Quote from a Gingrich spokesman

Hoirrible, venomous Christian thanks God for His vengence on athiest Japanese

This is a horrible person.

A truly, truly horrible person. She's literally orgasmic over what "God did to Japan".

Personally, I can't wait until Thor kills her under a semi on the way to hospice for her end-stage ovarian cancer.

Strangely enough, breaks for the wealthy and corporations eat up as much taxes as programs that the GOP wants to cut

Center for American Progress

House leaders are unfortunately restricting their proposed budget cuts for the remainder of fiscal year 2011 to nonsecurity discretionary spending in an attempt to tame a $1.3 trillion deficit. This approach is especially shortsighted since the Federal Treasury loses twice as much revenue due to tax breaks than Congress appropriates on all nonsecurity discretionary spending.

The chart below compares the 10 safety-net programs slated for deep cuts with the cost of the tax breaks that should also be considered for reduction or elimination to bring the budget into balance. The column on the left is a list of safety-net programs that have already been targets of the House leadership’s budget ax. The column on the right is the cost to specified tax breaks (see bottom of page for sources).

Huh. Does that just seem amazing? Remember this when the GOP comes crawling for the middle class vote, trumpeting their commitment to early-childhood education, better teacher training, the unemployed ("putting America back to work") and alternatives to ObamaCare.

Poll finds people who want fiscal responsibility actually want more spending

So I've been harping for a year that this whole "fiscal responsibility" movement is largely a sham. Not that we don't need it, but it's been my feeling that the Obama-hating right just uses this as a meme to tie Obama to the stereotype of a tax-and-spend liberal.

They might scream for fiscal responsibility at the town halls, but what they really mean is 'screw the poor and the blacks and the Mexicans'. I've wanted to see what happens when and if deep cuts happen. Do you think angry grandpa is going to be happy when his Medicare gets slashed? Do you think angry roughneck is going to like the gigantic 8-foot pothole in front of his driveway that doesn't get fixed for 3 years? Do you think mama grizzly wannabe is going to be happy when her child's Head Start funding is cut?

Hell no.

And that's why this whole thing is a crock of shit. The Tea Party likes slashing programs in theory, as long as the theory is that it's minorities and liberals getting hit. The reality is that cuts as deep as they want are going to wreck many of the programs they depend on.

There's a new Pew Poll out. As Greg Sergeant writes in the Washington Post:

The poll finds that in general, more Americans think deficit reduction is a more important priority (49 percent) than spending to help the economy recover (46 percent). But check out what happens when Americans are asked what they think about spending on specific programs:



More favor an increase in spending than a decrease on 15 of 18 issues tested in the poll. Now, these numbers aren't all that clear-cut. But the overall conclusion is clear: Once you start to talk specifics, the public's aversion to government spending rapidly evaporates.

This is why the Tea Party can't be taken seriously. It's populated by people with an agenda. an agenda that can be boiled down to "Gimme mine and screw the rest of you."

The Tax Foundation did a study in 2007 (that they're seeking to update) that shows Federal Spending per dollar of federal taxes. Basically, do you get back more or less than you give. Here's the chart for 2005, and next to it is a map I put together based on the Tax Foundation data:
You can't overly generalize. But it's not hard to see where the biggest tax hogs are. Anyone care to overly a Tea Party activity map on this?

The Republican effort to redefine rape a "priority" with Boehner

This is not a funny issue and woe be to any candidate at the national level who think this will help them. This is a disgusting effort by the GOP to redefine rape in hopes of gaining legal inroads to overturn abortion. The new language would say that rape is only really rape if it involves force.

Today, news hit that a Georgia state lawmaker introduced a bill changing the state legal codes to refer to a rape victim as a "rape accuser".

Apart from the absolutely vile nature of this effort, how, exactly, does this pertain to the "jobs, jobs, jobs" commitment from the GOP when they took the House? This isn't about jobs, it's about cynically reigniting the culture wars and re-litigating any laws that they don't like.

Mother Jones

the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," a bill with 173 mostly Republican co-sponsors that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has dubbed a top priority in the new Congress, contains a provision that would rewrite the rules to limit drastically the definition of rape and incest in these cases.

With this legislation, which was introduced last week by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Republicans propose that the rape exemption be limited to "forcible rape." This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible. For example: If a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion.

Given that the bill also would forbid the use of tax benefits to pay for abortions, that 13-year-old's parents wouldn't be allowed to use money from a tax-exempt health savings account (HSA) to pay for the procedure.

Jon Stewart, predictably, had a field day with this.

Tea Party network straightens out Bachmann's rebuttal; confirms teleprompter usage

HuffPost TeaPartyHD, the television and internet network behind now-infamous video of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) delivering her own rebuttal to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, endeavored to straighten out the conservative congresswoman on Friday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

Bachmann made headlines for her response to Obama and not just for the controversy it stirred within the Republican party. In one version of the video, the Tea Party darling doesn't appear to be looking into the camera. Instead of addressing her audience, she seems to be looking off to the side.

Per the Star Tribune:

The reason, it appears, is that Bachmann delivered her speech to TeaPartyHD's camera, which had the teleprompter she used. But most of the world -- well, nation -- saw the footage shot by network cameras that were allowed to video the speech.

TELEPROMTER??!!!!!

SOCIALISM!!!!!!!!!!!!




Really, don't we all see how silly this is? Can't we see how unserious they are?

GOP's jobs agenda is less about jobs, more about agenda

Examples of things the new Republican House is concentrating on that are not job-related:

Redefining rape and incest in order to re-ignite the anti-aborition culture war

Race-baiting on immigration - more culture war

Rewriting the Climate Act

Cutting the VA budget

Making incorrect constitutional statements, this time alleging that the Constitution eradicated slavery)

JOBS, JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!

Jon Stewart's epic back-and-forth takedown on Fox's Nazi hypocrisy

HuffPost

Last week, Stewart had some strong words for Rep. Steve Cohen, who likened the Republican party's views on government-owned health care to Nazi lies. To his surprise, Stewart's comments were echoed all over Fox News, with everyone -- including Karl Rove -- saying Cohen should be ashamed of himself.

"If that guy is telling you you should feel shame, that's like Charlie Sheen showing up at your intervention to tell you to take it down a notch."

Although the majority of Fox News pundits spoke out against Nazi name-calling, it was Megyn Kelly who took it to a hypocritical level by saying that kind of rhetoric doesn't exist on Fox News.

As he does best, Stewart produced an impressive slew of clips showing Fox News pundits using Nazi comparisons, including Bill O'Reilly's mind-boggling claim that there's "no difference" between what Hitler did and what HuffPost does.

But he didn't stop there. Watch the rest of the clip to see Jon Stewart find more than just unfair Nazi comparisons on Fox News, but an instance of such name-calling within the same 24 hours of Megyn Kelly's comment, a Fox News pundit making the same Joseph Goebbels comparison as Steve Cohen, Fox News President Roger Ailes calling someone Hitler, and another Nazi remark on Megyn Kelly's own show.

"Well, Ms. Kelly," Stewart said. "Don't you look ridiculous now?"

HuffPostAfter Stewart called out Steve Cohen's use of a Goebbels reference to describe GOP behavior, Megyn Kelly of Fox News said there is no Nazi rhetoric used on Fox News. But Stewart proved with a slew of clips that Fox was being hypocritical.

In one of those clips, Bill O'Reilly made a mind-boggling comparison between HuffPost and Hitler. Seeing it on "The Daily Show" didn't sit well with the Fox News host, who said on his next show that the clip was edited in a way took it out of context. Stewart responded:

Why you used the Nazi reference doesn't really matter in this. The segment is for Megyn Kelly to take offense to, not you. It's not all about you, Bill!"

Watch the rest of the clip to hear Stewart's impeccable speeding analogy that should really put the entire Nazi name-calling debate to bed.

What global warming? It's cold out.

"You know the drill: global warming isn’t happening, if it is happening then it’s not caused by human behavior, if it is caused by human behavior then we can’t do anything about it, if it is caused by human behavior and we can do something about it, then that something is too expensive, if it is caused by human behavior and we can do something about it that is not too expensive, then that something is not what Democrats are proposing. And Al Gore is fat, he flies too much, look at his electricity bill, and sometimes when he goes somewhere it snows there, which is very ironic."

DougJ from Balloon Juice on an excellent new article in The Economist about global warming

via Cesca

Glenn Beck clip from early 1990's found

Discuss.

This is why it's sometimes difficult to take Huff Post seriously

Huffington Post has to stop with the BLARING HEADLINES designed to get PEOPLE OUTRAGED over what really is MUNDANE STUFF. Because if they KEEP DOING THAT, eventually it will be like the Boy Who Cried Wolf - you won't be TAKEN SERIOUSLY.

This story involves the CEO of Citi getting a 175 MILLION PERCENT RAISE. Which is awful until you realize he worked for a dollar last year and is now making $1.75 million, which isn't really too bad given CEO salaries lately.

But HuffPost has to SCREAM THE HEADLINES about absolutely everything. And so when they really unearth something, NO ONE WILL PAY ATTENTION.

You're not Fox News. Everything doesn't need to be accompanied by giant fireworks, 140 point font and Carmina Burana.

Darrell Issa: car thief? arsonist? gun nut? fraudulent felon?

The New Yorker has printed a devastating story on Darrell Issa accusing him, among other things, of being an arsonist, a car thief, of running several fraudulent schemes involving cars, of pulling guns on people at his business, of possessing ungodly amounts and types of weapons in his car, and of questionable business dealings.

The California Republican is also now Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government. This means he has unlimited subpoena power and has already made clear his intentions to investigate the living hell out of the current administration. Gettin' it on, Clinton-style.

Note that the man who is going to bring down the Kenyan socialist has a list of crimes attributed to him longer than his own arm. Read the whole article - it's worth your while - but I've summarized some of the juicer parts below.

At 2:35 A.M. on September 7, 1982, the phone rang in Issa’s house. The Quantum and Steal Stopper office and factory was on fire. Issa got dressed and drove the seven miles from his house, in Oakwood Village, to his workplace, in Maple Heights. He arrived by 3 A.M., to find blue flames shooting from holes in the roof. Four fire engines, a helicopter, and forty-three firefighters from three departments responded to the alarm. When the firemen entered the building, they encountered black smoke so thick they couldn’t see their hands in front of their faces. The fire took three hours to bring under control.

A lieutenant in the Maple Heights Fire Department noted in his incident report that the “cause of this fire appears to be electrical.” The fire had started at a workbench where light bulbs for bug zappers were tested. Almost everything of value was gone. Fortunately for Issa, he had recently increased his fire insurance.

Issa was soon suspected of doing something worse: burning down the factory. The initial notion that an electrical socket had caused the fire was challenged. The science of determining whether a fire was caused by arson can be flawed. But a fire-analysis report commissioned by the St. Paul insurance company, and dated October 19, 1982, a month after the incident, concluded that the fire was “incendiary.” The report cited “suspicious burn patterns,” such as “two separate major areas of origin,” and it said, “No accidental source of heating power was located at either of these two major areas of origin.” The manner in which stacks of cardboard boxes burned was inconsistent with an accidental fire.

Joey Adkins, the former owner of Steal Stopper, provided the main evidence against Issa. On the afternoon of September 20, 1982, in a lengthy recorded interview with an insurance investigator, he described a series of suspicious actions by Issa before the fire. Adkins, who still worked for Steal Stopper, said that Issa removed the company’s Apple II computer from the building, including “all hardware, all software, all the instruction books,” and also “the discs for accounts payable, accounts receivable, customer list, everything.” According to Adkins, Issa also transferred a copy of every design used by Steal Stopper from a filing cabinet to a fireproof box. He also said that Issa put in the box some important silk screens used in the production of circuit boards. Insurance officials noted that, less than three weeks before the fire, Issa had increased his insurance from a hundred thousand dollars to four hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars. “Quite frankly,” Adkins told the investigator, “I feel the man set the fire.”

A member of Issa’s Army unit, Jay Bergey, told Williams that his most vivid recollection of the young Issa was that in December, 1971, Issa stole his car, a yellow Dodge Charger. “I confronted Issa,” Bergey said in 1998. “I got in his face and threatened to kill him, and magically my car reappeared the next day, abandoned on the turnpike.”

On March 15, 1972, three months after Issa allegedly stole Jay Bergey’s car and one month after he left the Army for the first time, Ohio police arrested Issa and his older brother, William, and charged them with stealing a red Maserati from a Cleveland showroom. The judge eventually dismissed the case.

According to court records, on December 28, 1979, William Issa arrived at Smythe European Motors, in San Jose, and offered to sell Darrell’s car, a red 1976 Mercedes sedan. William was carrying an Ohio driver’s license with his brother’s name on it and the dealer gave William a check for sixteen thousand dollars, which he immediately cashed. Soon afterward, Darrell reported the car stolen from the Monterey airport. He later told the police that he had left the title in the trunk.

Issa’s early business career was equally tumultuous. He started his car-alarm empire by acquiring the Steal Stopper brand in what was essentially a hostile takeover. A man named Joey B. Adkins owned the company, and Issa loaned him sixty thousand dollars. When Adkins was late on a payment, Issa went to court and foreclosed on the loan. Two days later, Adkins told me, Issa called and said that he wanted Adkins to come visit him at his new office. He gave Adkins the address of Steal Stopper. “I just took your company,” Adkins recalled him saying.

Once in control, Issa allegedly used an unusual method to fire Jack Frantz, an employee. Frantz told the Los Angeles Times that Issa came into his office, placed a box on the table, and opened it to reveal a gun. Issa told the paper, “Shots were never fired. If I asked Jack to leave, then I think I had every right to ask Jack to leave. . . . I don’t recall [having a gun]. I really don’t. I don’t think I ever pulled a gun on anyone in my life.”

He doesn't think he did. He can't be sure, but he doesn't think he did.

Really?

Nice job America.

Fox News, Arizona, shootings and victimhood

Jon Stewart checks in, making sure that the victim of the Arizona shootings is recovering nicely. That would be Sarah Palin.


He also checks in with the new bipartisan demeanor at Fox, where they talk about how weird the memorial was. Yay for softer tones.