's the "yellow-bellied deficit vulture," recently spotted circling the Capitol building and heard squawking on syndicated talk shows.

You can identify the vulture by its distinct screech it uses to selectively attack spending choices like unemployment benefits for hard-pressed workers. The vulture flaps furiously about President Barack Obama's spending in response to the worst economic meltdown in 60 years. But it is close-beaked about the previous decade, when both parties in Congress and President George W. Bush borrowed trillions of dollars to fight two wars and give tax cuts to corporations and the super-wealthy. He's also eerily silent about the $1 trillion over 10 years in military spending waste, identified by the Sustainable Defense Task Force watchdog panel.

That's because the yellow-bellied deficit vulture has powerful interests to defend and is determined to keep some things "off the table." Fortunately, this vulture is conspicuous with its bright tail-feathers of excessive political partisanship.

To be clear, the vulture is distinct from the vigilant "deficit hawk," which, like most Americans, is concerned about the national deficit and its impact on our economy and future generations. It can recognize the urgent need to assess the causes of the deficit and make thoughtful choices going forward. A mature hawk knows that budget politics are complicated and that borrowing is the path of least resistance for both major political parties. It understands the pressure that politicians face from powerful constituents that want both tax cuts and preferential spending.

That's why a mature deficit hawk would reconsider the prudence of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for households with incomes over $250,000, which are due to expire at the end of this year. Retaining the tax cut would add $826 billion to the national debt over the next decade.

But the deficit vulture takes flight when faced with the possibility of reversing reckless tax cuts for multi-national corporations and the very wealthy. Instead, it appears bold about cutting retirement benefits for future generations.

Seasoned hawks also demonstrate support for two proposals that would generate over $200 billion per year and strengthen the U.S. economy: closing overseas tax havens and instituting a financial speculation tax. This is wisdom we should follow.

U.S. multinational banks and corporations use overseas tax havens to reduce or avoid taxes, adding billions to the deficit and creating phony subsidiaries in places like the Grand Cayman Islands. They compete unfairly against responsible domestic businesses that pay taxes. Such tax-dodging costs responsible American taxpayers an estimated $43 billion to $123 billion a year.

A financial speculation tax is a modest levy on financial transactions, such as the purchase and sale of stocks, bonds, derivatives, and swaps. One proposal would collect a penny on every four dollars of financial transactions, generating an estimated $177 billion a year. Hawks in England and Taiwan have secured such taxes on securities that encourage productive investment and discourage the kind of reckless trading that crashed our economy.

Here in America, the yellow-bellied deficit vulture is doing all it can to make sure we don't consider these proposals. It nests with corporations, squawking for tax breaks, bailouts, and military contracts that have little to do with national security. We can't allow this bird to distract us from the serious national discussion we need to have.

It might the biggest and least funny joke ever that the American people took seriously: The Bush tax cuts would help the economy grow. Now we have the Great Recession and the only people laughing are the wealthy that are going to stay wealthy whether they keep Bush's tax cuts and let them expire.

GOP Lawmaker Slips Up, Admits Tax Cuts Will ‘Increase The Debt’

Congressman Paul Ryan Plans to Shaft Seniors and Small Business With Crazy Roadmap

Crazy Rep. Paul Ryan(R) and His Wacky Budget Plan

The White House's 2011 budget is only the second-most interesting budget proposal released recently. First prize goes to Congressman Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, who's released a budget proposal that actually erases the massive long-term deficit.

That's not mere press release braggadocio. CBO agrees (pdf). Under the CBO's likeliest long-term scenario, deficits are at 42 percent of GDP in 2080. Under Ryan's proposal, we're seeing surpluses of 5 percent of GDP by that time.

But Ryan's budget -- and the details of its CBO score -- is also an object lesson in why so few politicians are willing to answer the question "but how will you save all that money?"

As you all know by now, the long-term budget deficit is largely driven by health-care costs. To move us to surpluses, Ryan's budget proposes reforms that are nothing short of violent. Medicare is privatized. Seniors get a voucher to buy private insurance, and the voucher's growth is far slower than the expected growth of health-care costs. Medicaid is also privatized. The employer tax exclusion is fully eliminated, replaced by a tax credit that grows more slowly than medical costs. And beyond health care, Social Security gets guaranteed, private accounts that CBO says will actually cost more than the present arrangement, further underscoring how ancillary the program is to our budget problem.

An important note to understanding how Ryan's budget saves money: It's not through privatization, though everything does get privatized. It's through firm, federal cost controls. The privatization itself actually costs money. The CBO's analysis of Ryan's Medicare changes tells the story well:

Both the level of expected federal spending on Medicare and the uncertainty surrounding that spending would decline, but enrollees’ spending for health care and the uncertainty surrounding that spending would increase.

Under the Roadmap, the value of the voucher would be less than expected Medicare spending per enrollee in 2021, when the voucher program would begin. In addition, Medicare’s current payment rates for providers are lower than those paid by commercial insurers, and the program’s administrative costs are lower than those for individually purchased insurance. Beneficiaries would therefore face higher premiums in the private market for a package of benefits similar to that currently provided by Medicare.

Moreover, the value of the voucher would grow significantly more slowly than CBO expects that Medicare spending per enrollee would grow under current law. Beneficiaries would therefore be likely to purchase less comprehensive health plans or plans more heavily managed than traditional Medicare, resulting in some combination of less use of health care services and less use of technologically advanced treatments than under current law. Beneficiaries would also bear the financial risk for the cost of buying insurance policies or the cost of obtaining health care services beyond what would be covered by their insurance.

That's a bit of a slog, so here's the translation: The proposal would shift risk from the federal government to seniors themselves. The money seniors would get to buy their own policies would grow more slowly than their health-care costs, and more slowly than their expected Medicare benefits, which means that they'd need to either cut back on how comprehensive their insurance is or how much health-care they purchase. Exacerbating the situation -- and this is important -- Medicare currently pays providers less and works more efficiently than private insurers, so seniors trying to purchase a plan equivalent to Medicare would pay more for it on the private market.

Ryan is claiming his plan will work because under perfect conditions - a perfect stock market, everyone doesn't get to collect Medicare or Social Security until they're 69 and tons of other ifs - even than we'll have a multi-trillion dollar difficult as taxes(Ryan's tax hikes on small business) go up.

Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) Suggests Committing Treason If Voters Reject Right Wing Views On Constitution

Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) Suggests Committing Treason If Voters Reject Right Wing Views On Constitution

In an interview with Hotline OnCall, Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) suggested forming a new Confederacy if voters reject the “tenther” view that laws that conservatives disapprove of violate the Constitution:

“I hope that the American people will go to the ballot box in 2010 and 2012 so that states are not forced to consider separation from this government,” said Wamp during an interview with Hotline OnCall.

He lauded Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), who first floated the idea of secession in April ‘09, for leading the push-back against health care reform, adding that he hopes the American people “will send people to Washington that will, in 2010 and 2012, strictly adhere” to the constitution’s defined role for the federal government.

“Patriots like Rick Perry have talked about these issues because the federal government is putting us in an untenable position at the state level,” said Wamp[.]

Like Wamp and Perry, many right-wing lawmakers embrace lunatic legal theories — and their numbers grew significantly once President Obama took office. Right-wing Governors Bob McDonnell (R-VA) and Bobby Jindal (R-LA) both signed wildly unconstitutional bills attempting to nullify health reform. Tenther Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas thinks that the ban on whites-only lunch counters is unconstitutional, and other tenther officials claim that everything from Social Security to Medicare to the federal highway system is unconstitutional.

Moreover, while Wamp and Perry’s secessionary agenda puts them at odds with the Constitution and the American people, it does have one famous precedent supporting it. In 1860, American voters elected an obscure former congressman named “Abraham Lincoln” to the presidency. Eleven southern states — all of whom disagreed with the new president on the issue of slavery — soon decided that they didn’t want to be bound by the results of that election. Before Wamp starts campaigning to become the next Jefferson Davis, however, he might want to give some thought to what happened the last time right-wing state governments engaged in an act of mass treason.

Not always, but usually when conservatives talk about patriotism it is merely right-wing code for committing treason or sedition of some sort. They do not love a United States that aspires to great ideals they aspire to the tenets of the Confederacy.

Even when in error, Andrew Breitbart is on the attack - The conservative agitator didn't bother to vet the video that damaged Shirley Sherrod's character, yet he's unapologetic.

Is Senate GOP Candidate Carly Fiorina a Loon Without a Clue

Senate GOP Candidate Carly Fiorina Flip-Flops On Unemployment Benefits

After weeks of Republican obstructionism, the Senate — in a 60-40 vote yesterday — cleared the way for the extension of unemployment benefits to millions of struggling Americans. In California alone, where current unemployment is 12.3%, the state’s Employment Development Department reports, “the delay in benefit extension…affected about 260,000 jobless Californians.” In an interview with San Francisco’s KGO-AM radio yesterday, California’s GOP Senate candidate abandoned her former stance on extending unemployment benefits, indicating she would now “probably” support the extension if she was elected:

“I probably would vote for this extension, but I’ll tell you what, I think it is absolutely appropriate for people to stand on their desks and say, ‘When is it that we’re finally going to do what needs to be done and cut government spending?’” Fiorina said.

This statement stands in sharp contrast to the GOP candidate’s previous sentiments. In June, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow asked Fiorina if her time at HP qualifies her “to go after the government payrolls…to make the spending cuts in their salaries and their benefits.” Fiorina said “sure.” And earlier this month, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO told Good Morning America she would not have voted for the unemployment bill “the way it is put together today” and — like many of her Republican colleagues — cited concerns over the deficit to justify her position.

Although the GOP candidate has had a change of heart on unemployment benefits, still, as Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo points out, “Fiorina’s only real solution to anything is to cut taxes. But that doesn’t do much good for those who are already out of work and have no taxable income, and it doesn’t spur demand that will give businesses more customers and thus a reason to expand.”

Fiorina could not run HP. Has no ideas except recycled far right-wing talking points and the desire to re-implement the failed policies of the Bush administration. So this is the voice of change and good government?

Latest Daily Caller Journolist exposé even more lame than the first

Black Panthers and the DOJ - Another Conservative Hunt for a Blue Dress

Finally, the NBPP case offers an allegation worth investigating

Commission on Civil Rights vice-chairwoman Abigail Thernstrom has delivered what should be a lethal blow to the Fox News-hyped "scandal" regarding the Department of Justice and the New Black Panther Party. And she's also turned the New Black Panther case into something the media would be justified in investigating.

In the course of an interview with Politico's Ben Smith, Thernstrom, a conservative who was appointed by George W. Bush, alleged that the conservatives she serves with on the commission seized on the New Black Panther case not out of concern for civil rights and the law, but rather to wield it as a cudgel against the Obama administration and Attorney General Eric Holder. In stark language, Thernstrom claimed that her colleagues held "fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration," and that they "had this wild notion they could bring Eric Holder down and really damage the president."

Thernstrom has effectively confirmed what most of us already assumed to be true -- that the New Black Panther Party allegations are nothing more than invidious political hackery. And it should be noted that Thernstrom's claims carry more credibility than anything J. Christian Adams, the GOP activist and former DOJ attorney whose allegations of institutional racial bias at DOJ form the spine of the NBPP non-scandal, has thus far brought to bear; she clearly isn't grinding any political axes, and she boasts first-hand knowledge of the events she says transpired.

The DOJ will never be free of politics regardless of the party in power, but it is amazing that Republicans still have enough personnel and man-power at the DOJ to use it for political ends.

Ryan J. Murdough, a Republican New Hampshire State House Candidate Advises Tea Party To Be More Open With Its Racism

Strange Brew: The Constitution According to the Tea Party

Republicans Pissed Off Because Stimulus Saved Jobs

Wallace Presses Pence On How He Can Call The Stimulus A ‘Failure’ In The Face Of Job Growth

Republicans continue to rail against the stimulus, even though economists agree that the program has created a significant number of jobs. Last week, the White House Council of Economic Advisers said the Recovery Act has saved or created 3.6 million jobs. A recent report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) also found that the stimulus “has increased the number of workers by between 1.2 million and 2.8 million” and projects that “3.7 million jobs could be attributed to the stimulus by the end of September.”

Today, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace presented Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) with the CBO number and asked him how he could still say that the Recovery Act has “failed” in the face of this nonpartisan evidence:

WALLACE: These are numbers from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It estimates the stimulus has boosted growth between 1.7 and 4.2 percent, and it’s increased the number of people unemployed by 2-2.8 million. Congressman Pence, is that failure?

PENCE: Look, the reality is the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that is that part of our government that tracks the economy when people are hired and fired, says that since the stimulus was passed, we’ve lost 3 million jobs overall. About 2.5 million jobs net. The reality is unemployment today over 14 million Americans are unemployed; that’s exactly what it was a year ago. The American people know. We can’t borrow and spend and bail our way back to a growing economy.

WALLACE: But what about the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office just in effect saying, it would have been worse, and the fact is that it has boosted growth, it has gotten millions of people employed?

PENCE: Well, our economy is beginning to grow in a tepid way on the margins, I would argue in spite of the prescriptions of the physicians in Washington, DC. The American people know what’s necessary to get this economy moving again. It’s fiscal discipline in Washington, DC, and across-the-board tax relief for working families, small businesses, and family farms.


Basically, Pence seems to be saying that because unemployment hasn’t been completely eradicated, the stimulus must be a failure. But it’s important to remember the hole the country had to dig itself out of from the Bush administration, and the fact that unemployment would be even higher without the stimulus:

Many Republicans continue to go around and pretend that the stimulus hasn’t created any new jobs, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Last week, ThinkProgress attended a job fair hosted by Rep. Eric Cantor where the businesses in attendance had received more than $52 million in federal stimulus funds. Other Republicans who voted against the stimulus have similarly had no problem taking credit for its success.

The Republican plan for the 2010 and 2012 elections is to do everything they can to make sure the economy is in the tank and if that doesn't work, lie and lie often. Why do conservatives hate America.

Wash Post gives New Black Panther story new life
Just when the peddlers of the phony "corruption" claim are discredited

Scott Brown’s Facebook Fans Are FURIOUS At Scott Brown Again

What's Wrong With America? The Legacy of Conservatism

Americans Blame Bush, Not Obama, for Deficit, Jobs, Afghan War

Democrats, facing a U.S. electorate angry about the economy and other issues, still have one political asset: George W. Bush.

The former Republican president is blamed more than President Barack Obama for the budget deficit, unemployment and illegal immigration, according to a Bloomberg National Poll conducted July 9-12.

Most surprising is that 60 percent say Bush is primarily responsible for the current situation in Afghanistan. Just 10 percent point to Obama, who has ordered 51,000 additional troops to that country since taking office, doubling the number deployed by Bush.

When Obama entered office in January 2009, there had been 568 U.S. casualties associated with the Afghanistan conflict, a number that has grown to 1,086, as of yesterday, according to the Defense Department. The president has vowed to start withdrawing forces in July 2011, with the pacing determined by conditions on the ground.

“The public remembers the Bush years as a tumultuous time of costly wars, and the years when a budget surplus became a deficit,” said J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., a Des Moines, Iowa-based firm that conducted the survey.

Katrina, Gulf Spill

Asked to compare Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina with Obama’s handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, 51 percent say Bush’s performance was worse, while 35 percent name Obama. Republicans are more likely to pan Obama’s performance on the oil spill, with 69 percent saying he did worse than Bush.

Facing a tough environment in the November congressional elections, when their control of both chambers may be at stake, Obama and his fellow Democrats often mention the problems they inherited from the previous administration, which left the White House 18 months ago.

“They spent a decade driving the economy into a ditch,” Obama, 48, said at a Las Vegas fundraiser on July 8 for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. “And now they’re asking for the keys back. And my answer is, ‘no, you can’t have the keys. You can’t drive. You don’t know how to drive. You drive in the wrong direction.’”

. On unemployment, Bush is listed as most responsible by 32 percent, compared with 22 percent for Obama. Those with incomes below $25,000 are more likely to blame Bush for the unemployment rate, which was 9.5 percent in June.

‘Getting Worse’

“Bush was there for eight years and everything just kept getting worse,” says poll participant Kelly Redding, 31, an independent voter from Columbus, Ohio. “Obama can’t perform miracles overnight.”

Jeremy Dawson, 31, who has served three tours in Iraq, is among those who blame Bush more than Obama for some of the nation’s biggest problems.

“He focused so much on Iraq and Afghanistan and not enough on America,” says Dawson, who votes as an independent. “There was little or nothing being done in this country.”

Conservatives should be getting one hundred percent of the blame, but many Republicans have considerable powers of denial when it comes to accepting responsibility.

58% of Real Income Growth Since 1976 Went to Top 1% (and Why That Matters)

Tea Party NY Gov Candidate's E-Mails Exposed: Racism, Porn, Bestiality

Tea Party Express spokesperson Mark Williams’ litany of bigoted comments.

Iowa Tea Party Insults the Memory of Those Lost in Holocaust

North Iowa Tea Party displays billboard comparing Obama to Hitler.

The North Iowa Tea party, like many sympathizers of the movement, denounce media attempts to portray tea party members as extreme or outside the mainstream. On its website, the North Iowa Tea party links directly to a report by the conservative Media Research Center that decries the media’s characterization of Tea Party protesters as “‘ugly,’ ‘unruly,’ ‘nasty’ mobs, with reporters presenting the most odious images (such as pictures of Obama drawn as Hitler) as somehow representative of the entire group.” Ironically, despite disassociating themselves from Obama-Hitler comparisons in the past, the North Iowa Tea Party is now a leading propagator of this abhorrent image. Last week, they created a billboard that features President Obama “flanked” by Adolph Hitler and Vladimir Lenin:

A new billboard in downtown Mason City features a photo of President Obama, flanked by pictures of German dictator Adolph Hitler and Communist leader Vladimir Lenin.

The billboard features phrases like “Live Free or Die” and “Radical leaders prey on the fearful and naive.”

It’s the same spot where a billboard last fall featured the phrase “Obama-Nation, Live Free or Die” with the Communist symbol of a hammer and sickle. The billboards were paid for by the North Iowa Tea Party.

Iowa Tea Party leaders now say they disagree with the use of the pictures, but not the Obama-is-Hitler message. North Iowa Tea Party co-founder Bob Johnson stated that while the “the pictures might be overwhelming,” the sign “highlights” the right message. Iowa state Tea Party coordinator John White agrees that while the “sign goes” where “the Tea Party doesn’t want to be”, “everything Obama has done is ‘lock-step’ with what Hitler did in his day.”

The tea nuts are nothing but conservatives that shroud their radicalism in fake patriotism and conspiracy theories. Everything they claim is socialists is either some program that started during Bush's presidency - like TARP and the GM bail-out. health care reform is a gift to private health insurance companies and health care corporations that will millions in new profits. How could these wackos not be described as extremists without a clue.

Manufactured scandal: Right wing's phony allegations against the Justice Department

A Clarification on the NBPP Case.

The original complaint in the NBPP case alleged that the behavior of the men outside the polling station was part of a larger scheme to disenfranchise white voters ("Prior to the election, Defendant New Black Panther Party For Self-Defense made statements and posted notice that over 300 members of the New Black Panther Party For Self-Defense would be deployed at polling locations during voting on November 4th 2008 throughout the United States"). But there's no evidence that's the case -- no voters in Philadelphia or elsewhere came forward to say they had been intimidated. One of them actually had a poll watching certificate, and the remarks from the NBPP leader state the obvious -- that the NBPP thought they were protecting blacks from being disenfranchised by whites. Basically what you have -- to the extent that you have anything -- is a conspiracy to wear black clothing outside of polling stations as part of a fringe group, which career attorneys at the Department of Justice weren't comfortable prosecuting as a violation of the Voting Rights Act.

Eek! Black Panthers!

In fact, no voters at all in the Philadelphia precinct have come forward to allege intimidation. The complaints have come from white Republican poll watchers, who have given no evidence they were registered to vote in the majority black precinct.

An Associated Press story inaccurately described the scene as one where white voters were being intimidated by the Black Panther members. The only white people at the scene that day appeared to be the Republican poll watchers. And Fox News host Megyn Kelly inaccurately described video taken of the incident as made by a “voter.” In fact, the video was made by Stephen Robert Morse, a blogger hired by the local Republican Party on behalf of the John McCain presidential campaign.

The Philadelphia video also did not capture any racial slurs, although the two Black Panthers were shown in an earlier National Geographic documentary using derogatory terms against whites. The Southern Poverty Law Center has classified the New Black Panther Party as a hate group.

The incident allegedly took place was at 1221 Fairmount Avenue in Philadelphia, where approximately 65% of the nearby residents are black.

A civil complaint was filed against the NBP by the Bush Justice Department on January 7, 2009. J. Christian Adams, a former Bush Campaign poll watcher, conservative activist, and now Fox News pundit, was the prosecutor assigned to the case. Adams had no experience in voting rights law or civil rights law when he was hired, but he did have an extensive background in Republican politics. When the Bush Justice Department decided to drop the case against all but one of the defendants, Adams was silent. But last month he resigned in protest. DOJ cited the lack of a pattern of intimidation and the fact that no voters actually came forward to say they had been intimidated. The Civil Rights Commission held a hearing about the matter last April:

"No citizen has even alleged that he or she was intimidated from voting." In an April 23 hearing on the DOJ's decision in the case, Civil Rights Commissioner Arlan Melendez stated that "no citizen has even alleged that he or she was intimidated from voting," which "was clear to the Justice Department last spring, which is why they took the course of action that they did."

Media Matters has published an extensive write-up of Adams and the "manufactured outrage" on the right.

The Tea Party is Part of a Tradition of Fake Patriots

The Tea Party

Tea Party: Nothing New. Nothing Big.

Was GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham correct when he told the New York Times Magazine that the Tea Party would "die out" because "they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country"?

It would be nice if that were the basis on which political parties and movements survived or collapsed. But the Republican Party did not have a coherent vision for governing the country between 2001 and 2008, and it is still around. (Michael Steele notwithstanding.)

The Tea Party can easily survive on blind hatred for responsive government, revulsion of shared responsibility, rampant misinformation and conspiracy theories.

How do I know? Because it has survived for decades.

The Tea Party is nothing new. It is merely the latest incarnation of the right-wing fringe that predictably overheats whenever a left-of-center reformer is elected to the presidency. It was the John Birch Society and the National Indignation Convention in the early 1960s, the Moral Majority and other "New Right" groups in the late 1970s, and Rush Limbaugh's "dittoheads" and the militia movement in the 1990s.

But survival is not the same as significant.

The Tea Party is not large. Poll after poll has shown the Tea Party to be nothing more than a far-right faction of the Republican Party. They do not represent anything close to a majority of the country (a mere 18 percent in the April New York Times poll). And the more other Americans hear about the Tea Party's conservative ideas, the less they like it.

And the Tea Party is not effective. After its main salvo to kill healthcare reform - spreading the "death panel" smear - was flatly debunked in the September 2009 presidential address, dubious Tea Party claims ceased to be an obstacle to passage. (Reluctant "centrist" Democrats, peddling their own false information about the cost of reform, were the ones who dragged out the process.) The Tea Party's follow-up attack, twisting the Wall Street reform bill into a "permanent bailout" bill, barely registered at all.

Yes, some of the Tea Party's favorite congressional candidates have won Republican primaries. But others have been complete flameouts. Moreover, a conservative candidate winning a Republican primary is a minor achievement at best, and a Pyrrhic victory at worst if these far-right candidates blow it in November and ruin Republican chances to make big gains.

Perhaps a fresh moniker will marginally help to invigorate a conservative base that was rattled by Barack Obama's solid election victory, which may boost Republican candidates in the November midterm elections. But midterm elections often feature an energized opposition while the party in power suffers a conflicted grassroots base in the aftermath of tough governing choices. There's little evidence the Tea Party is playing a unique role.

So why is the Tea Party perceived as being so influential?

Because we keep talking about it.

The traditional media has given them disproportionate coverage. No Tea Party protest has come close in size to the anti-Iraq War protests of the prior decade, but no media outlet was ever pre-occupied about how the anti-war movement might reshape national politics.

But the media does obsess about the Tea Party in part because both conservatives and liberals eagerly consume, click, blog and e-mail Tea Party coverage. It's more fun for liberals to be outraged by Glenn Beck than to make sense of Sen. Ben Nelson's votes, even if the latter is far more relevant to our ability to govern ourselves.

And the conservatives themselves are far savvier at manipulating this media dynamic - pushing liberal buttons that gin up online outrage and cable TV debates - than the PR-illiterate anti-war movement.

We will surely keep talking about the Tea Party, despite its meager impact on policy and ordinary impact on politics.

So don't expect the Tea Party to die out anytime soon. But do expect right-wingers to come up with a new catchy name for themselves when the next left-of-center reformer is sent to the White House.

In short conservatism is like a snake that has its head cut off, every few years it replaces the head with a new rebranded one to detract attention away from its miserable failures.

Deficit Fraud Jon Kyl(r-AZ): ‘You Should Never Have To Offset’ Tax Cuts

Immigration tall tales in Arizona

Headless bodies and other immigration tall tales in Arizona

The Arizona governor, seemingly determined to repel every last tourist dollar from her pariah state, has sounded a new alarm about border violence. "Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded," she announced on local television.

Ay, caramba! Those dark-skinned foreigners are now severing the heads of fair-haired Americans? Maybe they're also scalping them or shrinking them or putting them on a spike.

But those in fear of losing parts north of the neckline can relax. There's not a follicle of evidence to support Brewer's claim.

The Arizona Guardian Web site checked with medical examiners in Arizona's border counties, and the coroners said they had never seen an immigration-related beheading. I called and e-mailed Brewer's press office requesting documentation of decapitation; no reply.

Brewer's mindlessness about headlessness is just one of the immigration falsehoods being spread by Arizona politicians. Border violence on the rise? Phoenix becoming the world's No. 2 kidnapping capital? Illegal immigrants responsible for most police killings? The majority of those crossing the border are drug mules? All wrong.

This matters, because it means the entire premise of the Arizona immigration law is a fallacy. Arizona officials say they've had to step in because federal officials aren't doing enough to stem increasing border violence. The scary claims of violence, in turn, explain why the American public supports the Arizona crackdown.

Last year gave us death panels and granny killings, but compared with the nonsense justifying the immigration crackdown, the health-care debate was an evening at the Oxford Union Society.

Two months ago, the Arizona Republic published an exhaustive report that found that, according to statistics from the FBI and Arizona police agencies, crime in Arizona border towns has been "essentially flat for the past decade." For example, "In 2000, there were 23 rapes, robberies and murders in Nogales, Ariz. Last year, despite nearly a decade of population growth, there were 19 such crimes." The Pima County sheriff reported that "the border has never been more secure."

FBI statistics show violent crime rates in all of the border states are lower than they were a decade ago -- yet Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) reports that the violence is "the worst I have ever seen." President Obama justifiably asserted last week that "the southern border is more secure today than any time in the past 20 years," yet Rush Limbaugh judged the president to be "fit for the psycho ward" on the basis of that remark.

facts bounce off conservatives the bullets bounce off Superman. Republicans are impervious to reality. It keeps them from having to hold honest debates about any issue.

Dean Baker’s” THE CONSERVATIVE NANNY STATE – How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer”

Obama urges boosting clean energy tax credit

While campaigning for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is in a tough fight for re-election in Nevada, Obama called on Congress to extend a tax credit program to foster private investment in clean energy manufacturing.

He estimated that a the $5 billion expansion would generate nearly 40,000 jobs, and the $12 billion or more in private sector investment it is expected to trigger could create up to 90,000 more jobs.

A now-depleted $2.3 billion in clean energy tax credits was part of a $787 billion economic stimulus Obama signed last year to help lift the economy out of the worst recession in a generation. Many independent economists credit the package with helping to stave off a worse crisis.

There words say one thing, but their actions say another: Republicans like dirty energy and being dependent on Saudi Arabia and Russia for energy. And they do not want to transition to a green economy because that would mean more employed people which they cannot blame Obama for.

Conservatives Owned and Operated By Big Oil

THE GOP'S GENETIC LINK TO BIG OIL

If scientists were to compare the DNA of Republican congress-critters and of oil corporations, I'll bet they'd find that they match perfectly. After all, the two species have identical political instincts and seem to have a natural affinity for each other -- so I'm pretty sure they sprang from the same genetic pool.

How else can you explain the remarkable gusher of compassion that Republican lawmakers are presently directing toward Big Oil in general and BP in particular? For example, only hours after winning his party's nomination for a Kentucky Senate seat, GOP teabag darling Rand Paul was on national TV decrying Barack Obama as "un-American" for daring to demand that BP be held accountable for its human and ecological destruction in the Gulf of Mexico.

Next came Minnesota's Lioness of Loopiness, Michelle Bachmann, implying that the hard-hit people of the Gulf are shiftless moochers who're using the oil disaster to grab corporate cash. Brimming with tears of compassion, the kooky congresswoman wailed that "(BP) shouldn't have to be fleeced and made chumps to have to pay for perpetual unemployment and all the rest."

And who can ever forget the astonishing public apology to BP's CEO by the oil-soaked Texas Republican Joe Barton? After Obama had gotten agreement from BP to set aside $20 billion to cover some of the damages it has caused, Barton called Obama's actions a presidential "shakedown." He asserted that it made him "ashamed" to live in America, and he obsequiously begged forgiveness from the reckless CEO whose faulty wells killed 11 American workers and continues to do inestimable economic and ecological harm.

Speaking of ecological harm, nature needs us to focus. All of us who love polar bears, whales, seabirds and other wildlife should put our minds together to send an urgent telepathic message to the animals in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska. Our message is blunt: Flee! Flee as fast as you can! Flee, because BP is coming!

While our public attention has been riveted on BP's disastrous blowout in the Gulf, the British oil giant has been quietly and quickly drilling another risky offshore well three miles off Alaska's north coast.

Dubbed "Liberty," this project requires a technique called "extended reach," which is even more prone to explosions than the process used in the Gulf. First, BP is drilling down two miles under the Beaufort Sea, drilling sideways for up to eight miles to tap into one of our national oil reserves.

But wait -- didn't Obama impose a moratorium on such offshore drilling? Yes ... but when Liberty was planned in the George W. Bush years, it was magically declared by his Republican devil-may-care regulators to be an "onshore project." How can that be? Because the rig sits on a tiny artificial island that BP built, so -- voila! -- it's "onshore" even though it's three miles offshore.

The whole concept of modern conservatism rests on the same tenets of Reagan and the "Wall Street" years: Greed is good. It is amazing conservatives have any support at all from working class Americans since Republicans will always, always, always put the interests of the rich and powerful before the interests of American workers. Another case in point - MN GOP Gov. Candidate Tom Emmer's Idea For Economic Growth: Cut The Minimum Wage Of Bartenders And Waiters

Praise Ye Rep. Steve King (R-IA) Grand Wizard of the "well-informed truth"

Praise Ye Rep. Steve King (R-IA) Grand Wizard of the "well-informed truth"

This week on a local Iowa radio show, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) said the Obama administration has not responded adequately to BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But according to King, it wasn’t because there was confusion and disarray within the administration. Rather, the problem is that President Obama has it out for Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal because Jindal is a Republican:

CALLER: You know it’s absolutely despicable the way our president is acting on this oil slick. And it boils down that the governor is a Republican and Obama is a Democrat and he’s not gonna help in any way to make him, to help Louisiana. … So as far as I’m concerned the blood is on his hands. [...]

KING: I appreciate Larry’s statement and I agree with his analysis of it. As I watch the reluctance on the part of the White House to cooperate with Bobby Jindal. I’d like to think it’s being done out of policy perspective, but there is a political component. And to delay these skimmers all this time, and to refuse to wave the Jones Act, well essentially they passed that hot potato around, and nobody asked for it.


Not only is it absurd to suggest that the President is purposely refusing to give federal assistance to a state in an economic and environmental crisis because that state’s governor is of the opposite political party, but also, King’s accusation is based on a falsehood. In fact, Obama did not “refuse to wave the Jones Act,” as McClatchy reported this week:

Maritime law experts, government officials and independent researchers say that the claim is false. The Jones Act isn’t an impediment at all, they say, and it hasn’t blocked anything. “Totally not true,” said Mark Ruge, counsel to the Maritime Cabotage Task Force, a coalition of U.S. shipbuilders, operators and labor unions. “It is simply an urban myth that the Jones Act is the problem.”

Indeed, FactCheck.org has also weighed in, noting that “the Jones Act has yet to be an issue in the response efforts. … Reports claiming that the federal government has refused help are not only incorrect — foreign assistance has been utilized — but are also misleading.”

Earlier in the interview, King complained about the “professional hyperventilators out there that are monitoring everything that I and others say” and said, “My approach is to just go forward, make sure that what I say is based on solid, well informed, broad, in-depth truth.” “I just try to give well-grounded, well-informed truth,” King reiterated. It doesn’t seem like he’s off to a good start. (HT: Iowa Independent)

I must have missed the day in government civics when being a lying dirt bag was considered good patriotism. King receives over $190 thousand dollars a year to apparently do two things: makes sure the government does not work for the common good and pull opinions out of his lazy lying posterior.

Republicans Show American Working Class Contempt

Republican Jobs Plan: Kick Americans When We're Down

Today brought some sobering news on the jobs front - mainly due to the layoff in the Census workers, non-farm employment declined by 125,000 in June, although private sector employment grew (albeit at a lower-than-expected rate) by 83,000. The unemployment rate dipped a little and now stands at 9.5%.

In the middle of this, on Wednesday, Republicans once again blocked an unemployment extension bill on that would have extended unemployment benefits. Their excuse? The bill costs $34 billion and adds to the deficit. They have suddenly discovered an interest in the deficit. Never mind that they put two wars on the national credit card. Never mind that they put a giveaway to the health insurance industry (Medicare Part D) on the backs of future taxpayers. Never mind that their hero Dick Cheney thinks that deficits don't matter.

These would also be much the same republicans that voted for the multi-billion dollar TARP to rescue banks. Save the banks, screw the workers - typical conservative world view.

A Jobs Program That Works

It may be hard to believe, but it’s true. The program, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, allows states to use federal dollars to temporarily subsidize the salaries of individuals placed in private- and public-sector jobs. More than 30 states are participating.

The program, though small, appears to be working exceptionally well. States expect to have placed more than 200,000 individuals by this coming autumn. Some of those workers would otherwise have landed on welfare.

The catch — there is always a catch — is that the program will expire at the end of September if Congress does not act to extend it.

Expect himbo senator and tea bagger Scott Brown(R-Mass) to block renewing this program along with his fellow American worker haters in the Republican party.

"We are...Beck State!" Introducing Beck U. (seriously). Shouldn't Glenn The Dunce graduate from college before starting one.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) Has ‘No Idea’

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) Has ‘No Idea’ Whether He Would Have Voted To Confirm Thurgood Marshall

One of the main lines of attack that Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have deployed against Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court is her clerkship under under Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American justice. They have had no qualms about blasting the civil rights legend, with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) attacking Kagan’s association “with well-known activist judges who have used their power to redefine the meaning of our Constitution.” On Monday alone, Republicans mentioned Marshall 35 times during the hearing. By comparison, President Obama’s name was uttered only 14 times.

But today, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) went further than merely criticizing Marshall, telling ABC’s Top Line that he has “no idea” whether he would have voted to confirm Marshall, even while knowing his “entire record as a justice”:

KARL: How would you have voted, knowing all that you know — I mean, now you know his entire record as a justice — would you have voted no on a Thurgood Marshall nomination?

COBURN: I have no idea. I don’t know his writings. I think that’s an important part of her history, but not as important the two things that I just mentioned

Watch it:

Coburn joins fellow Judiciary Committee member Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who said yesterday that it was “hard to say” whether he would have supported Marshall. As Salon’s Steve Kornacki noted, “That’s a rather stunning statement when you consider the dynamics of Marshall’s 1967 confirmation.” Only 11 senators voted against Marshall, and their opposition “had everything to do with race — and, more specifically, with lingering white Southern resentment of the court’s 1954 school desegregation ruling (in which Marshall, as the NAACP’s chief counsel, had played a leading role).” All 11 were White and Southern, and most had signed the “Southern Manifesto,” a pro-segregation document drafted by the late Sen. Strom Thurmond.

Moreover, Republicans can’t seem to provide any evidence to support their claim that Marshall was an “activist” judge. Talking Points Memo asked Coburn, Hatch, and Sessions which of Marshall’s opinions best exemplified his activism — “none of them could name a single case.” As the National Urban League’s Stephanie Jones wrote in today’s Washington Post, “Unlike many of his detractors, past and present, Marshall showed the utmost reverence for the Constitution” by defending equal rights for all Americans.

Republicans do not need to know the facts they just feel things in their bones we guess. The voodoo politics of conservatism and they actually get paid to not know "a single case" to present as an example.

Andrew Breitbart Puts a $100,000 Bounty on Ezra Klein’s Liberal Listserv. Beware America, if you have a personal opinion and would like to share it privately with your peers Andrew will put a bounty on your head. Conservatives seem to get many of their values from Josef Stalin.

The Bush administration's fiscal record

The major domestic initiatives of the Bush years -- the tax cuts and the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit -- made the budget picture much, much worse. The Obama administration's health-care reform proposal has, by contrast, made the budget picture much better. (You could say that the stimulus wasn't paid for, but that was sort of the point of the thing. And if we want to put emergency measures into the mix, we also have all costs related to 9/11 and TARP accruing to Bush. And I've been nice and haven't mentioned Iraq so far. Oops.) In fact, there's no high-priced initiative from the Bush years that improved the budget situation, or was even paid for.

But according to conservative values and rules we're not supposed to place blame where it belongs. One guesses we have this rule because it makes conservatives look bad.