The usual suspects:
We can do better, America.
via sandandglass
Feds spend $7 on THE ELDERLY for every $1 on KIDS: Funny how the blame is always on the (nonexistent) welfare moms who keep pumping out kids for more government cheese. (via) »»»»»» SENIORS TAKE NOTE: it’s impossible for the GOP to draft a budget that balances in 10 years without eating into entitlement benefits for people older than 55. »»»»»» House GOP leaders want Obama to own the automatic cuts — the sequester (the OBAMAQUESTER) — but their budget chief, PAUL RYAN, is expected to count those cuts toward his 10 year plan.
Kerry: Budget cuts may force reduction in aid to ISRAEL: Some $3 billion goes to Israel annually in US military aid, 74 percent of which must be spent in the US. »»»»»» Incomes rose more than 11 percent for the TOP 1 PERCENT of earners during the economic recovery and declined by 0.4 percent for everyone else.
After a METEOR struck RUSSIA, the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology announced Friday that it will hold a hearing over asteroids – that committee is chaired by THIS GUY, so maybe they’ll try to pray them away. »»»»»» ”The REPUBLICAN PARTY was always an uneasy marriage between the Jesus freaks and the plutocrats.” »»»»»» Why a $9.00 MINIMUM WAGE would NOT lead employers to shed jobs or increase prices and pass the costs onto consumers.
The NRA says regular Americans can’t protect themselves without high-capacity magazines. »»»»»» We’re at war, but… why did Senator JOHN MCCAIN claim he wouldn’t filibuster CHUCK HAGEL, then go ahead and do so anyway? Because Hagel hurt his feelings over five years ago. »»»»»» SEAN HANNITY: “It’s the first time a filibuster of a cabinet nominee has been used. And needless to say, this marks a major win for the GOP, and pretty embarrassing defeat for the president.” »»»»»» FreedomWorks produced a video of a fake GIANT PANDA having sex with a fake HILLARY CLINTON. Seriously.
(Photo by Gary Cameron/Reuters/Files)
This morning Hillary Clinton remains hospitalized with a blood clot and is being kept under observation for 48-hours. Can we talk about SOME of the people / organizations who have famously and disgustingly accused her of faking her illness and concussion — including several shows on Fox “news,” two former Romney aides, and a member of Congress.
Via Buzzfeed:
And from Charles Pierce:
…the well-known conservative intellectual journal Human Events –or, as it’s known around the magazine rack at the cigar store, Highlights For Wingnuts– would like to correct the record. Earlier, the Dumbest Man On The Internets had busted wide open the story that the Hilldebeast was “too busy” to testify about why she personally killed four people in Benghazi because she was jet-setting around the Caribbean with the Beautiful People. This proved to be in error. [...] The Secretary Of State, as it happens, is presently luxuriating in that famous playground of the rich and famous, New York Presbyterian Hospital, where she is being treated for a serious condition involving a blood clot. While I’m sure Jim Hoft will be dressing up as a Candy Striper and working the halls to make sure that the Secretary is not being fed mojitos intravenously, Human Events, at the moment, regrets the error, but not its very existence, which is unfortunate.
Will there be any public apologies forthcoming?
Get off my lawn! Why some older men are so grouchy
The look: A scowling face, a wagging finger, and a shaking head. The targets: The economy. Teenagers. Windmills. Some informally dub it “grumpy old man complex.” British author Carol Wyer labels it “irritable male syndrome,” a spike in the outward crankiness of guys of a certain age. As more baby boomers hit 60 — the age when male grumpiness seems to kick in — be ready for a growing chorus of grouchy flare-ups, like a Donald Trumprant set to explode.[...]
Testosterone levels generally fall as men age, according to the Mayo Clinic. Such hormone drops are known to dampen male moods, says Dr. Ridwan Shabsigh, head of the International Society of Men’s Health and a urologist in New York City. “Testosterone is a hormone that grows muscles, reduces fat in the body, affects energy, and improves sexual desire,” Shabsigh says. “However, it also has neural-psycho effects. And in some men we encounter in our practice, those affects can be mostly visible: low mood and irritability.”
Rachel Maddow Beating Hannity: Are People Finally Catching on to FOX News’ BS? | Alternet
“Particularly impressive were the results of the two powerhouse programs on the MSNBC lineup: Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell. Maddow won seven of the eight days against her Fox competition, Sean Hannity. For the 8-day run Maddow beat Hannity by 18% and her 544k average was second to only Bill O’Reilly in all of cable news. O’Donnell won all eight days against Fox’s Greta Van Susteren. His margin of victory over Van Susteren was 17% for the eight days.
This can no longer be considered a temporary blip on the ratings scales. With two weeks having elapsed, the MSNBC programs are showing steady strength against competition that was once thought insurmountable. Only Bill O’Reilly is holding his top position for Fox in primetime. This may indicate that Sean Hannity is wearing thin with viewers who are likely disappointed with his overly confident (and harebrained) assurances that all the polls were wrong and that Mitt Romney would emerge victorious.
Hannity is perhaps the most stridently partisan host on the Fox News network and frequently augments his analysis with that of the pundit world’s most notorious nutcase, Dick Morris. As for Van Susteren, she never had the cult-like following of her Fox comrades, but she has been closely associated with her good friend (and client of her husband), Sarah Palin… “
One also has to factor in all the non-believers / anti-fans who watched Fox prior to the election because of the OMG Factor or, in other words, the rich vein of comedy material and/or outrage one could always find there. Now that the election’s over, people can just relax and watch what they really enjoy… So Fox has not only lost the anti-fan progressive audience, but perhaps it’s also losing people who are waking from their comas.
“People will say this has already been reported. Well, actually, it hasn’t been reported. And I know because I reported on it the first time.” — Tucker Carlson to Sean Hannity on Fox “news” last night.
via: sarahlee310
Reference:
motherjones: Charles Dharapak, AP photographer, for the win.
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images above: kohenari
via: sarahlee310
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Joan Walsh: Mainly, their complaint came down to: How dare a black president (or at the time, presidential candidate) talk to a black audience about black poverty and suffering! And the legacy of slavery, and the endurance of racism! Has he no shame? [...] Let me pull out just a few of the worst distortions. Hannity and Carlson hyped Obama’s “shout-out” to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but amazingly ignored the part of his speech where he said Wright “introduced me to someone named Jesus Christ, and I learned that my sins could be redeemed.” (This from our first Muslim president.) On Fox, Hannity played the Wright “shout-out” side by side with Obama’s later denunciation of Wright, as though the Wright remarks revealed in 2008 were already public when Obama greeted him at the 2007 speech. I shock myself at my ability to be shocked by these frauds, but that was pretty shocking.
via: wisconsinforward
The National Memo: Most observers quickly dismissed the stunt as an attempt to create a “47 percent” moment for the president that reveals his disdain for some Americans. Hannity at one point said that then-candidate Obama made derisive comments about “poor people” — when Obama was clearly speaking about the need to provide skills training to neglected groups including the homeless, veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and young adults coming out of foster care. Carlson went on Fox and Friends Wednesday morning to blame the dismissal of the tape on the “throne sniffers” in the mainstream media. Yet by morning even Drudge had dropped the story from his top headline and moved on to the next manufactured outrage.
In case you need a reminder why you should never take the Drudge Report seriously… – A ThinkProgress study of the the Drudge Report reveals the popular internet aggregator has linked 184 times to InfoWars and World Net Daily, two sites that promote the internet’s worst conspiracy theories, since June 2011. By directing millions of visitors to these websites, Drudge is providing critical financial and reputational support to publications that argue 9/11 was an inside job, FEMA is building concentration camps and President Obama was not born in the United States.
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via: paxamericana
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Does this reek of Willard flop sweat?
The Guardian: The Democratic national committee described the conservative attack as “lame”. The bigger question is whether the Romney campaign played any part in the release of the footage. Both campaigns can be guilty of dirty tricks operations, passing on material to sympathetic journalists. But Romney officials denied all knowledge and distanced itself from the video, portraying it as thin.
Igor Volsky: Romney Campaign Encourages Voters To Consider Drudge’s Race Video: Senior Romney adviser Kevin Madden refused to dismiss the race bating tactics of the Drudge Report, Fox News, and the Daily Caller, during an appearance on CBS This Morning on Wednesday, saying that voters should decide if a racially charged 2007 video of then-Senator Barack Obama discussing Hurricane Katrina is “relevant” to the election.
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DRUDGE TEASERS throughout the day:
The Drudge version:
The speech version:
Via: blogs.suntimes.com
Margaret Hartmann: A day after Mitt Romney’s 47 percent video surfaced, Matt Drudge countered with a fourteen-year-old video in which Barack Obama makes the scary-sounding admission that he believes in “redistribution.” The clip failed to get any traction, so on Tuesday he tried again, hyping a “bombshell” video of “Obama’s Other Race Speech” with help from the Daily Caller and Fox News. [...] Five years later, Carlson has finally obtained the full video, complete with some “explosive” new facts: Obama takes a slightly different tone when addressing a predominantly black audience, he once called Rev. Jeremiah Wright “a friend and a great leader,” and he was pretty “steamed” about how the federal government responded to Hurricane Katrina.
Obama’s Right: We Failed Black New Orleans After Katrina – David Frum: Is it really so outrageous that a black presidential candidate would want to talk about the displacement of black Americans in this way? Maybe a better question is: why isn’t the condition of black America an important topic for all presidential candidates of all backgrounds and all races?
Charles P. Pierce: But, honestly, beating the drum for an “exposé” of a video Carlson himself discussed on MSNBC five years ago is probably the most singularly pathetic moment in a career that has become singularly pathetic, and I used to watch The Spin Room on CNN….
Ta-Nehisi Coates: Carlson’s descent from reasonably credible magazine journalist to inept race hustler is well mapped territory. He has not been the same man since Jon Stewart took him down. The ethering reverberates through the years with such force that we now find its recipient slathering yesterday’s nothing-burgers in weak sauce, and serving them up as the daily special. Even those who would like to be fooled are not. “What’s the ‘So what’ of this video? I don’t think it’s going to really go anywhere,” Republican Rep. Allen West said on Fox News.
Zandar: I will add however that Romney’s internal polling numbers must continue to be absolutely horrific if the Tighty Whitey Patrol here is resorting to what is actually a really damn good speech by then Senator Barack Obama as some sort of secret instructions to us black folk to rise up and…build…infrastructure in…primarily minority neighborhoods…to benefit…minority owned local businesses. Or something equally fabulously offensive.
Steve Benen: I’m not sure whether to be annoyed (by the ugly, racially-charged tactics), insulted (they’re treating Americans like fools), or feel sorry for them.
Josh Marshall: You don’t imagine you’ve got a big shocker story like this unless you really think you’ve got something big. And that tells me that there’s a big chunk of rightwing America living in a cocoon in which black people even talking about racism or race at all is ipso facto shocking. I think Americans know Barack Obama is black.
Better Drudge headline:
via: sarahlee310
Matt Drudge, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson (wearing a big-boy tie now) hyped a video all day yesterday that had been previously reported about in 2007. Bombshell! As a matter of fact, Andrew Sullivan posted a full transcript in June of 2007. What’s the big deal now? Oh, well they want to air a segment where (then) Senator Obama name checks Rev. Wright, which wasn’t on the video in 2007:
“I’ve got to give a special shout-out to my pastor. The guy who puts up with me. Counsels me. Listens to my wife complain about me. He’s a friend. And a great leader,” the president said of Wright in an address to the Hampton University Annual Ministers’ Conference in Hampton, Va., in June 2007 in video posted by The Daily Caller and first aired on Fox News.
For the rightwing extremist, that’s all she wrote. Why? I don’t know. I’m not a rightwing extremist. But Obama goes on to say — and I think this is interesting:
“Down in New Orleans, where they still have not rebuilt 20 months later, there’s a law, federal law — when you get reconstruction money from the federal government — called the Stafford Act. And basically it says, when you get federal money, you’ve got to give a 10 percent match. The local government’s got to come up with 10 percent. Every 10 dollars the federal government comes up with, local government’s got to give a dollar.
“Now here’s the thing, when 9/11 happened in New York City, they waived the Stafford Act — said, ‘This is too serious a problem. We can’t expect New York City to rebuild on its own. Forget that dollar you got to put in. Well, here’s 10 dollars.’ And that was the right thing to do. When Hurricane Andrew struck in Florida, people said, ‘Look at this devastation. We don’t expect you to come up with y’own money, here. Here’s the money to rebuild. We’re not going to wait for you to scratch it together — because you’re part of the American family.’ … What’s happening down in New Orleans? Where’s your dollar? Where’s your Stafford Act money? Makes no sense. Tells me that somehow, the people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much.”
BLACK PEOPLE ARE THE REAL RACISTS! I guess? ABC News reports “Carlson told Fox Tuesday night the clips were evidence the then-candidate was ‘whipping up race hatred and fear. Period.‘” Really! Obama also adds:
“People ask me whether I thought race was the reason the response was so slow. I said, ‘No. This administration was colorblind in its incompetence.’ But everyone here knows the disaster and the poverty happened long before that hurricane hit. All the hurricane did was make bare what we ignore each and every day, which is that there are whole sets of communities that are impoverished, that don’t have meaningful opportunity, that don’t have hope and they are forgotten. This disaster was a powerful metaphor for what’s gone on for generations.”
Whatever. First of all, this is so blatant an attempt to try and change the subject from Romney’s hidden camera remarks on the 47 percent that it reeks of flop sweat. Secondly the entire time Drudge was barking on the midway yesterday, preparing to release the flying monkeys, he was also linking to a page to contribute to Mitt Romney’s campaign. Certainly no collusion between Romney, Drudge, Hannity and Carlson over this latest bit of desperation, I’m sure.
Finally, and most importantly, look (or listen) to what Obama said — it’s an interesting observation: why WASN’T the Stafford Act waived for New Orleans after Katrina like it had been for other monumental disasters? Do you agree that simply mentioning that fact is racist?
There’s no need to go to Tucker Carlson’s website to watch the video — you can watch the longer version here.
Source: sandandglass
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Here’s an example of the “reframing” effort, the script — currently being undertaken by panicky Fox “news” and Team Romney — to spin Mitt Romney’s own words into something a bit more palatable to the “47 percent” that Romney dismissed as a scavenging horde of grifters, eaters, and shiftless bums, and whose existence sucks the lifeblood from the upstanding and heroic entrepreneurial class:
“He was obviously inarticulate in making this point. The point we’re trying to make here is, under the Obama economy, government dependency is up and economic stagnation is up. And what we’re trying to achieve is trying to get people off government dependency and back to a job that pays well, that gets them on the path to prosperity.” — Paul Ryan
No. Sorry, Paul Ryan. Mitt didn’t mean to say that, at all. And then the spin goes counter-clockwise:
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Bob Cesca collects some of the “liberal media” names that Todd Akin must be talking about:
And Charles Johnson mentions a couple others:
Mean ol’ liberal media trying to make Todd “The Hero” Akin drop out!
Watch this video of Palin, who is filled to the brim with WTF over this issue. I can’t even begin to decode her language — which at this point consists entirely of rhymes, word salad, and slogans — but the funny thing is, neither can Greta van Susteren.
Related:
When Dr. Rape-Doesn’t-Cause-Pregnancy-Because-Of-Spastic-Tubes endorsed Mitt Romney
Well, let’s look at the history of other presidential candidates releasing their tax returns: first how many tax returns, on average, have been released by candidates historically? Further, how many returns did one of the candidates own father say was a reasonable and honest amount to release to the American public?
Now let’s look at the history of other presidential candidates releasing their college records: first, which other presidential candidates did the opposing political party demand college records from? Also how many years of college records, on average, did those other candidates then release?
Right.
Actual Fox News screenshot:
via: dropfox
We thought of doing a caption contest for this one, but it seems Sean Hannity already beat everyone. Audio.
Bob Cesca notes “Regarding Voter ID, Hannity and the dude from Midnight Oil tried to make the case that people need an ID to rent a movie, so they should have an ID to vote. Is renting a movie a fundamental and universal right of citizenship and civic duty? Of course it’s not. Furthermore, the process of registering to vote involves identification anyway — plus there have been roughly 13 cases of voter fraud in the last ten years. 10. And also — oh screw it. Once again, I’m trying to rationalize facile, simplistic nonsense from a professional carnival barker.
“Ultimately, it’s worth noting that Hannity is the second highest rated show on all of cable news. This is what cable news viewers are hearing every night. So if you think this election is over and the president will cruise to victory, you’re out of your mind.”
The president is angry.
The president is an angry man.
The president is black.
The president is an angry black man.
“For the past week or so… Romney has become more and more convinced that he is being treated shabbily by the political process and that, at the heart of this untoward disrespect from The Help, is that… person who currently has the job for which Willard has applied. He is simply not going to stand for this sort of thing anymore, and he is going to inform that… person that there are things that simply… are… not… done.” Continue…
Raw Story reports on some new outrageous thing that Ann Coulter said on The Sean Hannity Cartoon Hour:
Conservative columnist Ann Coulter on Wednesday said that President Barack Obama was campaigning with women’s rights activist Sandra Fluke because his base was “stupid single women.”
[...] Romney has said that he would “get rid” of Planned Parenthood and “kill” the Affordable Care Act health law, which provides free contraception for women.
“I think it’s probably a good sign that Obama is so desperate just to get the base Democratic voter — stupid single women — to vote for him,” Coulter told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday. “This is good news that he needs to lock up that part of the Democratic vote.”
“He’s trying to get the stupid single women voter, which is the Democratic Party base,” Coulter repeated. “And I would just say to stupid single women voters, your husband will not be able to pay you child support if Obamacare goes through and Obama is re-elected. You are talking about the total destruction of wealth. It is the end of America as we know it.”
“Great, you will get free contraception; you won’t have to pay a $10 co-pay, but it will be the end of America. Think about that!”
YEAH, stupid single women! The woman with the androgynous neck, who’s never been married, never had kids, wants you to know that Obamacare is anti-MAN and it will be the END OF AMERICA! Think about THAT.
No, really. Think about that — and then, for Ann, get your stupid single butt out to the polls on November 6th and vote for the end of the world.
(h/t: questionall)
gifs: sandandglass
And for the 1,000th time… Fox is not news. Fox is the official Republican Propaganda Channel. I’d call them an entertainment network, but they’re really not that entertaining.
Brian Beutler discusses the plot twist that occurred yesterday in the Romney campaign narrative — and the absurd contradiction in messaging that Andrea Saul offered in Romney’s defense to a new Priorities USA ad (links and emphasis below are mine):
The background here is a new Priorities USA ad, which tells the story of a man, Joe Soptic, who lost his job — and thus his health insurance — after Bain bought out his plant. Years later his wife died of what may have been a preventable death of cancer.
His particular story doesn’t perfectly illustrate the problems with the country’s safety net. But far from suggesting Romney killed anybody (as his outraged supporters claim) it neatly exposes an enduring source of middle class uncertainty. If you get very sick almost anywhere in America, and then your employer goes out of business, or lays you off, you’re already running out of options. Romneycare fixed this problem in Massachusetts. Obamacare is designed to fix it for the rest of the country.
Enter the Romney campaign, which notes quite correctly that Romney’s mandated, subsidized health care system might have saved Soptic’s wife if she’d lived in Massachusetts. But if that’s such a good thing, then unless President Romney’s going to recommend that all sick and laid off people move to New England, his pledge to repeal Obamacare just falls apart.
Because of Andrea Saul’s response to that Priorities USA ad, Ann Coulter shambled onto the set of The Sean Hannity Cartoon Hour wearing her rage face to screech a little bit about the ad, but mainly to screech at “moron” Andrea Saul and the Romney campaign:
“Anyone who donates to Mitt Romney, and I mean the big donors, ought to say if Andrea Saul isn’t fired and off the campaign tomorrow, they are not giving another dime, because it is not worth fighting for this man if this is the kind of spokesman he has…
There’s no point in you doing your show [Sean Hannity], there’s no point in going to the convention and pushing for this man if he’s employing morons like this. This ad is the turning point and she has nearly snatched victory from the jaws of defeat! She should be off the campaign.”
It will be interesting to see where Romney goes from here. With his business “experience” and personal wealth being examined and attacked and questioned at every turn, now the shrillest exploding heads on Fox are threatening mutiny (on a ship they never wanted to be on) because he needs to score some points on an achievement, which Romneycare was.
But as Benjy Sarlin at TPM notes, “By trying to reclaim Romney’s health care law as part of his political resume, however, Romney is now inviting the issue back into the campaign. If he wants Americans to elect him based on his Massachusetts reforms, it’s only logical to ask him why he doesn’t want them for everyone.”
