Even if you ignore the silly Jesus stuff in the beginning of this video, it’s obvious that the ridiculous ACORN witch hunt is not about illegal activity, it’s about ideology. There are government contractors with FAR more egregious records of fraud (Northrop Grumman, etc.) and other illegal activity including murder (Blackwater) that are not receiving the same scrutiny.

In fact, Sean Hannity dismissed Blackwater’s actions because they are, in his words, “keeping us safe.” (Don’t get me started on that little bit of wingnut fantasy.)

As I’ve posted before, if Acorn was in the business of KILLING brown people instead of HELPING them this would not be an issue.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2a4MEAoxko

Oh, and the Defund ACORN Act IS a “bill of attainder” and, as such, is unconstitutional. But Fox won’t tell you that. In fact, the only way it could be constitutional is if it is applied equally to “any organization that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency [, or applied to] any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.”

“In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex.”

When someone’s entire purpose in coming out to a town-hall forum is to chant and shout and protest and disrupt, they aren’t just expressing their opinions — they are actively shutting down democracy.

And that, folks, is a classically fascist thing to do.

David Neiwert

I have nothing to add to this except to say that Sessions is an ass:

“Empathy for one party is always prejudice against another.”
- Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama

I was struck by this key sentence in Sessions’ opening remarks Monday in the Sonia Sotomayor hearings, especially because he presented it as the essential logic behind their opposition to Sotomayor — their abiding fear that when she sits on the court, she’ll be ruling against every white man who crosses her path.

We know this, according to their logic, because she is Latino — and because she emphasizes her “empathy” for other Latinos, she will be prejudiced against any non-Latinos in her courtroom.

It is, as logic goes, about as obviously faulty as syllogisms get. Normal human empathy is not exclusive — that is, our ability to feel empathy for one party does not necessarily exclude empathy for another party (or moreover, in Sessions’ formulation, necessitate an animus to any other party). Being empathetic typically means the ability to place oneself in another person’s shoes regardless of background. Identifying closely with one group at the exclusion of another typically is the antithesis of empathy.

What Sessions is describing is not empathy but rather the crude tribalism that underscores and animates most racist belief systems, and has done so since time immemorial. It is, essentially, an almost astonishing confession to being racist on Sessions’ part.

And it animates not just Sessions but nearly the whole of movement conservatism and the Republican Party. If you were to poll Republican senators this week and ask them if they agreed with Sessions’ “logic,” I’d wager the numbers would be in the vicinity of 90 percent.

Crooks and Liars

Bill Moyers interviewed an ACTUAL socialist, and guess what? He doesn’t like Obama.

Crooks & Liars

Like Tim over at Balloon Juice, I too remember back when the wingnuts tried to hang Michael Moore around the neck of the Democratic Party. Alas, as Tim points out, “prominent Democrats seemed more than happy, eager, to kick him in the shins.”

Michael Moore has never had any influence on the Democratic Party. Sure, he’s made a few salient points about the Right, some of which our Democratic leadership might agree with. But he hardly commands a majority audience with the base. As a commenter on Balloon Juice points out:

Democrats didn’t need to [defend Moore], because the right-wing attempt to make Moore the grand poo-bah of the Dem Party was on its face laughable…

Democrats defended Moore where defense was warranted, but they didn’t engage in the “Michael! Michael!” idolatry that we saw at CPAC (“Rush! Rush!”).

And now we have this alleged conspiracy involving the White House attempting to “silence” Rush Limbaugh by…uhh…saying his name at a press conference? I dunno, I’m still trying to figure out what the wingnuts’ complaint is here. Tim speculates that it loosely follows this pattern:

Step 1: Publicly suggest that Republicans agree with Rush Limbaugh.
Step 2: ??
Step 3: Clear Channel replaces Rush’s show with Randi Rhodes and CounterSpin.

In Step 1, we have committed the Right’s most unpardonable sin – we have said something true! (Nothing flips out the GOP more than having their foibles pointed out to the public.) Obviously, Step 3 is never going to happen. And, frankly, no one has been able to fill in Step 2.

I’ll give it a shot.

Step 2: A few Republicans step out of line and oh-so-mildly criticize das Limbaugh, only to see the error of their ways and immediately go groveling to the Great One for forgiveness in order to make the yelling stop. This same group includes the fucking leader of the RNC, supposedly the TOP Republican in the country, who later lies about what he said and tries to play it off as a “misunderstanding.” Meanwhile, Limbaugh reaps huge ratings and manages to keep his name in the papers, thanks to our corporate media who just love a dust-up.

A few other Republicans play damage-control by going on TV and claiming “no, no, it’s actually the White House that started this whole thing” which, of course, is contrary to every bit of evidence we’ve seen over the last week or so. Ari Fleischer was talking to Schuster the other day and actually tried to pin the whole thing on Obama specifically, concern-trolling and tsk-tsk-ing the President for not living up to his “post-partisan ideals” (which really only exist in Fleischer’s head; the GOP likes to project these things on Obama when it is convenient to do so.)

(Watch the Fleischer/Schuster video by the way. Schuster eviscerates Fleischer for his rank hypocrisy in accusing anyone of being “childish” and “distracting” with a record of his own childish and distracting rhetoric and name-calling. Fleischer does a pretty good job of staying on-message, I’ll give him that. But his message is horseshit and is itself a ridiculous distraction. Schuster pretty well nails him for it.)

So now we’ve got Republican media personalities accusing the White House of being “childish” and “distracting the nation with this Limbaugh nonsense when there are more important issues at stake.” (This is the wingnut talking-point du jour, by the way. Meritless on its face, of course.)

Yeah…it’s all Obama’s fault.

Never mind the Chairman of the Republican National Committee crawling to beg forgiveness for daring to criticize Limbaugh. Ignore the fact that no Republican has been willing to say that Limbaugh was wrong for not only hoping that President Obama fails, but for claiming that every Republican feels the same way but is too afraid to say so. It’s all the White House’s fault.

Basically, as Tim says in closing:

Republicans could have kept their yap shut and let the country think that a drug-addled ignoramus pulls their strings. Instead they opened their mouth and proved it.

Conservatives are shamelessly digging up the poor corpse of Terri Schiavo in a ploy to voice opposition to Thomas Perrelli, Obama’s pick for a high level position at the Justice Department. See, Perrelli was…horror of horrors…one of the lawyers who represented Michael Schiavo.

Now, anyone who remembers the Schiavo fiasco must also remember what a disaster it was for Republicans. Not only did a bunch of wingnut legislators engage in some of the most disgusting grandstanding I’ve ever witnessed, they actually tried to pass a law to involve the US government in a family’s private affairs. Bill Frist famously claimed to have diagnosed Schiavo as coherent after having only watched “nearly an hour” of video footage.

Nevermind the fact that after Terri finally passed, an autopsy revealed that the doctors were right that she was in a permanent vegetative state with no hope of recovery. And that polls showed the American public were overwhelmingly opposed to Congress poking its collective nose in the Schiavo family’s private business.

Part of me wants to say, “sure, wingnuts, bring up one of your party’s most embarrassing moments of the last decade. Let’s thrust it back into the limelight so the American public can see you all for the opportunistic ghouls you are.”

But I think Terri’s family has suffered enough. Michael Schiavo in particular has suffered some pretty ridiculous slander and libel at the hands and mouths of the wingnut community.

At long last, conservatives, have you no decency at all?

Crooks and Liars

…when Reagan came into office we were the largest exporter of manufactured goods and the largest importer of raw materials on the planet. And the largest creditor. More people owed us money than anybody else in the world. Now just twenty eight years later we’re the largest importer of finished goods, manufactured goods, exporter of raw materials which is kind of the definition of a third world nation and we’re the most in debt of any country in the world. This is the absolute consequence of Reaganomics.

Thom Hartmann

There isn’t a nation on Earth spends a fraction of what the U.S. does on the military, and the next three biggest spenders are all ostensibly allies (France, Britain, Japan). The US could cut its military budget by two thirds and still outspend all of its possible threats combined.

Crooks and Liars

That will be the wingnut refrain for the next 4 years.

Watch for it. It’s coming.

Fact is, the vast majority of fake registrations are winnowed out before Election Day. And if fake voters actually do make it to the polls, their numbers will be so small as to be inconsequential.

No, the main way to commit voting fraud on a massive scale on the registration level is to sign people up for the election — and then throw out their registrations if they’re from the opposite party. Who’s been doing that? Republicans.

You can also run massive voter-purge operations and voter-caging schemes that rob citizens of their legitimate voting rights. Republicans have been doing that too.

Facts don’t matter to people like the Putz and Fund, though. They’re only interested in propagating right-wing bullshit. These guys are setting the table for after Tuesday.

We can count, I’m sure, on four years of hearing how Obama stole this election. After all, the one thing they can’t stand is to admit they actually got their asses kicked.

Crooks & Liars

Adorable, isn’t he?

via Crooks & Liars