Tag Archives: politics

The schedule of events from CPAC: Friday & Saturday’s crazy train

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Some of the speakers and events from the schedule (pdf):

FRIDAY

  • 10:30 Hon. Mitt Romney – Marriott Ballroom
  • 11:00 Gov. Luis Fortuño (PR) – Marriott Ballroom
  • 11:15 Rep. Tom Price (GA) – Marriott Ballroom
  • 11:30 Rep. Marsha Blackburn (TN) – Marriott Ballroom
  • 1:00 Sen. John Barrasso (WY) – Marriott Ballroom
  • 1:15 Are We Superman? Using School Choice and Homeschools to Grow the Conservative Movement – Marshall Ballroom
  • 1:30 Sen. John Thune (SD) – Marriott Ballroom
  • 2:00 Sen. Mike Lee (UT) – Marriott Ballroom
  • 3:00 Hon. Tim Pawlenty – Marriott Ballroom
  • 3:30 Rep. Ron Paul (TX) – Marriott Ballroom
  • 4:00 Gov. Rick Perry (TX) – Marriott Ballroom
  • 4:30 Herman Cain – Marriott Ballroom
  • 7:30 RONALD REAGAN BANQUET – Marriott Ballroom, Master of Ceremonies: Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum

SATURDAY

  • 9:00 Andrew Breitbart – Marriott Ballroom
  • 9:30 Gov. Haley Barbour (MS) – Marriott Ballroom
  • 10:00 David Horowitz – Marriott Ballroom
  • 11:00 Rep. Connie Mack (FL) – Marriott Ballroom
  • 11:30 Bleeding America Dry: The Threat of Public Sector Unions – Marriott Ballroom
  • 1:00 Ambassador John Bolton – Marriott Ballroom
  • 1:30 The New Nuclear Threat: China and North Korea – Marriott Ballroom
  • 2:20 Presentation of the Lifetime Achievement Award – Marriott Ballroom (Will it be … REAGAN? GWB? Cheney?)
  • 3:15 Jonah Goldberg – Marriott Ballroom
  • 3:45 Ann Coulter – Marriott Ballroom
  • 4:15 Rep. Peter Roskam (IL) – Marriott Ballroom
  • 4:30 Changing the Conversation: Winning with Minorities, Women and Independents – Marriott Ballroom
  • 5:15 Straw Poll Results – Marriott Ballroom
  • 5:30 Closing Speaker To Be Announced – Marriott Ballroom

You can watch here — the site does require registration / login.

Palin 2012 Button At CPAC | Oliver Willis

The retort, of course, is the same that was used with Goldwater when his supporters used this slogan: “In your gut, you know she’s nuts.”

Palin 2012 Button At CPAC | Oliver Willis The retort, of course, is the same that was used with Goldwater when his supporters used this slogan: “In your gut, you know she’s nuts.”

Half the American public favors deficit reductions — but few support decreases in specific federal programs

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Greg Sargent looks at a new Pew poll showing major contradictions in the American public’s opinion on government spending.  Half of the people think deficit reduction is a priority for economic recovery — until you get to specific programs — then more people favor spending increases or no reduction in spending:

The Left built Huffington, the Left can tear it down

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Adbusters: The left built Huffington, and we can tear it down too

“Socialite Arianna Huffington built a blog-empire on the backs of thousands of citizen journalists,” a post at Adbusters begins. “She exploited our idealism and let us labor under the illusion that the Huffington Post was different, independent and leftist. Now she’s cashed in and three thousand indie bloggers find themselves working for a megacorp.”

But the Huffington Post is not Arianna’s to sell. It is ours: the lefty writers and readers, environmentalism activists and anti-corporate organizers who flooded the site with 25 million visits a month. So we’re going to take it back.

We’ll stop going to her site. And we’ll stop blogging for her too. Then we’ll give birth to an alternative to AOL’s HuffPo by using the #huffpuff hash tag to tell the world about our favorite counter-culture websites and indie blogs.

“We are the ones who built the Huffington Post. And now we will be the ones who will huff & puff it down,” Adbusters concluded.

A quick search of the social network Twitter indicated that the hashtag #huffpuff was already being used to propose alternatives.

Arianna herself told Politico this week, “We don’t see ourselves as left. And I think it’s one area where news consumers are ahead of the media, because they know that continuing to see everything that’s happening as a right-left issue is missing what’s happening, and is also making it much harder for us to be properly informed.”

Watch “Patriot” Bill O’Reilly interrupt the President of the United States A TOTAL OF 48 TIMES during his interview

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As Bill Maher said last night on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show, “…and Bill O’Reilly, who claims to be such a patriot — how unpatriotic, in my view, to treat a President that way. How does that look to other countries when you’re interrupting and belittling?”


(Wonkette)

Lawrence O’Donnell & Bill Maher discuss the lack of respect towards President Obama from Republicans.

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Maher and O’Donnell discuss Bill O’Reilly, John Boehner, Glenn Beck, Christine O’Donnell, & Elisabeth Hasselbeck

Profit over people: a brief history of corporate concerns

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“We can look at the history in this country. Early drug companies argued the bill creating the FDA would “practically destroy the sale of … remedies in the United States.” That didn’t happen. Auto executives predicted that having to install seatbelts would bring the downfall of their industry. It didn’t happen. The President of the American Bar Association denounced child labor laws as “a communistic effort to nationalize children.” That’s a quote.” — President Obama, in an address to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

(via)

Obama reminded Chamber of Commerce that it’s not all about them

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AFL-CIO: We liked Obama’s challenge to the Chamber of Commerce

Obama’s reminder to business that they have a responsibility to America, that they can’t just worry about shareholders and the bottom line:

“Ask yourselves what you can do for America. Ask yourselves what you can do to hire American workers, to support the American economy, and to invest in this nation.”

Obama’s reminder to business that there are important regulations:

“For example, even as we work to eliminate burdensome regulations, America’s businesses have a responsibility to recognize that there are some safeguards and standards that are necessary to protect the American people from harm or exploitation.”

His reminder to business that changes in the tax code need to benefit everyone:

“If we’re fighting to reform the tax code and increase exports to help you compete, the benefits can’t just translate into greater profits and bonuses for those at the top. They should be shared by American workers, who need to know that expanding trade and opening markets will lift their standard of living as well as your bottom line. We cannot go back to the kind of economy — and culture — we saw in the years leading up to the recession, where growth and gains in productivity just didn’t translate into rising incomes and opportunity for the middle class.”

It was probably shocking for the CoC to hear that America might expect more of business than profit increases for their shareholders and huge bonus checks for their executives.  Certainly it needed to be said.

Tea party favorite Rand Paul wants to scrap the Energy Department, move the nuclear weapons program to the Pentagon

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Seriously »

But the idea of shifting the nuclear weapons program to the Pentagon ignores a carefully considered posture, adopted after World War II and carefully maintained, to keep nuclear weapons under the jurisdiction of scientists and other civilians.

There are other security reasons for keeping nuclear weapons in a separate agency. Every year, Energy and the Pentagon conduct separate reviews of the nuclear stockpile. “By having two separate entities involved, you increase the chance that you get an honest, rigorous evaluation,” said Linton Brooks, the Energy Department’s undersecretary for nuclear security and the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration under President George W. Bush.

His assessment is that the move is probably a bad idea, especially paired with slashing the science and research programs. Sparing from the ax the labs most closely affiliated with nuclear weapons development, such as Los Alamos, and putting them under Pentagon control wouldn’t be much better.

“The [Defense Department] as it existed in the second half of the Bush term would not have been a very good steward” for the nuclear weapons program, Brooks said. “DOD does not have a particularly good track record at running multipurpose research labs… If you want Sandia, Los Alamos, and [Lawrence] Livermore to continue to be great institutions, you’re taking a risk with moving them.”

Aside from the whole “oversight” thing on NUCLEAR WEAPONS, I have to wonder at Paul’s thought process since the Pentagon has proven itself to be so excellent with budgets and money.

Is Rand Paul simply an idiot — or is he the biggest idiot, ever? Discuss.

http://www.classicalvalues.com/rand-paul-628x434.jpg

Colorado doesn’t care for Palin

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“Due to an onslaught of personal attacks against Governor Palin and others associated with her appearance, it is with deep sadness and disappointment that, in the best interest of all, we cancel the event for safety concerns.” — Palin Colorado Event Canceled After ‘Onslaught Of Personal Attacks’

Because:

1) Palin’s a quitter – as we already knew;

2) “personal attacks” are exactly like “safety concerns” for someone who wants to frame herself, again, as a victim; and

3) the Sharon K Pacheco Foundation “provides assistance to military families and at-risk youth” so they SHOULD HAVE found someone less politically polarizing in the first place!

And can we stop with the “governor” Palin now? She quit, half-way through, to make money. She was a governor for 18 months and she didn’t finish her term!!

Stay in Alaska.

On Ben Quayle

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I lol’d:

“It is very possible that a Quayle might someday marry a Palin resulting in a super-race who communicate using a complex mélange of guttural grunts, clicks, and dropped g’s.”

AZ Republicans Resign After Giffords Shooting, Citing Threats From Local Tea Partiers

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Instead of saying “both sides do it,” it may be more correct to say that the Tea Party does it to “both sides:”

Think Progress:

Just hours after 22-year-old gunman Jared Loughner launched a shooting spree at a Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) constituent event in Tucson on Saturday that left six dead and 14 wounded, Legislative District chairman Anthony Miller, a Republican, announced that he would resign his position. In an email to the state’s GOP chair, Miller cited “constant verbal attacks” after his election last year “and Internet blog posts by some local members with Tea Party ties made him worry about his family’s safety.”

[…] The newly-elected Dist. 20 Republican secretary, Sophia Johnson of Ahwatukee, first vice chairman Roger Dickinson of Tempe and Jeff Kolb, the former district spokesman from Ahwatukee, also quit.

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Tea-Party-armed.jpg

Discussing the ‘politics’ of the hostage taker

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thedailywhat:
Photo of the Day: Discovery building hostage taker James Jay Lee protesting outside the channel’s HQ, circa February 2008.

Among Lee’s demands: The Discovery Channel must develop programming aimed at “[finding] solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that.”

[photo: sss.]

Yet another right wing hate crime.  Where are all the supposed liberal hate crimes?  Fox runs the same footage of a black man committing voter intimidation for two months straight, but not a word on the murders and hate crimes being committed by rightists.

The right-wing anti-immigration and “anchor baby” memes are really out of place in Lee’s manifesto given the left-wing positions found throughout the document. Makes me wonder if he’s really just some right-wing scam artist who’s been laying the groundwork to smear liberals for the last few years. — Ryking

And a sampling of blame from the conservatives (aka TCOT):

Leftists aren't supposed to have guns!