The Tea Party Movement is the Most Informed and Honest Political Movement Ever

How corporate interests and Republican insiders built the Tea Party monster

A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it.

After Palin wraps up, I race to the parking lot in search of departing Medicare-motor-scooter conservatives. I come upon an elderly couple, Janice and David Wheelock, who are fairly itching to share their views.


"I'm anti-spending and anti-government," crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. "The welfare state is out of control."

"OK," I say. "And what do you do for a living?"

"Me?" he says proudly. "Oh, I'm a property appraiser. Have been my whole life."

I frown. "Are either of you on Medicare?"

Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!

"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"

"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."

"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"

"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much." Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry's medals and Barack Obama's Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse is key to understanding what this movement is all about — and nowhere do we see that dynamic as clearly as here in Kentucky, where Rand Paul is barreling toward the Senate with the aid of conservative icons like Palin.

[ ]....Early in his campaign, Dr. Paul, the son of the uncompromising libertarian hero Ron Paul, denounced Medicare as "socialized medicine." But this spring, when confronted with the idea of reducing Medicare payments to doctors like himself — half of his patients are on Medicare — he balked. This candidate, a man ostensibly so against government power in all its forms that he wants to gut the Americans With Disabilities Act and abolish the departments of Education and Energy, was unwilling to reduce his own government compensation, for a very logical reason. "Physicians," he said, "should be allowed to make a comfortable living."

[ ]...Suddenly, tens of thousands of Republicans who had been conspicuously silent during George Bush's gargantuan spending on behalf of defense contractors and hedge-fund gazillionaires showed up at Tea Party rallies across the nation, declaring themselves fed up with wasteful government spending. From the outset, the events were organized and financed by the conservative wing of the Republican Party, which was quietly working to co-opt the new movement and deploy it to the GOP's advantage. Taking the lead was former House majority leader Dick Armey, who as chair of a group called FreedomWorks helped coordinate Tea Party rallies across the country. A succession of Republican Party insiders and money guys make up the guts of FreedomWorks: Its key members include billionaire turd Steve Forbes and former Republican National Committee senior economist Matt Kibbe.

Prior to the Tea Party phenomenon, FreedomWorks was basically just an AstroTurfing-lobbying outfit whose earlier work included taking money from Verizon to oppose telecommunications regulation. Now the organization's sights were set much higher: In the wake of a monstrous economic crash caused by grotesque abuses in unregulated areas of the financial-services industry, FreedomWorks — which took money from companies like mortgage lender MetLife — had the opportunity to persuade millions of ordinary Americans to take up arms against, among other things, Wall Street reform.

Joining them in the fight was another group, Americans for Prosperity, which was funded in part by the billionaire David Koch, whose Koch Industries is the second-largest privately held company in America. In addition to dealing in plastics, chemicals and petroleum, Koch has direct interests in commodities trading and financial services. He also has a major stake in pushing for deregulation, as his companies have been fined multiple times by the government, including a 1999 case in which Koch Industries was held to have stolen oil from federal lands, lying about oil purchases some 24,000 times.

So how does a group of billionaire businessmen and corporations get a bunch of broke Middle American white people to lobby for lower taxes for the rich and deregulation of Wall Street? That turns out to be easy. Beneath the surface, the Tea Party is little more than a weird and disorderly mob, a federation of distinct and often competing strains of conservatism that have been unable to coalesce around a leader of their own choosing. Its rallies include not only hardcore libertarians left over from the original Ron Paul "Tea Parties," but gun-rights advocates, fundamentalist Christians, pseudomilitia types like the Oath Keepers (a group of law- enforcement and military professionals who have vowed to disobey "unconstitutional" orders) and mainstream Republicans who have simply lost faith in their party. It's a mistake to cast the Tea Party as anything like a unified, cohesive movement — which makes them easy prey for the very people they should be aiming their pitchforks at. A loose definition of the Tea Party might be millions of pissed-off white people sent chasing after Mexicans on Medicaid by the handful of banks and investment firms who advertise on Fox and CNBC.

Matt is admittedly a little rude in his article, but far less rude and rowdy than the tea nuts who were screaming and threatening people at town hall meetings last year.

Nevada senate candidate and tea nut Sharron Angle says she hates government spending - except when she benefits of course - Anti-Government Crusader Sharron Angle Receives Government Health Care

The Tea Party's Toxic Take on History

And they believe him! That's the thing. The recent New York Times study of T.P.ers reported that party members are "better educated" than most Americans. But educated in what? Clearly, they—or at least a significant, influential portion of them—are utterly uneducated in history. One can get a college degree without taking a single class in world history and thus still be ripe for the idiot distortions of a Glenn Beck.

Most people with a basic grounding in history find Tea Party ignorance something to laugh about, certainly not something to take seriously. But I would argue that history demonstrates that historical ignorance is dangerous and that it can have tragic consequences, however laughable it may initially seem. And thus the media, liberals, and others are misguided in laughing it off. And educated conservatives are irresponsible in staying silent in the face of these distortions.

The muddled Tea Party version of history is more than wrong and fraudulent. It's offensive. Calling Obama a tyrant, a communist, or a fascist is deeply offensive to all the real victims of tyranny, the real victims of communism and fascism. The tens of millions murdered. It trivializes such suffering inexcusably for the T.P.ers to claim that they are suffering from similar oppression because they might have their taxes raised or be subject to demonic "federal regulation."

The media for the most part has shown itself afraid to challenge the insidious distortions of language and history Tea Partiers promote. In the last few weeks, several news outlets have been propagating the meme that Tea Partiers are "just regular folks." And certainly some are. But if you examined the ideology that shows its face, the one that is apparent in sign carriers and blog commenters and cable spokespersons, you find something disturbing.

Consider this CNN report, which attempts to give a smiley face to the Tea Party's underlying ideology. Even Fox News recognizes Tea Party dogma as a seething cauldron of deranged and vicious lies about history. Look at the guy in the photo in this report and how proud he is of his illiterate swastika sign.

These swastika nuts look ridiculous. But words matter, sometimes in a life-and-death way. Take for instance the Tea Party demonization of "federal regulation" as the instrument of the tyranny that's been imposed on them. I would like every Tea Partier who has denounced federal regulation to write a letter to the widows and children of the coalminers in West Virginia who died because of the failure of "federal regulation" of mine safety.

Tell the weeping survivors that such regulation is tyranny, that their husbands and fathers had to die, but for a good cause: lowering federal spending so the T.P.ers could save a few pennies on taxes. That's worth 29 lives snuffed out in a mine blast, isn't it? They either don't see the connection or don't care.

Indeed the demonization of "federal regulation" could prevent cowardly legislators from strengthening protections for miners and other workers imperiled by unsafe conditions. But the happy T.P.ers will still go out with their swastika and Hitler-mustache signs, whining about tyranny. Wouldn't it be great if there were a liberal politician who, in the wake of the mining catastrophe, had the courage to stand up and say that federal regulations are often a very good thing? Don't hold your breath.

This is just one example of the toxic effect of Tea Party ignorance on the lives of their fellow citizens. But the damage done by the injection of fraudulent history into the body politic by Tea Party ignoramuses and their enablers will be more profound and lasting than one tragedy.

That's because ignorance of this sort isn't inconsequential. Historical fraudulence is like a disease, a contagious psychosis which can lead to mob hysteria and worse.

The Republican Con Game on Deficits and How Democrats Should Respond

The Republican Con Game on Deficits or how the "Pledge" is a Joke and Democrats should respond Accordingly

The Democratic response to the Republican Pledge to America has been factual about its economics. The September 26, 2010 Sunday NY Times editorial goes through the economic details, and Democrats have been citing the economic facts from the Congressional Budget Office. As Dan Pfeiffer reports on the White House blog, the Republicans are proposing:

* Tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires by borrowing $700 billion we can’t afford;
* Tax hikes for 110 million middle-class families and millions of small businesses;
* Cutting rules and oversight for special interests like big oil, big insurance, credit card and mortgage companies and Wall Street banks;
* Doing nothing to stop the outsourcing of American jobs or to end tax breaks that are given to companies that ship jobs overseas;
* All while adding trillions to our nation’s deficit.

Their plan is also notable for what it doesn’t talk about: protecting Social Security and Medicare from privatization schemes; investing in high-quality education for our nation’s children; growing key industries like clean energy and manufacturing; and rebuilding our crumbling roads, rails and runways.

This is the same agenda that caused the deepest recession since the Great Depression…

The Democrats who have checked out the facts have echoed President Obama’s judgment of the Pledge: It’s “worthless.”

I agree. And if the voting public voted on the basis of the economic details, plus the Democrats’ system of values, the Republicans wouldn’t have a chance in hell in the November elections.

But the polls show otherwise. What do we conclude? The voting public does not vote on the basis of the economic details, and the voting public does not fully accept the Democrats’ system of values as they apply in this election.

I will make a bet. When the new polls come out next week, the Democrats’ response to the Republican pledge will not have turned around the Republican lead in the polls.

In short, the Democrats’ response to the Republican Pledge may well be irrelevant. Why? And why does the President have such a hard time defending his accomplishments?

Pundits have been looking for a simple answer. But the answer is complex and depends on understanding how the minds and brains of voters work. Here are ten basic principles:

First, all politics is moral. People vote for values they identify with, for what they see as right, not wrong.

Second, the facts alone don’t set you free. Facts matter, but they must be understandable, that is, framed for normal human beings, and framed so as to be relevant to the moral views that define a voter’s identity.

Third, there are two very different moral views at play in our country’s politics. Liberal and conservative moral systems are inconsistent as they apply to most major issues. There is no neutral worldview, no worldview of the “center.”

Unfortunately facts do not matter for many Americans. They vote the way the loudest most often heard voices say to vote. That voice is mostly far Right. Republicans own and operate media that is unashamed in its perverse promotion of boneheaded conservative ideas. Despite the internet and other traditional resources people do not track the lies of Bill O'Leilly or John Boehner (R-OH), they believe what they hear. People also have a tendency to want the easy answer, one that does not require sacrifice - goodness forbid we have another World War and a modern Roosevelt ask the nation to ration gas and save their metal cans for the war effort.

Florida gubernatorial candidate and right-wing tea nut Rick Scott is lying about his Democratic opponent Alex Sink. Scott is a criminal, so lying ain't no big thing. Another typical conservative Republican.

Right-wing media try to revive the phony New Black Panther Party scandal

Right-wing media try to revive the phony New Black Panther Party scandal

Right-wing media are citing the testimony of Justice Department attorney Christopher Coates before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to revive the phony New Black Panther Party scandal. But Coates reportedly became "a true member of the team" in the highly politicized Bush DOJ.
Right-wing media hype Coates' Civil Rights Commission testimony as a "bombshell"

Hans von Spakovsky: Coates testimony is a "bombshell." In a September 22 Pajamas Media blog post, Bush DOJ official Hans von Spakovsky called Coates' decision to testify before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights a "bombshell" that was "likely to be incredibly damaging to DOJ leadership and the Obama administration." [Pajamas Media, 9/22/10]

Wash. Times: "Justice's Panther pursuer to testify on case." In a Washington Times article headlined "Justice's Panther pursuer to testify on case,"

....Right-wing activists and Fox News promoted unsubstantiated allegations based on hearsay. Right-wing media figures -- led by GOP activist J. Christian Adams -- have relied on distorted evidence and hearsay to accuse the Obama Justice Department of racially charged "corruption" based on the decision not to pursue additional charges against members of the New Black Panther Party accused of intimidating voters outside a Philadelphia polling center in 2008, claiming that the decision was based on "hostility in the voting rights section to bringing cases on behalf of white victims for the benefit of national racial minorities." Fox News has discussed the phony scandal during more than 100 segments since June 30.

Unsubstantiated allegations against DOJ don't stand up to facts. Adams has acknowledged lacking firsthand knowledge of the events he has cited to support his claims, and the suggestion that the Civil Rights Division in the Obama DOJ is hostile to "bringing cases on behalf of white victims for the benefit of national racial minorities" falls apart given the fact that the Obama DOJ obtained judgment against one defendant in the New Black Panthers case and requested additional judgment against black leaders in Mississippi who were found to have discriminated against white voters.

Conservative Civil Rights Commission vice chair ridiculed commission's investigation. A July 16 Politico article reported that Abigail Thernstrom, a Republican who serves as vice chair of the Civil Rights Commission and who is an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said, "This doesn't have to do with the Black Panthers, this has to do with their fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration." Politico also quoted Thernstrom saying, "My fellow conservatives on the commission had this wild notion they could bring Eric Holder down and really damage the president."

So the summer of right-wing Republican race-baiting continues into the fall. Fox, Pajamas Media and the Washington Times do not have any actual evidence but they do have a few right-wing ideologues throwing around accusations in the name of their hateful cause. Ironic that guys like Coates are well off financially and are part of the right-wing welfare system that rewards ideologues with jobs and other perks. Now they complain they are but poor victims of discrimination.

Florida tea nut conservative Rick Scott - a known thief - is lying about Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink. A Republican who would be in jail if he wasn't wealthy and had the right connections is lying and buying his way into office. One wonders if he is related to California tea nut conservatives Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina.

Tea Party Republican and Nevada Senate Candidate Sharron Angle Says Kids With Autism Just Pretending

Tea Party Republican and Nevada Senate Candidate Sharron Angle Says Kids With Autism Just Pretending

Sharron Angle already explicitly said that she appears on Fox as a fundraising tool, because they allow her to tell viewers to go to her website and donate to her campaign. But Jon Ralson found a great tape of Angle at a house party over the weekend describing exactly how much buck a candidate can make off a Fox appearance.

Sharron Angle: It’s going really well. If you’re interested in just the Internet part of that -- and of course I’ve been criticized for saying that I like to be friends with the [press] -- but here’s the deal: when I get a friendly press outlet -- not so much the guy that’s interviewing me -- it’s their audience that I’m trying to reach. So, if I can get on Rush Limbaugh, and I can say, "Harry Reid needs $25 million. I need a million people to send twenty five dollars to SharronAngle.com.” The day I was able to say that [even], he made $236,000 dollars. That’s why it’s so important. Somebody ... I’m going on Bill O’Reilly the 16th. They say, "Bill O’Reilly, you better watch out for that guy, he’s not necessarily a friendly" ... Doesn’t matter, his audience is friendly, and if I can get an opportunity to say that at least once on his show -- when I said it on Sean Hannity’s television show we made $40,000 before we even got out of the studio in New York.

So, again, Fox News is the communications arm of the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party. The fun part is that even when Bill O'Reilly does his "I'm just an independent" thing and actually questions a Republican, all his viewers hear and see is "send this woman money."



Because Angle has a nasty habit of saying outright what conservative candidates are supposed to keep on a wink-nudge basis, she keeps telling people that she does Fox and Christian radio in order to raise money without being challenged for her nutty views.

But avoiding tough reporters does not stop Angle from saying idiotic things -- like, say, putting "autism" in scare quotes at a rally last year.

"You're paying for things you don't even need," Angle says -- like, uh, healthcare for kids who are pretending to have something called "autism," in order to steal your insurance money, I guess.

In short , Angle thinks children - with their parents as devious accessories to the crime - are pretending they have a well documented medical condition. Further more that its easy getting money from the gullible right-wing rubes that watch Fox and listen to Christian radio. I guess we should all be grateful for the refreshing honesty from from a Republican.

Republicans In 2010 Recycle Bush Agenda and Present it as New Ideas

GOP Pledge ‘steers clear of specifics on important issues’

The plan steers clear of specifics on important issues, such as how it will "put government on a path to a balanced budget." It omits altogether the question of how to address looming shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare, which account for a huge portion of the nation's soaring deficit, instead including a vague promise: "We will make the decisions that are necessary to protect our entitlement programs."

Republicans are favored to add substantially to their ranks on Nov. 2, perhaps enough to seize control of the House.

Their new agenda is rife with the kind of grass-roots rhetoric that could appeal both to tea party activists and to independent voters the GOP is courting in its quest for control.

...."Republicans want to return to the same failed economic policies that hurt millions of Americans and threatened our economy," said Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Carly Fiorina Owned and Operated by the Looney Billionaire Koch Brothers

GOP’s Newly Unveiled ‘Pledge to America’ Is a Destructive Sham

Tea Party GOP House hopeful Jim Russell Subscribes to Nazism

GOP House hopeful Jim Russell praised racist practices, advocated eugenics in 2001 essay

GOP House hopeful Jim Russell praised racist practices, advocated eugenics in 2001 essay. A New York Republican hoping to displace the long-serving Democratic Rep. Nita Lowey will face an increasingly steep climb to electoral victory thanks to a revelation by Politico's Maggie Haberman, who dug up some of his published works and noted a number of distinctly racist elements in a 2001 piece published by the right-wing Occidental Quarterly.

Jim Russell, who enjoys the support of his state's Republican Party and conservative establishment, has maintained a strongly anti-immigrant stance in his campaign against Lowey, who defeated him in 2008.

The same could be said of his 2001 essay for Occidental [PDF link], titled "The Western Contribution to World History," which advises parents to establish "appropriate ethnic boundaries" for their children, and criticizes the film "Save the Last Dance" for depicting an interracial relationship.

He also opined against the racial integration of public schools and praised two individuals for their antisemitic ideas on how to limit the spread of Jews.
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Russell even lauded some ideas behind the practice of eugenics, a radical ideology most commonly associated with Germany's Third Reich which seeks to preserve racial and ethnic purity.

In his essay, he also writes highly of the book, "The Camp of the Saints," a tome held dear by many white supremacists. First published in France in the mid-70s, "The Camp of the Saints" depicts a mass migration from India into Europe, resulting in a radically altered political reality.

The Tea Party is just a bunch of concerned patriots? Patriots of what country...Germany during the Nazi era. There are surely some tea baggers who mean well and are not extreme right-wingers but they seem to have an awfully large contingent of racist and far Right extremists in their midst.

Conservative Republicans Want To Cut Federal Spending But Have No Idea What Programs To Cut. Complaining is not a subsitute for having ideas.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) chickens come home to roost -The senator voted against the auto-bailout, but attended a GM plant reopening ceremony. The workers were not amused. Corker thought the idea of helping GM through hard times was exactly like socialism and now he is trying to take credit for an aid package he voted against. Well, he is a conservative and that's what conservatives do.

The Tea Party movement has two defining traits: status anxiety and anarchism.

So who are these people and what do they want from us? A series of polls, as well as be-ins like Glenn Beck's Washington rally last month, have given us a picture of a movement predominated by middle-class, middle-aged white men angry about the expansion of government and hostile to societal change. But that profile could accurately describe the past several right-wing insurgencies, from the California tax revolt of the late 1970s to the Contract with America of 1994—not to mention the very Republican establishment that the Tea Party positions itself against. What's new and most distinctive about the Tea Party is its streak of anarchism—its antagonism toward any authority, its belligerent style of self-expression, and its lack of any coherent program or alternative to the policies it condemns.

In this sense, you might think of the Tea Party as the Right's version of the 1960s New Left. It's an unorganized and unorganizable community of people coming together to assert their individualism and subvert the established order. But where the New Left was young and looked forward to a new Aquarian age, the Tea Party is old and looks backward to a capitalist-constitutionalist paradise that, needless to say, never existed.

The Deeply Warm Values and Thoughts of Republicans

Nevada Senate Race: Tea Nut Conservative Sharron Angle Claims Unemployment Insurance 'Really Doesn't Benefit Anyone'. Sharron got up one morning and that deep thought - lacking in any actual facts to back it up - came to her like a vision comes to a heat stroke victim. Unemployment Insurance Kept 3.3 Million Americans Out Of Poverty In 2009 . Those crazy lazy unemployed went out to local businesses and blow those benefits on food and bath soap. Angl has spent most of her life working at jobs in the public sector in which she was paid with ?...That's right...tax payer funds.

Mike Pence (R-IN) whines but doesn't do math or have any answers - Deficit Frauds Boehner And Pence Can’t Answer How Tax Cuts For Wealthy Will Be Paid For

GREGORY: This tension that I got out with Leader Boehner. Republicans want more tax cuts seems to me he acknowledged that they’re not paid for and yet at the same time they want tax cuts but they’re so worried about the deficit. How do you resolve that tension?

PENCE: Well I think the way you resolve it is you focus on jobs. …

GREGORY: But congressman, you’re asking Americans to believe that Republicans will have spending discipline when you’re saying extend the tax cuts that aren’t paid for and cut the deficit, how is that a consistent credible message?

PENCE: Well I understand the credibility problem. …

GREGORY: You acknowledge, tax cuts being extended cannot be paid for, it would be borrowed money.

PENCE: Well no I don’t acknowledge that. … I think it’s apples to oranges.

Watch it: Embarrassing video at link.

The reality is that extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy will cost $830 billion over the next ten years and the Republicans — who have made bringing down the deficit one of their signature issues — have no idea how they will pay for them.

Delaware senate candidate conservative Christine O’Donnell has talked about sex, sex and more sex for over twenty years, but no one is allowed to talk about her talking about sex according to right-wing Republican blogger Legal Erection - Talking about one’s views on sex does not equal “sexualizing”

Sarah Palin is the media enforcer. Telling candidates where they can go to get softball questions. That would be because conservatives don't have the backbone to stand up to a real journalist - Fox News contributor Sarah Palin advises GOP candidate O'Donnell to "speak through Fox News" http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201009150072

Colorado Republican gubernatorial nominee Dan Maes Compares His Embellished Undercover Stories To Serpico

Maes originally claimed in campaign material that he had worked undercover with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation on a drugs and gambling operation, and that he was fired when he "got too close to some significant people." A few weeks ago, he was forced to back off parts of his story, after Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) officials told the Post they had no record of working with Maes.

Maes might be distantly related to George W. Bush - preferring to live in a fantasy world where he is the hero. Unfortunatelt this is not a private matter. Like Bush, maes will bring his delusions into how he governs.

Huckabee Opposes Insurance For People With Pre-Existing Conditions

When Republicans attack health care reform, Democrats like to counter by accusing Republicans of wanting to repeal a law that requires insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions. According to Republican Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, that's exactly right. People with pre-existing conditions, he explains are like houses that have already burned down.

This is what Jesus would do - at least in Huck's version of the Bible.

California Should Vote Carly Fiorina. Fiorina Has Proven Super Leadership Skills

California Should Vote Carly Fiorina. Fiorina Has Proven Super Leadership Skills

This is a CEO who, in the words of another right-wing Republican in the form of a former GOP presidential candidate, was too ego-driven to successfully run a company. She was a great self-promoter, but not so much on the actually getting the job done at HP thing. The board hated her, after all she was spying on some of them. The employees hated her, she laid off thousands of them, so no surprise there. And, oh yeah, the stock value of HP halved while she was the CEO.

Certainly we can agree that the last thing California needs is somebody too concerned about their own ego to focus on the very real problems we have to deal with today.

"Let's not forget that the HP board fired Fiorina early in 2005, and no company has hired her since." - David W. Packard, former HP board member and son of HP founder Dave Packard (San Jose Mercury News, "Opinion: Neither of HP's founders would have endorsed Fiorina," April 22, 2010)

"...Carly Fiorina was a failure at Hewlett-Packard." - Michael S. Malone, ABCNews.com columnist and former Hewlett-Packard employee (ABC News/Money, "Carly Fiorina's HP Legacy," October 10, 2006)

"Fiorina's reign at H-P...makes a great case study of exactly what not to do." - TheStreet.com, "The Nation's Worst CEOs," June 10, 2004

"[H-P's board members] lost faith in Carly...It is difficult to find anyone involved with H-P today -- board member, shareholder, employee, customer, analyst -- who isn't happy that Ms. Fiorina is gone..." - Wall Street Journal, "H-P lost faith in Carly, but not in merger," May 24, 2006

"Fiorina was bad. Everyone seems to agree on this now... All in all, our judges seem to think Fiorina should win [the 'Worst Tech CEO' title]." - USA Today, "Can Fiorina trump competition for 'worst tech CEO' title?" February 16, 2005

"[Fiorina is] the worst because of her ruthless attack on the essence of this great company. She destroyed half the wealth of her investors and yet still earned almost $100 million in total payments for this destructive reign of terror." - Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of Yale University (USA Today, "Can Fiorina trump competition for 'worst tech CEO' title?" February 16, 2005)

But you see, Carly is one of the Kool Konservatives Kids and they get pass no matter how much they screw up or how many people they screw over. Conservatism is not so much a political movement as much as a club for rewarding unmerited wealth and power.

Carly Fiorina Supports Outsourcing American Jobs To China

On Tuesday night Carly Fiorina won the Republican Senate primary in California and the very next day she says that if she were still CEO of HP she would have no problem cutting 10,000 jobs right now (when California suffers a 13% unemployment rate). According to Fiorina, “China is fighting for our jobs” – and apparently she’s ready to give our jobs to them?

Fiorina is quick to bash the stimulus, which she claims has not helped California. Think Progress points out just how wrong she is:

According to employer reports, more than 70,000 stimulus jobs have been created in the Golden State. Overall, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the recovery act saved or created 2.8 million jobs, and an estimated 3.7 million by September.

When you live in the Conservative Bubble of Misinformation you tend not to notice or care about the facts. A trait Carly is certain to bring to the Senate - isn't that just the kind of change America needs right now.

The New Improved Conservative Republicans

Hey Breitbart, look to your left

During his speech at FreedomWorks' September 12 rally on the National Mall, Andrew Breitbart berated the media for portraying tea party ralliers as "racist, sexist, homophobe," and "Islamophobe," but the crowd he addressed was full of inflammatory signs.

pictures of the signs at the link. Andrew is either not the brightest tool or he has the bizarre right-wing habit of ignoring reality.

Racist and pornography provider Tea Party candidate Carl P. Paladino wins GOP gubernatorial nomination in New York

Buffalo multimillionaire and Tea Party candidate Carl P. Paladino defeated former Rep. Rick Lazio to win the Republican gubernatorial nomination in New York last night. The “volatile newcomer,” who forwarded racist and pornographic e-mails to friends, has lent a “potentially destabilizing blow to New York Republicans” who have “historically succeeded by choosing moderates.”

What Does a Vote for a GOP Candidate in November Really Mean?

1) A vote for a GOP candidate is a vote for the interests of the wealthiest Americans, at the expense of everyone else, including the middle class. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell put his cards on the table when he said that senate Republicans will not accept anything short of a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, presumably voting against maintaining the tax cuts for those making less than $200,000 if the rich are not also included. It is important to note that just a day earlier, House Minority Leader John Boehner took a more reasonable position, saying he would vote for the extension of the tax cuts for those making less than $200,000 if he had to. (Here is a basic hint for life: If you are putting politics ahead of the good of the nation even more than John Boehner, it is a sign you have gone horribly off the rails.)

Unemployment is pushing 10 percent, Americans are concerned about the economy, and Republicans in the Senate are making their stand to support the wealthiest Americans? There is no reasonable, non-fringe economic argument that tax cuts on the top earners fuel job growth, but we know that these tax cuts have exploded--and would continue to explode--deficits (something House and Senate Republicans have previously said is just fine, putting tax cuts for the rich in front of deficit reduction).

Frustrated With the Economy. Let Out Your Inner Brat. Vote Conservative

Let's Put This Run Down Economy in Reverse. It'll be Fun To Drive it Off a Cliff One More Time

When President Obama unveiled an array of new tax-cut and spending proposals last week, one word was noticeably missing from his speeches: “stimulus.” Republicans, meanwhile, energetically set about decrying the plan as “more of the same failed ‘stimulus’ ” and as simply a “second stimulus”—as if the word itself were a damning indictment. The idea of using countercyclical fiscal policy to help get a weak economy moving is hardly radical. But in Washington stimulus has become the policy that dare not speak its name.

This wouldn’t be surprising if we were talking about a failed program. But, by any reasonable measure, the $800-billion stimulus package that Congress passed in the winter of 2009 was a clear, if limited, success. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it reduced unemployment by somewhere between 0.8 and 1.7 per cent in recent months. Economists at various Wall Street houses suggest that it boosted G.D.P. by more than two per cent. And a recent study by Mark Zandi and Alan Blinder, economists from, respectively, Moody’s and Princeton, argues that, in the absence of the stimulus, unemployment would have risen above eleven per cent and that G.D.P. would have been almost half a trillion dollars lower. The weight of the evidence suggests that fiscal policy softened the impact of the recession, boosting demand, creating jobs, and helping the economy start growing again. What’s more, it did so without any of the negative effects that deficit spending can entail: interest rates remain at remarkably low levels, and government borrowing didn’t crowd out private investment.

Politically, however, none of this has made any difference. Polls show that a sizable majority of voters think that the stimulus either did nothing to help or actively hurt the economy, and most people say that they’re opposed to a new stimulus plan. The hostility has numerous sources. Many voters conflate the stimulus bill with the highly unpopular bailouts of the banking sector and the auto industry; Republicans have done a good job of encouraging such misconceptions, as when Representative Mike Pence, of Indiana, referred to the “bailout stimulus.” Also, the stimulus—which, to begin with, was too small to completely offset the economy’s precipitous drop in demand—was oversold. The Administration’s forecasts about the recession (particularly regarding job losses) were too optimistic, and so its promises about what the stimulus would accomplish set the public up for disappointment.

But the most interesting aspect of the stimulus’s image problems concern its design and implementation. Paradoxically, the very things that made the stimulus more effective economically may have made it less popular politically. For instance, because research has shown that lump-sum tax refunds get hoarded rather than spent, the government decided not to give individuals their tax cuts all at once, instead refunding a little on each paycheck. The tactic was successful at increasing consumer demand, but it had a big political cost: many voters never noticed that they were getting a tax cut. Similarly, a key part of the stimulus was the billions of dollars that went to state governments. This was crucial in helping the states avoid layoffs and spending cuts, but politically it didn’t get much notice, because it was the dog that didn’t bark—saving jobs just isn’t as conspicuous as creating them. Extending unemployment benefits was also an excellent use of stimulus funds, since that money tends to get spent immediately. But unless you were unemployed this wasn’t something you’d pay attention to.

The stimulus was also backloaded, so that only a third was spent in the first year. This reduced waste, since there was more time to vet projects, and insured that money would keep flowing into 2010, lessening the risk of a double-dip recession.

Anyone out there ever do the best they could and things didn't work out perfectly. Maybe even prevented a disaster from being an even deeper tragedy. That is what Democrats did. Republicans - the ones in charge of Congress for six of Bush eight years in office - created the catastrophe yet also claim they know how to solve it. Why did they trash the country they claim to love so much in the first place.

Boehner(R-OH) Invites Lobbyists To Help Form GOP Agenda In Intimate Meeting At His Office

As the Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo has documented, congressional Republicans have “organized a pow-wow with lobbyists in order to devise a strategy” for nearly every piece of major legislation over the past year, from health care reform, to Wall Street reform, to climate change, to a jobs bill.

Are Tea Baggers Self Loathing America Hating Idiots

Are Tea Baggers Self Loathing America Hating Idiots

If people could be counted on to vote in their own best interests, there would be no Tea Party movement, for if the economic agenda embraced by Tea Partiers -- a vastly pro-corporation, government-killing plan -- Tea Partiers would find themselves among the people most hurt by it.

To hear Tea Party activists tell it, they seek to save future generations from the crushing demands of big government. Yet the agenda they advocate, dictated by the big-money players behind the muscular interest groups that keep the movement growing, will likely render the Tea Partiers themselves the economically squeezed subjects of a corporate state, one in which the elderly will be left to scrounge for crumbs, small businesses will be crushed by lack of capital, and their own ground-level online organizing supplanted by the networks built by giant, corporate-funded astroturf groups.

As George Lakoff and Drew Westen remind us, people don't vote on the facts: they vote on emotion, according to Westen, and their notion of morality, according to Lakoff. The resentment of Tea Partiers toward liberals, East Coast elites, the poor and people who don't look like them has been effectively marshaled in service of a "free market" ideology cleverly packaged as "freedom." Never mind that free markets are anything but free for ordinary people. The packaging strikes the necessary emotional and moral chords: Free markets = freedom = liberty = endowed by the Creator, as written in the Declaration of Independence by the founders. It's the perfect exploitation of the worldview of conservative middle-class white people -- all in the service of enriching the super-rich at the expense of their unwitting, patriotic ground troops.

Some of the early tea bagger rallies featured people with signs saying keep the government out of my Medicare - the tea baggers astonishingly failing to realize Medicare is a government run insurance program. People like Dick Armey and FreedomWorks would like nothing better than to get their hands on Medicare and choke it to death. You know the program most tea baggers like and want. The same goes for Social Security. many tea baggers either depend on Social Secuirty or need it indirectly to help with with the costs of taking care of elderly relatives. Republican leaders and think tanks want to either destroy Social Security or hand it over to the geniuses on Wall St to manage. On almost every issue tea bagger is just another word for being a tool of greedy special interests.

California millionaire Meg Whitman: let the poor fund higher education

Another Republican hypocrite on the Recovery Act ( stimulus). he said he hated it and is now taking credit for the good it is doing for his state - Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) On Health Clinic Funded By Stimulus He Opposed: ‘One Of The Core Pieces Of The Solution’ America Needs

Newt Gingrich's Ex-Wife Goes Public: Messy Relationship Life, Meltdowns

The profile paints a silhouette highlighting the intersection of Gingrich's personal life and political career:

"There's somebody else, isn't there?"

She kind of guessed it, of course. Women usually do. But did she know the woman was in her apartment, eating off her plates, sleeping in her bed?

She called a minister they both trusted. He came over to the house the next day and worked with them the whole weekend, but Gingrich just kept saying she was a Jaguar and all he wanted was a Chevrolet. "'I can't handle a Jaguar right now.' He said that many times. 'All I want is a Chevrolet.'"

He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.

He'd just returned from Erie, Pennsylvania, where he'd given a speech full of high sentiments about compassion and family values.

The next night, they sat talking out on their back patio in Georgia. She said, "How do you give that speech and do what you're doing?"

"It doesn't matter what I do," he answered. "People need to hear what I have to say. There's no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn't matter what I live."

As for 2012, Marianne Gingrich shared her take on speculation swirling over the possibility of Newt Gingrich making a run for the White House in the next election cycle. The bottom line, she said, is that "there's no way" he'll be president.

Newt has a following because - like the tea baggers - conservatives do not have much need for the truth. And obviously lying and hypocrisy doesn't bother them at all

Why Does the Conservative Chamber of Commerce Hate America

Why Does the Conservative Chamber of Commerce Hate America

The Chamber of Commerce is rolling out its "jobs and economy" political initiative today. As Politico reports, the blitz is "designed to drive voters toward '5 Questions to Ask Your Candidates', to be distributed by mail and online to millions of voters."

Here are the five, accompanied by five alternatives tied to reality rather than the Chamber's ideological phantasmagoria:

1. Do you believe that our free enterprise system is currently threatened?

Do you believe that entrenched corporate interests are blocking reforms vital to our country's future?

2. Do you believe that tax increases hurt job creation?

Do you believe that tax cuts to businesses already awash in cash and excess capacity will create jobs or waste money?

3. Do you think that the growth of government at all levels and the deficits that follow negatively impact job creation?

Do you think that deregulation of corporations and banks and the financial high that followed, crashing the economy, and doubling the national debt negatively impacted job creation?

4. Would you deal with the debt and deficit issues through increasing government revenue or decreasing government spending?

Would you deal with debt and deficit issues by building a new foundation for the economy so we can grow our way out of the hole we are in, or with austerity, cutting spending on education, energy, infrastructure, Medicare and Social Security to balance our budget?

5. Do you believe that the uncertainty resulting from pending tax increases, higher government deficits, and more government regulations will hurt the economy?

Do you believe businesses aren't hiring because they don't have customers, or that they are foregoing profitable expansion, fretting about deficits, and possible increases in taxes and regulations?

This country is struggling to respond to the worst downturn since the Great Depression, a direct result of the failed conservative policies that the Chamber of Commerce has advocated for decades. Over the last decade, we lost one in three manufacturing jobs. Inequality reached gilded age levels. CEOs and bankers pocketed million dollar bonuses while cooking the books and gambling on exotic securities, inflating the housing bubble until it burst. Health insurance companies kept a strangle hold on a health care system that costs twice as much as those in other industrial countries, leaves millions uninsured and provides worse health care. Catastrophic climate change went unaddressed. Big Oil and big coal insured that the US would forfeit the lead in the new green industrial revolution that is sweeping the world. Conservatives removed the cop on the corporate beat leading directly to the financial wilding and collapse, the horrors of Massey in West Virginia and BP in the Gulf, the risks of poisoned toys and infected eggs.

One would think that in the ruins, the Chamber of Commerce would have the common decency to reconsider its ideological positions. After all, they have not only been ruinous to workers and the country, they led directly to the economic free fall that devastated businesses. But no. Not one comma has been changed. Not a line changed in the stump speech. Mindless, without shame or sense, blind to the world around it, the Chamber gathers new millions from companies and peddles its poisonous nostrums.

Why doesn't the uber-Conservative Chamber change course? Because like most zealots and extremists they have a remarkable ability to deflect blame. Add to that psychologival ditch the zealto's predisposition to avoiding admitting wrong and you have the perfect cocktail of nut jobs fighting progrss because they love rewarding wealth and punishing work. Modern conservatism - which has no real intellectual history on which to base its philosophy - is actually a continuation of the totalitarian monarchies of the Dark Ages. They honestly believe our wealthy corporate masters must be protected and rewarded at the cost of progress for average working Americans. Don't worry middle-America there will be some Chamber trickle down crumbs for you.

Being a Republican is the Art of Always Being Wrong

Republicans base their economic philosophy on supply side/voodoo economics. It does work if you like the idea of redistributing wealth to the people who work the least - Trying to understand income inequality, the most profound change in American society in your lifetime.

In 1915, a statistician at the University of Wisconsin named Willford I. King published The Wealth and Income of the People of the United States, the most comprehensive study of its kind to date. The United States was displacing Great Britain as the world's wealthiest nation, but detailed information about its economy was not yet readily available; the federal government wouldn't start collecting such data in any systematic way until the 1930s. One of King's purposes was to reassure the public that all Americans were sharing in the country's newfound wealth.

King was somewhat troubled to find that the richest 1 percent possessed about 15 percent of the nation's income. (A more authoritative subsequent calculation puts the figure slightly higher, at about 18 percent.)

This was the era in which the accumulated wealth of America's richest families—the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Carnegies—helped prompt creation of the modern income tax, lest disparities in wealth turn the United States into a European-style aristocracy. The socialist movement was at its historic peak, a wave of anarchist bombings was terrorizing the nation's industrialists, and President Woodrow Wilson's attorney general, Alexander Palmer, would soon stage brutal raids on radicals of every stripe. In American history, there has never been a time when class warfare seemed more imminent.

That was when the richest 1 percent accounted for 18 percent of the nation's income. Today, the richest 1 percent account for 24 percent of the nation's income. What caused this to happen? Over the next two weeks, I'll try to answer that question by looking at all potential explanations—race, gender, the computer revolution, immigration, trade, government policies, the decline of labor, compensation policies on Wall Street and in executive suites, and education. Then I'll explain why people who say we don't need to worry about income inequality (there aren't many of them) are wrong.

Because of conservatives and the few percent of conservative Democrats who have gone along, most of the US economy has been moving toward the voodoo economic dream. A permanent underclass, a shrinking middle-class and the rich elite.

Christine O'Donnell's Views On Sex And Porn Take Social Conservatism To The Extreme

Republican minister doesn't care if he endangers troops - Hate Pastor Behind ‘Burn A Quran Day’ Responds To Petraeus: ‘We Have Firmly Made Up Our Mind’

The Conservative Attacks On Obama Are Based On the Denial of Reality

Obama’s enemies have painted him as an alien threat.

“I’d like to burn them off,” says the Illustrated Man in Ray Bradbury’s 1951 science-fiction classic of that name. “I’ve tried sandpaper, acid, a knife.” Nothing works. More than a half century before head-to-toe tattoos, a time-traveling witch had painted colorful images on nearly every part of the man’s body. The elaborate stories they told made it hard for him to hold a job.

President Obama is our era’s Illustrated Man. His enemies—and even some of his ostensible allies—have been busy for three years painting Obama as some kind of alien threat.

....Our maddening times demand that the truth be forthrightly stated at the outset, and not just that the president has nothing in common with the führer beyond the possession of a dog. The outlandish stories about Barack Hussein Obama are simply false: he wasn’t born outside the United States (the tabloid “proof” has been debunked as a crude forgery); he has never been a Muslim (he was raised by an atheist and became a practicing Christian in his 20s); his policies are not “socialist” (he explicitly rejected advice to nationalize the banks and wants the government out of General Motors and Chrysler as quickly as possible); he is not a “warmonger” (he promised in 2008 to withdraw from Iraq and escalate in Afghanistan and has done so); he is neither a coddler of terrorists (he has already ordered the killing of more “high value” Qaeda targets in 18 months than his predecessor did in eight years), nor a coddler of Wall Street (his financial-reform package, while watered down, was the most vigorous since the New Deal), nor an enemy of American business (he and the Chamber of Commerce favor tax credits for small business that were stymied by the GOP to deprive him of a victory). And that’s just the short list of lies.

Why is the total sum of conservative right-wing attacks based on lies/ Because Republicans know they cannot win an honest debate. Such unhinged hatred toward moderate policies and politicians has become an intrinsic part of the extremist conservative movement. They don't know how to govern and really have no interest in doing so. They say they hate bog government, but when Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 made government bigger they didn't say a thing. The fact is that conservatives love big bloated government as long as they're the fat cat corrupt capitalists running the circus.

Sarah Palin's Sudden Obsession With Penis

Sarah Palin Gay-Baiting?

Is Sarah Palin using code words to slam gay journalist Michael Joseph Gross, a frequent Advocate contributor who wrote the much-buzzed-about profile of the former vice presidential nominee in this month’s Vanity Fair?

Palin didn’t mention Gross by name while talking Thursday on Sean Hannity’s WABC radio show, but she seemed to be referring to the article — and pointedly used emasculating words that have long been used as euphemisms for homosexuality — when she called reporters who publish “rumors” about her “impotent,” “limp,” and “gutless.”

“I don't read some of it because I know that those who are impotent and limp and gutless, and then they go on, they're anonymous, they're sources that are anonymous, and impotent, limp, and gutless reporters take anonymous sources and cite them as being factual references,” Palin said.

“You know, it just slays me because it's so absolutely clear what the state of yellow journalism is today that they would take these anonymous sources as fact. So when a story especially is filled with those and we know it's bogus, and we're not going to read it.”

Gross defended the article on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Thursday, saying most of his sources would only speak with him anonymously because they’re “terrified of retribution.”

“There is a string of people going all the way back in her life, all the way back in her career, who have been so abused so horrifically by her, and they’re just terrified of retribution,” Gross said. “They’ve seen her take revenge on people before, and they’re so broken, they’re so stepped on, they’re so beaten down, they don’t want to take the risk of speaking out.”

These Palinruptions have become a regular event. Someone tracks down more of her lies and bad behavior - she starts calling people names. Where are Palin's counter facts - that's not true because - and than she produces evidence.

Presimetrics: How Democratic and Republican Administrations Measure Up on the Issues We Care About

Dealing with the Sunset of the Bush Tax Cuts (Part V in a series)--dividends at capital gains rate

IN this series, i've been discussing the merits of enacting a new series of tax cuts that mimic, at least in part, the Bush temporary tax cut legislation that expires at the end of this year.

The primary arguments for the original Bush temporary tax cuts were either bogus to start with or proven weak over the period of the tax cuts.

1.The Republicans who pushed the cuts claimed first that they were intended to return to taxpayers the surplus. Of course, that argument was laughable from the beginning: Bush deficits started in the first year of the Bush regime and got worse for the long term as the costs of a military budget pumped up by preemptive war and other augmenting of government spending at the same time that tax revenues were cut again and again throughout the regime.

Why didn't conservatives - most of whom are still in the Senate and House - put the breaks on. Now those same people are mad at President Obama for not cleaning the mess they made fast enough. The words conservative and republican are not exactly synonymous with being smart or responsible.

Ignorance Fuels "Feelings" About Health Care Reform. Get the Facts

FACTBOX-US healthcare bill would provide immediate benefits

WITHIN THE FIRST YEAR OF ENACTMENT

*Insurance companies will be barred from dropping people from coverage when they get sick. Lifetime coverage limits will be eliminated and annual limits are to be restricted.

*Insurers will be barred from excluding children for coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

*Young adults will be able to stay on their parents' health plans until the age of 26. Many health plans currently drop dependents from coverage when they turn 19 or finish college.

*Uninsured adults with a pre-existing conditions will be able to obtain health coverage through a new program that will expire once new insurance exchanges begin operating in 2014.

*A temporary reinsurance program is created to help companies maintain health coverage for early retirees between the ages of 55 and 64. This also expires in 2014.

*Medicare drug beneficiaries who fall into the "doughnut hole" coverage gap will get a $250 rebate. The bill eventually closes that gap which currently begins after $2,700 is spent on drugs. Coverage starts again after $6,154 is spent.

*A tax credit becomes available for some small businesses to help provide coverage for workers.

*A 10 percent tax on indoor tanning services that use ultraviolet lamps goes into effect on July 1.

WHAT HAPPENS IN 2011

*Medicare provides 10 percent bonus payments to primary care physicians and general surgeons.

*Medicare beneficiaries will be able to get a free annual wellness visit and personalized prevention plan service. New health plans will be required to cover preventive services with little or no cost to patients.

*A new program under the Medicaid plan for the poor goes into effect in October that allows states to offer home and community based care for the disabled that might otherwise require institutional care.

*Payments to insurers offering Medicare Advantage services are frozen at 2010 levels. These payments are to be gradually reduced to bring them more in line with traditional Medicare.

*Employers are required to disclose the value of health benefits on employees' W-2 tax forms.

*An annual fee is imposed on pharmaceutical companies according to market share. The fee does not apply to companies with sales of $5 million or less.

WHAT HAPPENS IN 2012

*Physician payment reforms are implemented in Medicare to enhance primary care services and encourage doctors to form "accountable care organizations" to improve quality and efficiency of care.

*An incentive program is established in Medicare for acute care hospitals to improve quality outcomes.

*The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the government programs, begin tracking hospital readmission rates and puts in place financial incentives to reduce preventable readmissions.

WHAT HAPPENS IN 2013

*A national pilot program is established for Medicare on payment bundling to encourage doctors, hospitals and other care providers to better coordinate patient care.

America can listen to the facts or they can listen to right-wing conservative zealots who oppose health care reform out of pure spite. Notice Republicans never attack individual portions of the bill which everyone that bothers to read them likes - Republicans ramble on about how protecting the American people is somehow unconstitutional.