Sex, Lies, Videotape and Obama Derangement Syndrome

On Monday's show, Ed Schultz chose to concentrate on the unduly high level of open abuse various operatives of the Republican Party are heaping on the President now. His guests were Melissa Harris-Perry and James Peterson:-

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Several points to be queried here:-

1. Why does every Chairman of the RNC inevitably look like a sex criminal? Mind you, Reince Priebus not only looks like one, his name sounds like a sexual disease.

2.I agree with Melissa Harris-Perry. Priebus shouldn't apologise for likening the President to the perpertrator of a criminal act - in this case Captain Schettino, not only a criminal, but the ultimate coward, who abandoned his ship and its passengers in favour of his own safety. Such an analogy only serves to make the Republicans look like angry, sour-faced, cold-hearted bastards, with more than a smidgeon of racism thrown in.

3. I agree with James Peterson. Who the hell is Allen West? I'll tell you: a coward. West is the prissy, little kid who stood behind the fence shouting insults at various people passing, but when confronted by someone challenging him, he would either walk back what he said or run. Peterson thinks West should be called out, invited to debate his points and be challenged. He won't respond. What I would say to West is basically this: if you have a point to make, make it; and remember ... you were supposed to be an officer and a gentleman, and now you're an honourable gentleman, duly elected to serve your constituents, Republican and Democrat. Imagine how comfortable your Democratic constituents would feel having to contact you with a local problem? And as for the "gentleman" part of your job description, past and present, if your commanding officer never told you, if your daddy never told you, then your mamma sure as hell should have told you that you don't slander a lady the way you've slandered Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman Schultz. And finally, if you reckon you're the man to lead African-American Democrats off the DemocraTIC plantation, then shut the fuck up trying to sound like a sassy slave talking to the white folk. Memo to Congressman West: Sarah Palin is not Miss Scarlett, and you are not Big Sam.

Later in Ed's show, he hosted that old Professional Left nemesis Joan "I-Resent-Black-People" Walsh, who - just seven months ago - was reckoning that all vociferous supporters of the President were Republican trolls paid by Andrew Breitbart.

Now at virtually the eleventh hour, Joan - like a lot of others of her ilk - seem to be walking back a lot of their own Obama hatred, which got to be more than just a bit vitriolic, especially during the last two years. Of course, Joan had to blog about the treatment of the GOP's treatment of the President (whom Joan now refers to as "a decent guy").

I don’t agree with every move the president has made. But I think the more Republicans try to demonize him, the more most American voters will see the difference between the GOP caricature and the man they’ve come to know. I get more pro-Obama with each vicious anti-Obama attack. I’m sure the rest of his base does, too ... Has there ever been a more decent, upstanding, all-American president, with his dog and his family and his Apollo Theatre song solos, treated more shamefully by his opponents? I’d be more horrified by the abuse if I wasn’t sure it was backfiring.

It's 2012, an election year, and there's a President who's running for re-election who's been vilified mercilessly by his own side as much as by the opposition; and whereas the opposition has been led cock-a-snoot by Fox News, our underminers have the Professional Left, who've suddenly awoken, smelled their designer coffee and realised that a lot of the pushback from people they've blocked from their blogs, twitterfeeds and Facebook pages is resonating -hence the new dance known as the Professional Left Moon Walk.

Lest you think we've forgotten, Joan and Ed (and, yes, Ed, you've done your fair share of undermining mischief too), we haven't your words of wanton criticism, your dog whistles and your whining.

Here's a tune by which to practice your Moon Walk dance. Enjoy:-

Uncle Tom, Not Tubman

I'm talking about Allen West, the war criminal who, instead of hanging out in a cell in Fort Leavenworth, hangs out on Capitol Hill. Hark unto his latest bilious message of hatred and division:-



Just think, all y'all who stayed at home in 2010 and sulked out the vote just to "show Obama," this is what your actions got you: a politician whose hatred of the Democratic party is so visceral that he doesn't invite, he demands that the Democrats and their supporters simply take their message elswere - specifically out of the United States of America and, preferably, to hell.

Nice one, especially coming from the man who, ironically, lives in a town called Plantation and who refers to himself as a modern-day Harriet Tubman, leading African-Americans off the Democratic Party's "plantation," and likening such people as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to "overseers."

But then, this is the same "honourable gentleman" who referred to fellow Floridian and serving Congresswoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz as "the most vile, despicable and unprofessional member of the US House of Representatives", and who disrespects her, the President and every American who is a member of the Democratic Party by following Rush Limbaugh's lead of referring to the "Democrat" party.

This man's hatred is palpable, and considering the fact that the vast majority of African-Americans have politely turned their backs on the request that this military, misogynistic Moses lead them from what he regards as their servitude, I'd love to ask him where the hell he'd be finding himself had the Democra-TIC Party not ensured that the Civil Rights Act were passed. I guess he really does prefer pallin' around with those old turncoat Dixiecrats-turned-Republicans and all their children and grandchildren who still live on the real plantation and think him such a good and faithful Negro.

Ralph Nader regularly calls President Obama an "Uncle Tom." He obviously hasn't met Allen West, Uncle Tom on hate steroids.

Crocodile Republicans

Here's a song for any Democrat, Independent or disaffected EmoProg who thinks that it won't be so terrible if Willard defeats the President in November:-



There are a select group of so-called Progressives about, who think the world won't come to an end if a Republican be elected President in November. There's a particularly nasty sect of them on Facebook, led by someone, whose Obama hatred seems to be a projection of all the frustrations suffered during his lifetime. Of course, this fits into the convenient meme of the past four years that everything bad that has ever happened just has to be Obama's fault.

Their premise (and most of them advocate voting for whatever elusive "third party" candidate rises on the horizon (but not Ron Paul, to their credit) is to "allow" and hope for a Republican win. Why? Because these people think that there can be a great Progressive uprising, in the manner of the Tea Party some three years ago, and retake the country by storm. Just like the Teabaggers. An immense and great Firebagging revolution.

Apart from the fact that this tranche of Liberal has never given a genuine rat's ass about the condition and/or support of the working class or the working poor (the traditional base of the old Democratic Party), they have a distinct habit of going about all their "conversion" efforts bass-ackwardsly, which never ceases to rub the real proletariat up the wrong way. In order to effect a more Progressive nation, you have to be willing and able to engage with the likes of trailer park inhabitants, people whom they perceive to be rural deficienti and assorted hayseeds - and in a language familiar to them - without the fear of contracting cooties.

Once again, The Guardian gives a chillingly accurate portrait of Mitt Romney the Ruthless, in a way one can neither hope nor expect any part of the American media to do so - certainly not MSNBC, unless it's Al Sharpton.

So what kind of adversary will he be when he goes up against Obama come the presidential election proper?

The first point to make is that he should not be underestimated. He may come across as Widow Twankey on the campaign stump, but he fights hard and he fights dirty. He has neutralised much of the Gingrich threat through a blitzkrieg of negative TV advertising that was impressive even by America's sullied standards. In Florida alone he has spent almost $14m (£9m) on attack ads, $8m (£5m) of that through Restore Our Future, a Super Pac, or political action committee, that Romney pretends he has nothing to do with but is run by his former advisers. Over the past 10 days he has eviscerated Gingrich, depicting him as a lobbyist for the much-hated mortgage giant Freddie Mac and virtually accusing him of lying about his close relationship to Ronald Reagan. The assault was surgical, brutal and chillingly effective. And all the while, Romney kept that perma-smile glued to his face.

Expect similar treatment of Obama, who Romney will portray, as he does on the campaign stump, as a European-style socialist destroying free enterprise and the God-given right to pursue happiness that is the cornerstone of American greatness. It is a Tea Party argument that Romney, ever the chameleon, has adopted and made his own. Though he is likely to soften the message a little in order for it to reach beyond the Republican faithful he is appealing to now, the idea that Obama is somehow un-American is likely to suffuse the attack ads that will be unleashed from the summer with an intensity unparalleled in US history.

As if we didn't know ... with an occasional mention of the economy (and even if it improves, as it's doing slowly but surely, rest assured that whatever generic Republican candidate eventually runs, the economy will never be as good under this President as it was under Republican control), this election will be total culture war. It will determine whether the United States progresses forward or retreats to the 1950s Pleasantville which was anything but pleasant, unless you were white and male. Willard the flip-flopping dog-on-the-roof-of-the-car panderer will sell out to the Tea Party and the tail will wag the dog on the hot tin roof.

One other thing: when Republicans play, they play for keeps. If they get the keys to the White House and, subsequently, the Capitol, there will be virtually no way and no one to pry them from their cold, compassionless and emotionally dead hands.

Someone Is Lying and It's Not the President

Dr James Peterson, Professor of English at LeHigh University and a guest on Ed Schultz's MSNBC show last week, absolutely and accurately described Jan Brewer. Contrast her analysis of the 2010 White House meeting on immigration that she had with the President, only moments after it happened, to her description of it later in her book, which prompted the kerfuffle on the tarmac.

It's all on film and referenced here in Ed's interfiew with Dr Peterson:-

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Apart from the obvious racism and Jan Brewer's ugly history in dealing with the issue of illegal immigration in Arizona (headless corpses on the border and all that), as Dr Peterson points out, she's selling a book. In other words, grifting.

Kudos to the professor as well, for referencing the fact that many on the Left do much the same when they are pimping out a book. Or have we forgotten Michael Moore, his appropriation of Occupy Wall Street and his subtle insinuation to the Left not to vote?

R-E-S-P-E-C-T Is Lacking. I Wonder Why

On the eve of the 2012 Presidential election, chickens come home to roost. Jan Brewer guided them to Arizona on her broomstick, as she greeted the President on his recent visit, a visit which has been captured for immortality by an infamous picture:-

Taken on face value, this shows the governor of a Western state giving the President of the United States the cruelest sort of dressing-down. Has any President ever received such treatment, since General George McClellan snubbed Abraham Lincoln, who was awaiting him in McClellan's parlour, by announcing he was going to bed?

Taken on face value again, this gesture of the raised index finger is the sort of body language used when an adult takes to telling off a small child ... or when any adult takes to telling off another adult whom they consider to be inferior.

Aye, there's the rub.

One wonders if the President who'd walked down those steps of Air Force One had been Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or John Edwards, if Brewer would have dared to display such a singular lack of deportment and manners? After all, common courtesy dictates that it's rude to shake a finger in the face of another person. One wonders, as well, if the governor had been Brewer's Democratic predecessor welcoming George W Bush, if Janet Napolitano would have behaved in such a manner.

In both instances, I think it safe to assume that the answer would have been "no."

I also think it's safe, not just to assume, but to assert that this behaviour, as has a plethora of similar behaviour toward this President on both sides of the political spectrum, has been attempted because the President is African-American.

And that totally sucks.

From the frozen frame of the picture, which shows a white woman aggressively dressing down a black man, to Brewer's whiney response about "feeling threatened," and the President being "thin-skinned," you have the classic meme of the poor, little white woman being intimidated by the black buck straight in from the fields. And no matter how much blowhards like Rep Dana Rohrbacher try to excuse this action as part of the First Amendment, in that the President is not a King, the entire escapade comes down to one thing and one thing only: respect.

Until this President took office, each and every one of his predecessors had been shown the utmost respect - by their own party, by the opposition and by the media. Even the crook, Richard Nixon. Even the fratboy incompetent, George W Bush.

From both Right and Left, for the past four years, this President has suffered a level of disrespect heretofore unparallelled. From Newt Gingrich's Kenyan anti-colonial remarks to monkey pictures from the Right to Firedoglake's bugaloo Bush and "house nigger" comments to Joan Walsh's and Glenn Greenwald's "Obamalover" euphemism to Ralph Nader's Uncle Tom moment to Democratic Congressman Peter de Fazio's "fuck the President" moment, all of this disrespect boils down to one thing and one thing only: race.

And that's to our everlasting shame as a nation that we seem to be headed, not forward, but backwards in the direction the Newts and Ricks and Ron Pauls want to take us, back to the 1950s to a moment frozen in time by an equally infamous pictur of another sort:-

We really must ask ourselves, exactly, how far we've come since that moment?

The answer, I think, is simply not far enough.

Bill Maher Meets Republicans and Assorted Weirdos - January 27th 2012

Still pushing the Ron Paul meme, whilst studiously avoiding addressing Paul's race issues ... and giving Mark Foley gravitas? Really?



How to lose control of a panel: let two assholes like Dana Roeherbacher and Kennedy spew diarrhea of the mouth. Tell them to STFU. It takes a Brit to speak sense.



Watch Kennedy make "sexism" a euphemism for racism.



Totally useless panel.

Ep. 235: January 27, 2012 - Overtime

Overtime.

Wicked Witch of the West Competition

It's now official. Well, it's been official for over seventy years. The Wicked Witch of the West has melted. She is gone where the goblins go and all that. Here's the proof:-

For three score years and ten, the people of Oz (otherwise known as LaLaLand) have searched high and low for someone morally ugly and emotionally cold enough to bear the worthy title of Wicked Witch of the West.

Well, they've finally narrowed their field to two candidates, and they've decided, in this election year, to let the voters decide just who is wicked enough a bitch to spend the rest of her life riding around on a Lear Jet broom, bullying people and coveting Louboutin ruby slippers.

Candidate Number One is a Class A ratfucker, who comes with her own wicked elf (Bill Maher), likes to racebait a bit and has fellatio'd Newt Gingrich:-

Candidate Number Two inherited a governor's job, is delusionary enough to see decapitated heads on the border, has a good witch's cackle and tried to put a spell on the President with the evil finger:-

Right, folks, which one is it to be? Miss Hollywood or Miss Arizona? Which one of these women is wicked enough to lead the coven as Wicked Witch of the West? You decide.

Dontcha just wish you could melt them both?

Bill Maher Hopes You'll Forget What He's Been Saying for the Last Three Years

Bill Maher's got a man crush again. On the President. Again. All of a sudden the President is his hero. Last night on Anderson Cooper 360, he waxed lyrical about the President, and how he's the one source of reality in a world of politics gone mad. He's full of Obamalove again, and he thinks the President can beat Mitt Romney in November.

This is all damage limitation. Bill knows exactly what he's been saying about the President, or "Barry," as he sometimes, derogatorily, called him during this period. He also knows that many of the people who sucked on his words like oxygen during the Bush Administration, suddenly sat up and took notice of some of the vile, outlandish and totally untrue things Maher uttered about this President.

The President can win now, Bill has decreed, hoping that people won't remember that he's called him a wussy and that as late as last September, he was subtly insinuating that people shouldn't vote. As late as last October, he was calling the President a liar for failing to close Gitmo (ne'mind, it was Congress and the Democrats who effected that fiasco). And as late as November, he was insisting that Mitt Romney could certainly beat the President, and in the presence of his good friend, frequent guest and convicted felon, Rep Darrell Issa.

Now, as the Cockneys say, it's a completely different kettle of fish. Maybe Bill realises that all of his sayings and doings as a graduate of the Arianna Huffington School of Advanced Ratfuckery are here on the "internets" for all to see and to fact check. Or maybe he realises that people just aren't so stupid as he would like his arrogant minions and herd-followers to believe. Maybe Bill's scared that, should the President lose, as a member of the Professional Left, he might be held responsible.

Watch Bill's political Moon Walk backwards over his undermining of the past four years - the best and most ironic bit is when he refers to the Republican debates as being like the television show you watch and love, until it jumps the shark and then becomes a liability to your taste - a bit like Real Time :-



For all that luscious, fulsome praise, Bill still cannot manage to extricate his head from Ron Paul's posterior portion, clinging to this vicious, old racist homophobe disguised as a folksy, old country doctor, because he wants to legalise the weed Bill gets via medical prescription and effect a program of isolation with regard to what would be non-foreign policy.

And like all Paulbots, Maher insists that Ron Paul is honest, something which The Washington Post, today, proved to be a dubious assertion. Maher says that there are many things which Paul advocates, which make him uncomfortable and with which he doesn't agree. Amongst those things, he cited the gold standard and Paul's ideas about healthcare. Apparently, Ron Paul's racism, or his opportunism in promoting racism and homophobia in order to make a quick buck, doesn't bother Bill Maher in the least.

Well, it takes one to know one, I suppose.

I leave Bill, and the rest of the celebrity talking heads of the Professional Left, with this prescient song to ponder:-

Scary Stupid Headupassitis

For the umpteenth time, Hillary Clinton has said she's leaving politics. She's not interested in running for President. She's finished. Done. Retired. For the time being. At least after this stint as Secretary of State.

According to an article in today's Guardian, she's bowing out of public life after the November elections.

She told state department employees on Thursday she was ready for a rest and is paying no attention to the Republican presidential candidate debates. She said she wanted to find out how tired she was after being first lady, senator, aspiring presidential candidate and finally the US secretary of state.

"I have made it clear that I will certainly stay on until the president nominates someone and that transition can occur [if Obama wins re-election," she told a meeting. "But I think after 20 years, and it will be 20 years, of being on the high wire of American politics and all of the challenges that come with that, it would be probably a good idea to just find out how tired I am."

But, she appeared to leave the door open to a possible eventual return, adding to laughter from the crowd that "everyone always says that when they leave these jobs".

I don't know how many times this woman has to clarify her point. Besides, most Secretaries of State serve only one Presidential term anyway. Warren Christopher made way for Madeleine Albright. Colin Powell stepped aside for Condi Rice. And Hillary will defer to someohne else - possibly John Kerry or Bill Richardson or even James Webb.

The Clintonistas hate that, but, as the article states, she's not ruling out a return, and as much as Bill Keller and the rest of the herd might wish for a Vice-Presidential position on the 2012 ticket, she's still seen by people like Ed Rendell as a viable Presidential candidate for 2016. Who knows?

As Hillary says, she's got to retire to realise how tired she is, and at times during the past three years, she's looked exhausted.

I wish Hillary well in whatever she does. I would have voted for her in 2008, had she won the nomination, and I'd vote for her in 2016, if she secures it then.

What's scary about this announcement are the reactions by some of The Guardian's American commentators and their total and dangerous naivete.

Like jimbojamesiv:

Hillary's departure would be a reason to vote for Barack, and, yet, Obama still blows, so I can't.

Don't vote, occupy and opt-out.

Stand by the principle that the system is broken beyond repair.

Do not legitimize the corruption by participating. It's what each one of the decent persons must die, granted there aren't a lot of them, but there are enough to topple all the corrupt regimes, which includes basically every so-called nation-state.

Or overhead. who's clearly in over his own:-

Vote third party. The lesser of two evils is still evil.

Then MonkEMan, apparently a sane voice in the wilderness of stupidity:-

Protesting by making yourself silent and powerless is stupid beyond belief. Protest and occupy - yes. But get out and vote as well.

Only to be answered by the perennially obtuse OldSlov:-

If nobody voted, then the current process would lose its legitimacy. That is sorely needed, because we effectively have a democratic dictatorship. We seem to be under the illusion that we have a choice when everything was decided a long time ago.

There seems to be a couple of stupidity epidemics raging at the moment. I can't decide whether this singular resistance against voting is the legacy of the Occupy movement, which - whilst emphasizing income inequality - does nothing to alleviate this by encouraging people not to vote. Not voting, or voting third party, would give all the ammunition necessary to the party who's insistent that income disparity should be even greater, that women and minorities give up any equal rights achieved and that education, environment and health suffer all the worse for it.

That's not just stupidity; that's cussed headupassitis - and that's scary.

Yet Another Myth Dispelled ... UK Makes a Right-Face Turn

I know assorted Progressives in the US view Europe as, collectively, more sophisticated and socially liberal than the US. In many ways, this is true, but only for some countries. I also know that, presented with the fact that the vast majority of countries in Western Europe now have governments which can only be described as Centre-Right, these selfsame people will piously declare that conservatives in Europe are to the Left of the Democratic Party in the US.

And that's not entirely true.

Take Britain, for example.

Loads of people made mincemeat of the fact that that nice, pudding-faced David Cameron seemed to have more liberal ideas than our own President, but that couldn'b be further from the truth.

There's a Conservative MP who's chomping at the bit to get a law enacted to enforce abstinancy being taught as part of sex education in schools, and David Cameron, himself, is an advocate of faith schools and home-schooling.

That, alone, would ensure that the US Republican party welcoming him with open arms. Just a thought, but the Conservative Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, was an anchor baby, born in New York City. If the Republican National Convention evolves into a brokered affair, perhaps things should be put in motion to issue Boris (who's part-Turkish, by the way) with a US passport to enhable him to be drafted by the Republicans. Apart from holding dear all the same principles espoused by Cameron, Boris can add a few choice racist comments to his credits, especially referring to black children as "pickanninies" and calling for London's schools to be "culturally cleansed."

But, despite the fact that the fabled middle class in Britain are set to be squeezed to the pips until at least 2020, with most people's wages being frozen, despite the fact that the UK is bleeding jobs, despite the fact that food banks are opening every day and that Cameron and his cronies are revamping the single-payer National Health System into a competitive market force with a lot of help from Bill Frist's Humana empire, David Cameron and the Conservative Party are soaring in the polls.

Listen ... this is despite all the austerity measures, all the benefits cuts, all the rising unemployment, everything.

The Conservatives have forged a five-point lead over Labour, according to the latest Guardian/ICM poll, suggesting David Cameron would stand on the verge of an outright majority if an election were held now.

The Tories are on 40%, up three percentage points from December, while Labour has drifted down one to 35%. The Liberal Democrats are on 16%, up one.

The Tories' standing is their highest since before the general election in the Guardian/ICM series – they last stood at 40% in March 2010. Their lead is the biggest since the eight-point edge they enjoyed in June 2010, a few weeks after Cameron moved into Downing Street.

The result will add to the pressure on Ed Miliband, who has endured a difficult few weeks amid whispering about his performance and rows with union leaders over his attempt to harden his party's line on the deficit. Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite, attacked Miliband after the Labour leader and Ed Balls backed the public sector pay freeze and signalled they could not currently promise to reverse any of the coalition's spending cuts.

Read the last paragraph again. Miliband and Balls are the equally entitled, privately-educated leaders of the Labour party, who actually opposed the unions and publically stated that they wouldn't really reverse any of Cameron's policies, if elected. (Of course, Cameron's popularity isn't hindered by the fact that Miligand talks like a geek with a noseful of snot, or that his Miliband's older brother, David, the former Foreign Secretary, has just taken a cush lobbying job with a Class A city financial firm). So much for cloth-capped Labour.

Just like the US, British politics is geographical. The South and Southeast are famously conservative, whilst Labour generally polls better in the formerly industrial North; but the Midlands - "Middle England" - is the battleground, and it's there, the Conservatives are, surprisingly, strong.

The north-south divide is as pronounced as ever: the Tories lead by 12 points in the south, and Labour is five points up in the north. In the traditional electoral battleground of the Midlands, however, it is the Tories who are surging ahead – at 48%. Labour stands on 39%.

The Liberal Democrats, the truly Progressive party who form the junior partner of the current governing coalition, are nowhere. Nick Clegg will, inevitably, go down in British history, as the leader who destroyed his own party with his own ego.

One asks why the Conservatives, a party founded on the mean-spiritedness of Maggie Thatcher, is suddenly so popular. Thatcher's tactics are now written in stone in the Conservative Party manifesto, and they aren't any nicer, no matter how much Cameron might smile and play table tennis with schoolboys for the cameras.

It's simply that they've got the message right, and one also wonders if someone on their PR team hasn't been studying Frank Luntz. Keep it simple, stupid. The core British voter isn't much more intelligent than the American one. They don't like foreigners (and that means immigration), people perceived to be scrounging off the Government's tick (and that means poor people), and people basically "different" from the British.

Pander in the right way for the Right way, with a smile and some cute kids in tow, and the Brits are suckers just like their American cousins.

Rick Santorum on Making Lemonade from Life's Lemons

Whenever Piers Morgan interviews some of the totally dangerous nutjobs that inhabit our political stratosphere on the US side of the Pond, he must wonder if the money CNN pays him is really worth it. Nadine Dorries, aside, some of our politicos make the late Screaming Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Looney Party look normal.

Quite recently, Morgan interviewed Rick Santorum, the mega ueber conservative Republican, who believes in protecting life, until you're actually born, and then, it's every man (or woman) for himself or herself. But that's par for the course with Republicans.

What seemed to baffle Morgan the most, from the look of total bewilderment on his face, was Santorum's absolute regard for the total illegality of abortion and the fact that he would force a woman, a girl, who'd become pregnant as a result of rape or incest, to bear the child.

Santorum insists that he's not imposing his religious beliefs on others in his instance, but if you listen to the sacerdotal way in which he explains his convictions to Morgan, it's obvious that he does; for in forcing a woman to bear a child conceived as a result of rape or incest, he's forcing her to accept that his religious beliefs are the right ones, even in the language he uses about the child being a "gift from God" - albeit a broken one.

I totally admit that, anytime a pregnancy be a result of rape or incest, the child is the true innocent in all of this, but so, also, is the woman who, if Santorum had his way, would be forced to carry the child to term, forced to go into labour and give birth. Some women very well may hold Santorum's belief and be able to do this. I applaud their fortitude and their courage for choosing to do this.

But one man's (or woman's) medicine is another's poison, and for many women who have become pregnant because of these crimes, the pregnancy is a vivid reminder of what happened to them. A child should be conceived in love, and if a woman feels, under the circumstances of rape or incest, that she cannot carry to term and deliver this child because of the instances surrounding its conception, she should also have the choice to terminate such a pregnancy.

When I was raised in the Catholic Church, one of its basic premises was the sanctity of life. Rick Santorum wants to protect life until birth, but Rick Santorum also believes in the pre-emptive bombing of Iran and the continuation of the death penalty.

There is something mightily incongruent here, and this man is dangerous for America's future.

You can watch the creepy interview below (shudder):-

Think the Republican Party Really Is Splintering? Think Again

Our biggest problem - the Left's - is that we're stupid. Or rather, we're naive. So naive, we never learn from our mistakes.

And we listen too much to the Professional Left.

No sooner had Barack Obama won the 2008 Election, than we were lapping up every liquid word Chris Matthews or Bill Maher or Uncle Tom Cobbley told us about the Republicans being dead in the water - how they'd never come back from this, how they'd be the party in the wilderness for a long time.

Then, the Tea Party arose, and the Democrats lost the House in the 2010 Midterms.

OMIGOD! HOW DID THAT HAPPEN? I KNOW ... IT'S OBAMA'S FAULT.

Well, that was the refrain of the Professional Left, as well. After all, it was the Professional Left who told us not to vote, just so we could show Obama. Show him what, I've still to ascertain. How stupidly sheeple-like certain tranches of the Left are?

Anyway, the Professional Left have a new message: After three Republican Primaries in three states with three winners, the Party is splintering. Gingrich is attacking Romney, Romney's being cagey, Ron Paul sounds increasingly weirder (although Rick Santorum's approaching those depths, himself). They're all fighting with each other. They're destroying themselves from within.

Of course, there's a method to this meme on behalf of the Professional Left. Most would like to lull their sheeple into a daze where the prospective voter thinks the Republicans are so damned batshit that there's no way the President could lose ... so they won't need to vote, will they? That way, they could continue with their Obama-criticism well into his second term and feel even more purist in their critique because, after all, they didn't vote for him.

But unlike the Left, who have made snatching defeat from the jaws of victory an art form, the Right always seem to find a second wind; and if you really look at and listen to what the GOP candidates are saying, you'll find most of their policies mirror each other's, even Ron Paul's.

Mary Cate Cary explains in the most recent U S News and World Report:

A cursory review of the GOP candidates' positions on the issues is surprisingly repetitive, especially on the issues of most importance to voters, namely, the economy and the budget deficit. All of the Republican candidates are fiscal conservatives, all want lower federal income taxes, and when it comes to lowering corporate taxes, it's simply a question of who wants to cut by how much. Most support a balanced budget and raising the retirement age. All want to reform Social Security and Medicare. Most favor repealing Dodd-Frank's restrictions on the financial industry, and all want to reduce federal regulations on businesses.

All are pro-life, and all want tougher border security. All are opposed to Obama­care, with most calling for an outright repeal. All except Ron Paul support a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. The biggest areas of disagreement seem to be defense and foreign policy, with stances ranging from cutting the defense budget (Paul) to no reductions in the Pentagon budget except for waste (Newt Gingrich) to keeping all U.S. bases open (Rick Santorum) and increasing overseas troop levels and warships (Romney). They have a variety of positions on how to handle Libya, and while the field is split on whether waterboarding is torture, most support keeping the Guantánamo Bay prison open.

Overall, that doesn't sound like "deep ideological divisions" to me. On domestic issues, Republicans are surprisingly unified. Republicans agree on most economic issues, as well as on the other issues most important to voters: the federal deficit and healthcare.

There are a growing number of disaffected Progressives about, who plan on voting for a third party, knowing that this would give the election to the Republicans, in hopes that in four years a real Progressive revolution would take hold and, just like the Tea Party, prevail within four years.

Don't bank on that, and above all, don't give them the ammunition to achieve it.

The Mutant Newtant: A Horror Story

In the beginning there was a cute little newt.

And then it mutated into something horrible.

Ron Paul Whistles for Dixie

Ron Paul, who wants to be President of the United States, gives a speech in front of the Confederate flag, detailing how the South was right and the North was wrong.

Oh, and the war wasn't about slavery at all, but about those pesky, lil'ol States' Rights. (Sound familiar now?) In PaulWorld, there would be no Civil War (something that was unconstitutional in his mind). Instead, at some date and time, the US Government would agree to "bail out" the Southern slaveowners, by "buying" all the slaves they owned and then freeing them. Really.

Here's the man whom many Progressives and much of the Professional Left are pushing at us for the wedge issues of pot and bringing home the troops. There's so much more he encompasses:-



According to Paul, all our troubles started with honest Abe Lincoln and his fighting a war using slavery as a mask for wanting to create a monolithic, centralised government.

If you are so disgusted by the blatant display of race-baiting being practiced by Newt Gingrich, but if you turn a blind eye to Ron Paul's obvious racism and his back-to-the-future domestic social policy, please refrain from referring to yourself either as a Progressive or a Liberal. You are neither.

Uppity

Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian and Maureen Dowd of The New York Times stir some of the same old same old for the President, but then, most of these people have a remit to ensure that the President be constantly criticized.

You can read what they have to say in its entirety here (Freedland) and here (Dowd).

Freedland, a Brit, buys into all the usual suspects' talking points against anything and everything the President has achieved. The Brits always amaze me, nonetheless, those who write for the ueber-liberal Guardian, especially in their faux efforts to understand how our political process and our government works. I can only assume that Freedland got a lot of his criticism from Firedoglake's special brand of Obama-hatred, or perhaps his fellow Guardian contributor, GiGi, himself, was in touch.

The specific charge sheet against Obama could run for several pages and then several more. On the economy, the president is blamed for a lack of ambition, for passing a stimulus package of $787bn that, say the critics, should have been nearly twice the size. Obama erred, too, by allowing Democrats in Congress to write the stimulus bill, packing it with pet schemes and pork that would do little to get the economy moving. In an attempt to win Republican support – which never came – he also weighed down the bill with too many tax cuts. The result was action that was simply incomplete, leaving unemployment hovering around the 9% mark for most of Obama's presidency.

Former admirers say he was too weak on the banks, failing to declare war on those who had caused the 2008 crash. The clues were there in his senior appointments. While some liberals had fantasised about a dream ticket of Nobel laureate Paul Krugman and former labour secretary Robert Reich, Obama filled his two key economic posts with Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, both schooled by Robert Rubin, former co-chair of Goldman Sachs. Obama did legislate on financial reform, but the bill did not go far enough, with no restoration of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall act, which had previously separated casino and retail banking. Nor was there any action to cap the pay of top executives, even in companies majority-owned by the US government. It's not that Obama fought and lost on these issues. In most cases, he did not even fight.

His signature achievement, the passage of healthcare reform, also dismayed as many liberals as it delighted, chiefly because Obama surrendered on the so-called public option which, while not exactly establishing an American NHS, would have at least offered a government-run insurance programme as an alternative to the private sector. That made Obama's bill no more radical than one proposed decades earlier by Richard Nixon, or the one passed by a certain Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts.

In his inaugural address Obama spoke often and poetically on climate change. He vowed to "harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories". But there has been no action and not even any serious advocacy. Aware that Republicans do not even believe there is an energy problem, he has shied away from offering a solution.

Those of us watching from afar have felt versions of this disappointment. Plenty of Guardian readers would have cheered when Obama used his first day in office to sign an order for the closure of the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay – and chose to make his first presidential phone call to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. But, thwarted by a Republican refusal to allow any ex-Guantánamo detainees to set foot on US soil, Obama has been unable to make good on that day one order: Camp Delta remains open. As for Israel-Palestine, on which he had promised to work from his first day in office, the US role has been ineffective or even, by some lights, counter-productive.

You know, most of the highlighted criticism above would be valid, if we were talking about a dictator or even a Prime Minister in a parliamentary government. But we're not, and a lot of the reason this President never achieved a Progressive utopia was due, in part, to the fact that the President doesn't legislate. That he needs Congress to legislate and he needs a failsafe majority in order to ensure his policies are passed. On the other hand, most of what many Progressives wanted was unachievable anyway.

The stimulus was too small? The President admitted that it was, but in order to get this past the Senate, the President needed Republican votes. At the beginning of his term, the Senate had yet to attain a 60-vote Democratic majority. When the Stimulus was debated, Ted Kennedy was ill, and Al Franken was involved in a recount. Even with both of them there, at that time, there were only 59 votes. They would have needed one Republican to cross the aisle; as it was, they needed three. The stimulus was made smaller in order to secure the votes of three moderate Republicans, one of whom subsequently became a Democrat. In fact, the Democrats only had the elusive 60-vote majority for about six months, but that majority included Senators like Joe Liebermann and Ben Nelson.

The bank legislation? Once again, the President doesn't legislate. Could it have been stronger? Of course, but the sad fact remains that many powerful Democratic Senators and Congressmen are as much in Wall Street's pockets as their Republican brethren - people like Chuck Schumer and Charlie Rangel.

The same can be said for healthcare legislation, but as inadequate as it might seem to Jonathan Freedland, who seems to be oblivious to the fact that Britain's fabled National Health Service is moving more and more towards rationing healthcare (that's single-payer for you), the healthcare act provides health insurance for 30 million Americans, makes pre-existing conditions a thing of the past, allows children to remain on their parents' policies until they're twenty-six and even provides something that sounds suspiciously like a public option. Freedland may sneer, but perhaps he'd like to read a public apology to the President for doubting his ability from a breast cancer sufferer.

As for Guantanamo Bay's closure, the President can order that, but the Congress has to empower the money necessary to close the place down, as well as finding alternative facilities for people still being held. The Senate nixed that as well - not once, but three different times. The overriding legislation was supported by such notable Progressives as Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown and Al Franken.

But it's much, much easier to blame the President. And, of course, the article just wouldn't be valid without the usual whine about the President caving.

People can cut Freedland some slack, especially in his condescending conclusion, grudgingly giving credit to the President for obvious achievements and hoping that he channels Roosevelt (please, enough of the FDR revisionist history) during a second term in order to cement some greatness, because he's a Brit, and they're usually condescending to us in their jealousy; but Dowd, channels Newt in some none-too-subtle race-baiting, especially as her article's entitled "Showtime at the Apollo."

In an interview with Fareed Zakaria for this week’s Time cover story, the president is maddeningly naïve.

Asked about his cool, aloof style and his unproductive relationship with John Boehner, Obama replied: “You know, the truth is, actually, when it comes to Congress, the issue is not personal relationships. My suspicion is that this whole critique has to do with the fact that I don’t go to a lot of Washington parties. And as a consequence, the Washington press corps maybe just doesn’t feel like I’m in the mix enough with them, and they figure, well, if I’m not spending time with them, I must be cold and aloof. The fact is, I’ve got a 13-year-old and 10-year-old daughter.”

Reagan didn’t socialize with the press. He spent his evenings with Nancy, watching TV with dinner trays. But he knew that to transcend, you can’t condescend.

The portrait of the first couple in Jodi Kantor’s new book, “The Obamas,” bristles with aggrievement and the rational president’s disdain for the irrational nature of politics, the press and Republicans. Despite what his rivals say, the president and the first lady do believe in American exceptionalism — their own, and they feel overassaulted and underappreciated.

We disappointed them.

(snip)

The Obamas, especially Michelle, have radiated the sense that Americans do not appreciate what they sacrifice by living in a gilded cage. They’ve forgotten Rule No. 1 of politics: No one sheds tears for anyone lucky enough to live at the White House. And after four or eight years of public service, you are assured membership in the 1 percent club.

The Obamas truly feel like victims.

Freedland's article is awash with Progressive disappointment, which is founded in basic ignorance of how the government is supposed to function, according to the Constitution. I'd expect that, in today's world of lazy journalism, he'd trust his luvvie mates from Jane's World or GiGiLand rather than doing some real research to find out exactly what President Obama has achieved.

Dowd's entire article, however, as evidenced from the above quotes, drips with subtle race-baiting, in that the Obamas, especially Mrs Obama, hold themselves above ordinary people and are aggrieved that the common-and-garden public don't appreciate them. Reagan, the great white god, could stay at home and transcend; but Obama, the "other," needs to step out, step'n fetchit and shine. For the American people and Maureen Dowd. Smells like teen spirit, here we are now, entertain us and all that.

Smells more like Ms Dowd is pushing the meme of the uppity Negroes in the White House.

Let the culture wars begin.

Message for Newt: Honky, Please ...

My late daddy only ever had an inkling of like for two Republicans, and those two, he always said should have been Democrats. Coincidentally, the first one was George Romney, father of Willard, who's ten times the man Willard can only ever hope to be in his dreams. During his own Presidential campaign of 1968, Romney Sr remarked that the US was wrong to go into VietNam and that we'd all been brainwashed about this war.

I remember my dad's reaction was, "Well, that's him thrown under the goddamned bus for common sense."

The other was Nelson Rockefeller. Every time Rocky would mount a Presidential campaign, my dad would shake his head and muse, "Eeeeeh Lord, running again. That sonofabitch is divorced. A man who cheats on his wife will cheat on his country if he's in charge of it."

Of course, we all know that Saint Ronald Reagan was elected, and that Saint Ronnie married Holy Mother Nancy when she was pregnant with the immaculate child (who later posed nude for Playboy and is a Democrat today for her sins).

Yes, America is evolving. We're more tolerant now of a lot of things which twenty, thirty or sixty years ago, wouldn't have washed. Bill Clinton's popularity increased when it was revealed he got a blow job in the White House. A majority of Americans are now comfortable with the idea of same-sex marriages. More and more of us are openly secular.

Maybe we are ready for someone who in any other country would be called an open libertine. Would the Europeans poo-poo the idea of someone like Newt as the leader of a country? Well, Gerhardt Shroeder, the German Chancellor in the 1990s referred to as Herr Clinton Blair during his tenure, was on Wife Number Three when he took the helm and was a known bon vivant.

I think those cosmopolitan and sophisticated Europeans would object more to the fact that Newt left his first two wives by the wayside when they were suffering from serious illnesses, as well as his tendancy to hide behind the hypocrisy of his so-called religious conversion, than his libertine history.

The fact that Newt dipped his toe in the waters of race-baiting some sixteen months ago when he branded the President a Kenyan anti-colonialist - aren't we all descendents of anti-colonialists, Newt? I know I am - found the waters to his liking and invited the rest of the Republican party to come in for a swim, speaks volumes for the sad fact that these days, racism is the new black.

As Bill Moyers reminded everyone on Friday's Real Time, Goldwater and Reagan couldn't get elected today because they would be too moderate. Newt, being a Southerner and as slippery as the animal whose name he bears, knows how to use the coded language which would re-awaken all the racial doubts and fears which, for the most part, lie inanimate deep within the spiritual bowels of some people in the Deep South - and a fair few in the North, if truth be told.

The race-bating is obvious, and we can deal with that.

The hypocrisy regarding his amorality is another thing.

He left one wife, who was eight years his senior and the mother of his two daughters (and his high school geometry teacher, no less) when she was on a sick bed recovering from cancer; whilst married to his second, and much younger wife, he carried on an illicit liaison with an even younger staffer, in the marital home in Washington, asking the second wife for an open marriage before leaving her when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

In speaking of his second wife, he has remarked that Callista will let him do anything. So does that mean we'll have more intern sedcuctions in the Oval Office this time around?

The brilliant Gail Collins in today's Times does a great takedown of Newt and his marital manoeuvres.

Voters very seldom penalize politicians for sexual misbehavior — unless it’s of a type that suggests the pol in question is a little ... off. (See: sexting pictures of your underwear, having tickling parties with your young male aides, telling your staff you’re going on a hike and then flying to see your girlfriend in Argentina. Really, when you look back, we have been through a lot.)

Beyond the hypocrisy of this sort of behavior from a guy who wants to protect the sanctity of holy matrimony from gay couples, there also seems to be a streak of almost crazed self-absorption that runs through the Newt saga. Who would ditch a spouse of 18 years in a phone call? Shortly after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis? And, of course, he broke up with his first wife while she was battling cancer. Do you see a theme developing here? This is the same guy who proudly announced “I think grandiose thoughts” during the last debate.

Campaigning after the ABC News interview broke, Gingrich said: “Callista and I have a wonderful relationship. We knew we’d get beaten up. We knew we’d get lied about. We knew we’d get smeared. We knew there would be nasty attack ads. And we decided the country was worth the pain.”

Poor helmet-haired Callista. She's the schmuck. I would direct her to a famous remark made by the very wealthy and failed late British Conservative politician Sir James Goldsmith. Goldsmith was a bon vivant who had a habit of getting his mistresses pregnant, then divorcing his current wife in order to marry the mistress.

"When a mistress becomes one's wife," Goldsmith opined, "One suddenly finds one has a particular situation vacant."

Still, Callista lets Newt do anything. She'll share him with the country.

Lucky us.

Real Time January 20 2012

Ep. 234: January 20, 2012 - Overtime

Defining Newt and Willard

Buddy Roemer gets it. Well, as an ex-Democrat, he would; and he perfectly hands the Democratic party the most apt description of Willard Romney and Newt Gingrich I've ever heard. It's at the 1:50 mark or thereabouts:-



Mitt Romney is Mr One Percent. Newt Gingrich is his lobbyist.

The Democrats should remember that ... courtesy of a Republican.

Stupidity Is Not Confined to The American Right

You think stupidity - specifically moral stupidity - is only to be found amongst the religious base of the Republican Right? You think only the likes of Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum harken the virtues of chastity rings and the teaching of abstinence in US schools?

You believe Bill Maher is a genuine intellectual when he points out that conservatives in Europe are to the Left of Democrats in the United States?

Well ... welcome to David Cameron's Britain. And, ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce you to the British Michele Bachmann, Nadine Dorries, Conservative MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, which is a community not that far to the North of London and not that far South of the metropolis of Birmingham - so we're not talking about either the sticks or the boondocks.

The venerable Nadine, it seems, is pushing a bill which would allow abstinence to be taught as part of a sex education program in UK schools. Good luck with that, considering that UK schoolgirls have access to free contraceptives, including the morning after pill doled out to girls as young as eleven in junior schools, upon demand, by the school nurse, and the UK still manages to have the highest rate of teen pregnancies in Europe, not to mention the highest rate of teens indulging in underage sex.

Anyway, Ms Dorries has been given the go-ahead to present her bill for a vote in the Commons, as per The Guardian:-

The bill, proposed by Nadine Dorries, the Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire, would require schools to offer extra sex education classes to girls aged 13 to 16 and for these lessons to include advice on "the benefits of abstinence".

In May, MPs voted 67 to 61, majority six, in favour of allowing Dorries to bring forward her bill. It is listed to receive its second reading on Friday morning, though it is unlikely to become law without government support.

(Don't think this government enlightened enough to squelch this. David Cameron, Mr Austerity, is all about cut, cut, cut - sound familiar? - and it costs nothing to teach kids, or attempt to teach them, just to say no.)

But not everyone is a happy bunny with this.

The bill has angered feminists, humanists and pro-abortionists, hundreds of whom will be demonstrating outside parliament while the debate takes place.

Beth Granter, a socialist and feminist who has organised the demonstration, predicts that at least 300 will join it. Some 750 have shown their support on Facebook.

The bill has elicited considerable criticism from politicians in all three of the main political parties.

Dan Rogerson, co-chair of the Lib Dems education and family backbench committee and an MP for North Cornwall, said the bill would result in girls being given a "dire warning about their future prospects".

"To single out girls is at best unhelpful and at worst damaging," he said. He said boys and girls needed to be given high quality advice on all aspects of relationships.

Niki Molnar, chairman of Conservative Women, which has at least 4,000 members, said boys needed to be included in classes on sex and relationships to ensure that they learned to respect women.

A spokesman for Dorries stressed that the abstinence classes for girls would be taught alongside sex education lessons, rather than as a replacement for them.

A bit like creationism being taught alongside evolution, don't you think?

Dorries introduced the bill, originally, as a counter to what she sees as a society saturated in sex. But there's a whiffy smell emanating from all of this; it comes from the Right, and it has everything to do with religion. Yes, folks, the religious Right is alive and well and living in Great Britain ... the natural successors to the Puritans of old.

The British Humanist Association (BHA) said the bill had so far been supported predominantly by socially conservative Christians and had little chance of succeeding.

However, Naomi Phillips, head of public affairs at the BHA, said it was "yet another attempt by a lobby on the religious right to promote and impose on others, a narrow, unshared and potentially damaging perspective regarding sex, sexual health and abortion rights".

"All children and young people have a right to high quality, comprehensive and objective sex and relationships education in all schools, including 'faith' schools, which would and should equip young people – both boys and girls – with the information and skills to say no to sexual activity if that is what they choose."

Dorries has also campaigned to reduce the time during a pregnancy when an abortion can take place from 24 to 21 weeks.

Darinka Aleksic, campaign co-ordinator for Abortion Rights, said the bill served to further Dorries' "moral agenda, which involves restricting abortion and teaching teenage girls that they, unlike boys, must save themselves for marriage".

"This approach has been disastrous in the United States, leaving a generation of young people uninformed about sex. The last thing we need is a US-style chastity crusade," Aleksic said.

Well, they got that last bit right; and whilst they may not need a US-style chastity crusade, they do need to do something about the growing underclass of gymslip mums and their progeny. I actually think Mr Cameron's substantial benefit cuts will do more in the way of promoting chastity than any actual chastity drive will.

The Dream Team

The Professional Left have been Olbermannised.

I've sussed them.

I recognised their deliberate misinformation tactic ages ago, and now I've suddenly realised what cowards they are.

Yes, yes, yes ... I know that the Right lies, and lies blatantly, about President Obama's accomplishments. You have only to look at front runner and professional liar professional flip-flopper professional panderer former Massachusetts governor Willard Romney to see he lies, lies regularly and lies recently about the President to an audience so desperate to believe those lies, that they totally ignore the truth.

And let's not even reference Newt Gingrich. The fact that he's a serial adulterer is proof enough of his propensity for untruths.

But it's not just the Right who've made a habit of lying about this President, and they have a willing enough audience on the Left who'd rather believe a lie than a truth about Barack Obama, and, most likely, for the same reason.

In fact you can point to just about any celebrity talking head on the Left, and - if you could turn them into Pinocchio for an hour, they couldn't walk for tripping over their noses.

But I'm going to concentrate on one tonight - Bill Maher.

Since 2009, he's been saying that the President has done nothing and should be more like Bush; that he gives nothing for truly Progressive people; he's gone on record as saying that it would be a tragedy if we got to the end of four years of Democratic rule without implementing any Democratic policies. He's called the President wimpy and wussy, and likened him to the stereotype of an ineffectual and bumbling black man.

In early October of last year, he actually called the President a liar.

This is a man who proclaims himself a Progressive and counts a plethora of followers who hang onto this perceived wisdom and acumen as if he were almost the sort of religious icon he derides. If I had a dollar bill for every fanbabe and fanboy of Bill's who proclaimed that he and only he told "the truth," I wouldn't have to worry about working. I'd be rich for life.

The real truth is this man is dangerous. The even more real truth is that he's allowed to propagate his lies, and they go unchallenged.

Last week, on the first show of the tenth season, he was hell-bent on propagating the current poutrage lie of the moment regarding the NDAA, calling it "the Indefinite Detention Act." Unfortunately for Bill, Democratic National Committee Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz was on his panel, and she set him straight about what exactly the act was, what exactly it didn't contain and then explained the President's signing statement - but, of course, Bill had to act as though the signing statement was so pithy a thing he'd never heard of it and that it meant nothing. You can watch the exchange here.

Bill seems to be striking out a bit with some of his panel guests. Last autumn, he got called out on his misogyny by Jane Harman; then he ran into Jennifer Granholme on the following week's panel.

Watch the first part of the panel below, when Bill and Seth MacFarlane think they're the too-cool-for-school kids in the class and make dilettantish presumptions about the President in front of a woman who's actually governed a state and knows a bit about politics and how the government operates. Bill resorts to the typically dumbass poutrage Firebagging stance that the President should just "stop caving" and he should have accomplished more. When Granholme nicely reminds everyone that the President simply didn't have the votes necessary to accomplish everything the way it should have been accomplished - ergo, compromise was needed. And, please ... spare me the lie that the President has done nothing for the poor (what "liberals want.") The fact that the two very white and very elitist men propping up either end of this panel wouldn't know a poor person if they ran into one is moot; the other oxymoron is that by effecting a compromise to extend the Bush tax cuts for two years, the President achieved a gaggle of legislation that would benefit the poor, the working poor and the unemployed.

But Bill, who derides people who cannot think critically, seems devoid of that ability himself.

Watch:-



Please note how Bill and his bumchum MacFarlane totally ignore what Granholme, who knows a few things about the government and the Constitution and such, gets it: if you want a more liberal President, elect more liberal legislators ... because Congress legislates. Not the President.

I've no doubt Maher knows this. He cannot help but know it. Yet he willfully pushes the myth of the dictatorial President, who's not only a quasi-King, he has all the powers of a deity invested in his person, thus making him able to achieve the impossible.

Three times in the last three months, Bill Maher has been called out on his fallacies by guests on his panel - all of whom, I might add, have been women; and that's good, but Maher is an infamous misogynist, as are certain other well-known Progressives. It's worth remembering how he behaves when confronted with men who oppose his any of his self-conceived wisdom and opinions.

You can see what happens here, here and here.

Bill gets pissy. He snarks back like a smartass juvenile caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He resorts to making desperate jokes. He gets offended. You can almost smell the tears welling up behind his eyes. In short, he gets handed his ass by people who assume the role of adult in the room, and he's reduced to looking like a chastened little boy at the grown-ups' table.

But Bill is meticulous - or rather, he ensures that his team of lackeys are meticulous - in either booking guests who won't rock the boat precipitously or who adhere to specific requests from the production staff not to steer the vessel into dangerous waters. And that means not challenging Bill - although Bill seems to know well enough not to approach any subject on which he might be challenged by a particular guest.

So ... when Bill accuses the President of being weak and vacillating, isn't it really Bill who's the coward?

If Bill had the cojones he'd like everyone to believe he had, he'd agree to a couple of Dream Team panels.

First, I'd like to propose a panel discussing the President's achievements and how he's performed during the past four years, and I'd like the panel to consist of some very reasoned and seasoned pragmatists who appreciate exactly what the President has been trying to do and the obstacles with which he's been confronted. They'd be people who understand politics, whilst not necessarily being politicians, people who understand how our government is meant to function, and - most important - who aren't afraid to call out the lies and pejorative myths propagated from the Left against the President. Lies and myths Bill has even promoted on his own show.

So I would propose, for this purpose, a panel consisting of Andrew Sullivan, who recently wrote an article articulating why people like Bill are just so stupid in their constant criticism of the President, political fundit Hal Sparks, who's genuinely funny, but who also totally gets the President in a way Maher simply cannot, and George Clooney, who's disillusioned with people like Bill who sell disillusionment with the President by the pound. Then, for good measure, I'd book as the fourth guest, Rev Al Sharpton, who'd have a few things to say about Bill's constant reference to the President as "your boy Obama."

The following week, I'd like to see a panel address racism. Yes, yes, yes ... we know all about the racism and the race-baiting practiced by the Right. I want to see a panel who would address the subtle racism and dog whistling practiced by the Left.

On this panel, there'd be Tim Wise, who'd remind Bill Maher that he couldn't hope to call himself either a Progressive or a Liberal whilst he abhored Newt Gingrich's race-baiting, whilst turning a blind eye to Ron Paul's racist past (and present) as he praised Paul's foreign policy. There'd be Melissa Harris Perry, who'd expound upon her premise that white liberals (like Bill) are abandoning the President in a show of subtle racism; and there'd be Ta-Nehisi Coates, who would discuss how white, wealthy and entitled Progressives like Bill voted for the President because it was cool to vote for the black guy (or their idea of what a cool, black guy should be like), when such a reason was just an ignorant form of overt white privilege.

Then, I'd throw in Adam Serwer, who not only called Bill out on his cognitive dissonance regarding the President, but likened him to Rush Limbaugh in his latent racism.

Two panels such as those would give us the measure of the man; and whilst the first might mean that Bill's lackeys might have more than a bit of a cleaning job to do on Bill's unfortunate person, the second panel would surely see him crying under the table.

Who's the real wussy in the room? Not the President.

Brit Lectures Angry Old White Man about the President

Andrew Sullivan: "If I hear another person in his fifties with a ponytail complain that he's not going to vote for Obama because he didn't get a public option, I'll scream."

Word.

Oh, and he'd tell the twentysomething bloggerati to grow up too.

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Sullivan needs to go on Bill Maher's panel and kick ass, because Bill's in a lying mode. Dream panel to scare Bill shitless: Andrew Sullivan, Hal Sparks and George Clooney.

Racism Is the New Black

Lawrence O'Donnell, Goldie Taylor and Michael Eric Dyson take down the GOP's dog-whistlin' with a few unpalatable home truths:-

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The welfare references Newt and others use know no racial boundaries now, and it's wrong of him to insinuate something so snidely.

But just as Lawrence O'Donnell and others on MSNBC call out this perfidious behaviour on the Right, when are they going to grow a pair and call out the obvious racism on the Left, as indicated below:-



At least tell this truth about this woman: That she's long been known to be a disciple of Newt.

It's one thing for Newt Gingrich to play these games. He's the opposition, he's using whatever (despicable) means he can in order to get the nomination. But you have to ask yourself in that case, what the hell Arianna Huffington is trying to prove?