Sarah Palin expresses support for Obama tax cuts at Tea Party rally

At a Tea party rally today in Boston, Sarah Palin cma eout in enthusiastic support of President Obama's tax cuts to 95% of working Americans.

MSNBC

"We need to cut taxes, so that our families can keep more of what they earn and produce and our mom-and-pops then, our small businesses, can reinvest according to our own priorities, and hire more people and let the private sector grow and thrive and prosper."

It's refreshing that the governor, who has criticized President Obama on taxes, can now embrace the sweeping tax cuts that he's made.

PoliticFact checked Obama's claim:

"We cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95 percent of working families. We cut taxes for small businesses," Obama said. "We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college."

The key word in his statement is "working." Obama's claim is based on a tax cut intended to offset payroll taxes. Under the stimulus bill, single workers got $400, and working couples got $800. The Internal Revenue Service issued new guidelines to reduce withholdings for income tax, so many workers saw a small increase in their checks in April 2009.

During the campaign, the independent Tax Policy Center researched how Obama's tax proposals would affect workers. It concluded 94.3 percent of workers would receive a tax cut under Obama's plan based on the tax credit to offset payroll taxes. According to the analysis, the people who wouldn't get a tax cut are those who make more than $250,000 for couples or $200,000 for a single person.

CBS News highlights a problem: although 95% of working families got tax cuts, very few know about them

Here's the poll question: "In general, do you think the Obama Administration has increased taxes for most Americans, decreased taxes for most Americans or have they kept taxes the same for most Americans?"

The answer:
• 24 percent of respondents said they INCREASED taxes.
• 53 percent said they kept taxes the same
• And 12 percent said taxes were decreased.

Of people who support the grassroots, "Tea Party" movement, only 2 percent think taxes have been decreased, 46 percent say taxes are the same, and a whopping 44 percent say they believe taxes have gone up.

So why don't more people know about them? Go back to the top of the story. Or listen to the rhetoric:

MSNBC

"Is this what their 'change' is all about?" Palin asked. "I want to tell 'em, nah, we'll keep clinging to our Constitution and our guns and religion — and you can keep the change."

The change is here, some are just willfully ignoring it.

Finding grandpa dead

15 years ago, I was in my early 20's and my folks went to Vegas for their first vacation in 25 years. My gram - my mom's mom - calls in the middle of the night: "Chris, your grandfather fell in his room and I heard glass shatter and he's not answering....". She's incredibly arthritic and can't really get up quickly and my grandfather had been having heart problems for years.

So you know what I'm dreading.

I drive/fly the 5 minutes to their house, let myself in, start walking upstairs and yell to my gram in her room. She says "He's not saying anything.... Hank..... HANKKKKK.......".

Nothing. So I go to his room and remember that there's no ceiling fixture. The only light in the room is on his bedstand, and I'm willing to bet that it's what she heard shatter.

So no light. I also realize that I ran out of the house with no shoes - it being July and an emergency and whatnot. Ungood.

I go into his room as far as the hallway light will penetrate - not far, and I'm shuffling. Number one, so I don't step on glass, and number two, to find him. I'm kind of feeling with my feet and calling "Pop......... Pop........" Nuthin. I'm absolutely dreading my first contact with him. I know he's passed.

5 feet further on, my foot bumps his. It's cold. I push hard on it with no response, either to the pressure or my calling his name.

Shit. He's dead. This sucks. My mom is going to have to cut her trip short, I'm going to have to deal with all of this. My dad owns a funeral home and I was covering for the week. Double shit.

I slide a little further and find broken glass and it's not a lamp. There's water... it was a drinking glass. Good. It's 5am, dark, at least I can get a light on and figure out what to do next.

Now, through all of this (probably no more than 2 minutes, but it felt like an hour), my gram is yelling "Is he dead?". "Can you hear me??!!?!? Is he DEAD?"

Oh fer Chris'sakes, gimme a break. what does she want me to say? It just seemed wrong to break the news by screaming back "YEAH! STONE DEAD. You want wood or metal?"

Anyway.

I'm working my way along his body, feeling with my toes, going along the narrow passway between the bed and the wall, made more narrow by his body. I'm trying not to kick him, touching ym dead grandfather with my bare foot was skeeving me out. But I also don't want to fall over his arm.... or step in urine.... . You get the point.

Now I'm standing astride his body. I can tell he's on his back, so my left foot is next to his right arm and my right foot between his left arm and his torso.

I lean over him and I'm tearing up. I had really loved the guy and here I am standing over his corpse trying to find a light, hoping he didn't bash his head. If he's a bloody mess, I might just lose it.

I reach for the light, stretching over him, and in a voice as calm as can be he says, "Jesus Christ bud, what are you doing here?"

I SCREAMED. Not just a little. He had a spell and whacked his head and must have knocked himself out cold when he hit the table.

Meanwhile, I couldn't even help him up. I'm startled, scared, processing, and I suddenly have to pee worse than I've ever had to pee.

I think I lost 3 years of my own life on that one.

The Papua New Guinean mud god, Pikkiwoki, is promising a pig and as many coconuts as you can carry

David Thorne is an Australian atheist with a wickedly funny web site. One particular entry concerns his son's School Chaplain sending home a permission slip to see an Easter play, with the Yes box already checked.

It begins thusly (though you must absolutely read the whole thing):

Dear Darryl,

I have received your permission slip featuring what I can only assume is a levitating rabbit about to drop an egg on Jesus.

Thank you for pre-ticking the permission box as this has saved me not only from having to make a choice, but also from having to make my own forty five degree downward stroke followed by a twenty percent longer forty five degree upward stroke. Without your guidance, I may have drawn a picture of a cactus wearing a hat by mistake.

As I trust my offspring's ability to separate fact from fantasy, I am happy for him to participate in your indoctrination process on the proviso that all references to 'Jesus' are replaced with the term 'Purportedly Magic Jew.'

Regards, David.

More witty banter ensues until David drops this bomb:

Dear Darryl,

Thank you for the kind offer, being unable to think of anything more exciting than attending your entertaining and fun filled afternoon, I tried harder and thought of about four hundred things.

I was actually in a Bible based play once and played the role of 'Annoyed about having to do this.' My scene involved offering a potplant, as nobody knew what Myrrh was, to a plastic baby Jesus then standing between 'I forgot my costume so am wearing the teachers poncho' and 'I don't feel very well'. Highlights of the play included a nervous donkey with diarrhoea causing 'I don't feel very well' to vomit onto the back of Mary's head, and the lighting system, designed to provide a halo effect around the manger, overheating and setting it alight. The teacher, later criticised for dousing an electrical fire with a bucket of water and endangering the lives of children, left the building in tears and the audience in silence. We only saw her again briefly when she came to the school to collect her poncho.

Also, your inference that I am without religion is incorrect and I am actually torn between two faiths; while your god's promise of eternal life is very persuasive, the Papua New Guinean mud god, Pikkiwoki, is promising a pig and as many coconuts as you can carry.

Regards, David.

Either you find this stuff funny, or you do not.

via Wampeters, Foma, and Pat Falloon

This seems fair - inequality of wealth distribution in the U.S.

via Wampeters, Foma, and Pat Falloon



The top-earning 50% of Americans control 97.5% of our country’s wealth. The top 1% own one-third of America’s wealth.

The combined net worth of Forbes’ 400 wealthiest Americans is $1.5 trillion. The combined net worth of the poorest 50% of American households, approximately 150 million people, is $1.6 trillion. Just so we’re clear: the net worth of the 400 richest Americans is almost equal to the net worth of the 150,000,000 poorest Americans.

(chart and data via Institute for Policy Studies)

Woman-of-the-people Palin demands Lear Jets

MSNBC

Sarah Palin will get first-class airfare for two and three rooms at a luxury hotel when she gives a speech in June for a university foundation.

And organizers better not forget to stock her lectern with two water bottles and bendable straws.

The details of Palin's contract with the California State University, Stanislaus Foundation were contained in five pages of the document retrieved from a campus trash bin by students who heard administrators might be shredding documents related to the speech.

She demands pre-screened questions (it's hard to write the answers to questions you don't know yet on your hand), first class airfare or a private jet ("The private aircraft MUST BE a Lear 60 or larger"), 3 luxury hotel rooms, a fleet of black SUV's or Town Cars, no spotlights or autographs, unopened bottled still water (2 bottles) and bendable straws in the wide wooden (not thin or plexi) lectern.

Plus, though she's not getting it in this case) a speaking fee of $100,000.

She's already made $12 million since she quit as governor.

Very populist.

Conservative meme destruction: Obama's "weakness"

Wingnuts love to make a big deal and get all in a kerfluffle about the President's courtesy in bowing to foreign leaders. "WEAKNESS!" they scream. "TRAITOR!" they cry. "Damn uppity black usurper" they think.

Here's the thing - if you're the President of the strongest nation on the planet, you don't NEED to walk around with a swagger. That's what got us into trouble in the first place, what with that Cowboy Diplomacy.

They're afraid of intellectuals, because we're smarter than they are. They're the same crowd that thinks that they have to carry an assault weapon to be tough. In reality, they're the one's scared of their own shadows.

Let's be straight. Obama kills terrorists. He's not afraid to allow the assassination of american citizens who are actively involved in terrorist plots. He's getting fissile material out of dangerous hands, just this week.

These cowards on the right are afraid of actions, and they won't look at the man's deeds.

Then there's the interview "Good Morning America" anchor George Stephanopoulos conducted with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev the day after Medvedev and President Barack Obama signed the new START treaty.

ABCNews

STEPHANOPOULOS: You've now met with President Obama many times. At least 15 meetings and phone calls.

MEDVEDEV: Sixteen times.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Sixteen. Okay, I knew it was 15. I wasn't sure about the 16. What do you make of Barack Obama the man?

MEDVEDEV: He's very comfortable partner, it's very interesting to be with him. The most important thing that distinguishes him from many other people – I won't name anyone by name – he's a thinker, he thinks when he speaks. Which is already pretty good.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You had somebody in your mind, I think. (LAUGHS)

MEDVEDEV: Obviously I do have someone on my mind. I don't want to offend anyone. He's eager to listen to his partner, which is a pretty good quality for a politician. Because any politician is to a certain degree a mentor. They preach something. And the ability to listen to their partner is very important for the politician. And he is pretty deeply emerged in the subject, so he has a good knowledge of what he's talking about. There was no instance in our meetings with Mr. Obama where he wasn't well prepared for the questions. This is very good. And after all, he's simply a very pleasant man with whom it's a pleasure to deal with.

Ooooohhhhh.... a THINKER! BURN HIM!

So can we stop the crap? There's not ONE world leader who has made any kind of deal about the bow. Only the wingnuts who hate him anyway and would criticize him for saving a bus of burning churchgoers.

Be a better Tea Partier, Tip #1: send lots of racist emails,blame Democrats

Carl Paladino, Tea Party candidate for governor of New York, finds himself in racial trouble (again), this time for sending racist, sexually explicit and beastiality-themed emails to friends.

Here's a rundown. Extremely graphic pictures can be seen at WNYMedia:

• Ahead of Obama's swearing-in ceremony, Paladino sent around a video entitled "Obama Inauguration Rehearsal." The video shows an African tribesman dancing, and is apparently popular among white supremacists.
• An email with the subject line "Proof the Irish discovered Africa" containing a video of monkeys that appear to be doing a Riverdance-style jig.
•  A video of a naked woman sent from a government email account.
• A bestiality video involving a horse screwing a woman.
• An email featuring this motivational poster:

• A photo of Barack and Michelle dressed in 70's blaxploitation pimp and ho outfits:

• A video entitled “Miss France 2008 fucking”
• A picture of Linda Lovelace's granddaughter licking a hot dog entitled "Now this is talent"

For his part, Paladino's spokesman doesn't deny any of it:

New York Daily News
Carl Paladino has forwarded close friends hundreds of email messages he received. Many of these emails he received were off color, some were politically incorrect, few represented his own opinion, and almost none of them were worth remembering.

We're not surprised the political establishment feels threatened by Carl's drive the take Albany back for taxpayers. Our campaign won't be wading through the details of what is just another liberal Democrat blog smear. It figures that members of the Party who brought us record taxes, record spending and record debt would want to change the topic from reform to having sex with horses and S&M parlors.

Ahhh.... it's the Democrats fault for "trying to smear me". So much for accountability.

WNYMedia

In this political climate, it’s safe to assume that the opportunists and hangers-on that make up much of Carl’s activist base will dismiss this report as a “smear” and circle the wagons around their candidate. It is the political culture wrought by Sarah Palin. A reflexive defensiveness to criticism from the opposition on even the most obvious of hypocrisies, malevolence or provable falsehoods.

Wingnuts tout the awesome power of Palin's FULLY OPERATIONAL battle station

The racists-posing-as-Patriots over at Confederate Yankee have gone farther over the deep end. Now they're jumping on board with David Vitter ("I'll take a TV personality over a community organizer every day") and Sarah Palin in endorsing Palin's "nuclear experience" as the governor of Alaska over Obama's experience in crafting legislation limiting loose nukes.

He simply doesn't know when to shut up.

Palin's view of nuclear weapons was shaped by her stint as the commander in chief of the Alaskan National Guard, our first line of defense against Soviet nuclear weapons. Obama has held his same views since he was a stoner college student and has showed no signs of maturing.

Which of the two would you trust?

Update: I stand corrected. Palin does not have any experience with the AANG. The 49th Missile Defense Battalion AANG, Fort Greely is (literally) the first line of defense against Soviet nukes with 25-30 anti-ICBMs, but they do not report to the governor.

Obama? Still utterly untrustworthy, and getting more so every day.

So first Bob Owens (CY) says that Palin has more nuclear experience because of the Air Alaska National Guard. That in itself is hilarious.

THEN, he corrects himself because he was wrong - Palin was not in command of the AANG. But Obama is still untrustworthy. Prolly cause he's black.

So first, the President has less experience than the governor of Alaska and then, when it turns out the governor of Alaska has no experience, Obama is still less experienced anyway.

If these nuts even get 20% of the vote, we're in trouble as a nation. Willfully dense ignorance of basic facts is worse than stupidity.

I'd like to point these guys to:

The Lugar-Obama Proliferation and Threat Reduction Initiative, signed into Law on Thursday, January 11, 2007 by President Bush.

Authored by U.S. Sens. Dick Lugar (R-IN) and Barack Obama (D-IL), the Lugar-Obama initiative expands U.S. cooperation to destroy conventional weapons. It also expands the State Department’s ability to detect and interdict weapons and materials of mass destruction.

Loose nukes, boys. As a senator, Obama worked with the Republicans to secure loose nuclear material that can fall into terrorsit hands.

'Course them confederate boys don't need none'a that there thinkin' stuff.

$100 says they say nookyuhluhr too. Just like Sarah from Wasilla.

Glenn Beck is playing you for a fool

Why the Tea Partiers so willing to be duped? Beck himself admits that he doesn't care about the politics, he only cares about yanking peoples chains to they'll buy into him, and ultimately, buy his stuff. He's causing a Pavolvian reaction in the right wing: throw them red meat and they'll open their wallets.

While I disagree with so many of the basic themes of the Tea Party, I feel bad that they're allowing themselves to be lied to and mislead by this charlatan who is clearly only interested in their money. Read the quote: "I could give a flying crap about the political process. We're an entertainment company".

Wake up, people, wake up!

Forbes

With a deadpan, Beck insists that he is not political: "I could give a flying crap about the political process." Making money, on the other hand, is to be taken very seriously, and controversy is its own coinage. "We're an entertainment company," Beck says.

He has managed to monetize virtually everything that comes out of his mouth. He gets $13 million a year from print (books plus the ten-issue-a-year magazine Fusion). Radio brings in $10 million. Digital (including a newsletter, the ad-supported Glennbeck.com and merchandise) pulls in $4 million. Speaking and events are good for $3 million and television for $2 million. Over several days in mid-March Beck allowed a reporter to follow him through his multimedia incarnations, with one exception, his 5 p.m. daily show on Fox News, which attracts just under 3 million viewers.

...
"I don't necessarily believe that (what Beck says) is reflective of his own personal politics — I don't even know if he has personal politics," says Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers, a trade magazine devoted to talk radio. "I see him as a performer."

America is a stupid country - the reality of 'throw the bums out'

Let's look at the reality versus the truth that's being spun regarding this president and his "failures".

John Cole/Balloon Juice

When the President was elected and this congress took office, we were losing over half a million jobs a month. Now, we are gaining jobs.

In the past year and a half, they’ve stabilized the banks, the economy, and the major car companies, they passed health care reform that adds thirty million people and cuts the deficit long term while getting rid of the worst abuses of the insurance companies, extended the solvency of Medicare for a decade, we’re drawing down troops in Iraq, we are making progress with green energy, there has not been one successful terrorist attack on American soil, we’ve just signed a nuclear arms reduction treaty and re-examined our use of nuclear weapons and we are making great progress on the global stage. Hell, the DOW is up over 3,000 since we got rid of the bums. Personally, we’re getting a road paved near me that was a disaster, and it is being paid for with stimulus money. We’re gonna put some people to work and have a nice paved road! And Obama and company did it all without getting blowjobs from interns.

And we’re going to reward them by kicking a lot of them out of office. We’re a really stupid country.

Ford's turning a profit, the president made $8 billion for the nation in the Citi bailout, jobs are up, if START II passes the threat of nuclear holocaust is pushed back, the troops in Iraq are coming home without it turning into a bloodbath, we've avoided terroist attacks on our homeland (unlike Bush), we've captured or killed 10 top terrorists in just over a year.

Yeah, throw the bums out.

If we do, this is what we get: a reversal of all of the gains we made. And a return to the world created by this guy. Don't believe me? Here's the guy who shut down government and drove us to our knees 15 years ago in the name of dogmatic conservative "principle":

Dave Weigel

"Stage one of the end of Obamaism will be a new Republican Congress in January that simply refuses to fund it," said Gingrich -- that last word was drowned out in a standing ovation.

Gingrich ribbed the media for suggesting that this wasn't possible. "I think they forget that once upon a time I used to be Speaker of the House," he said. "Under our Constitution, Congress doesn't have to pass the funding."

What's funny is that Republicans claim to be for tax cuts. They're not - they're for them as political leverage when they deliver them. When President Obama cut taxes by 10% for 95% of all Americans, that's bad.

Bad.

So bad that Glenn Beck wants you to give it back.

Here's the President in his Weekly Address

Benen

"So far, Americans who have filed their taxes have discovered that the average refund is up nearly ten percent this year -- to an all-time high of about $3,000. This is due in large part to the Recovery Act. In fact, one-third of the Recovery Act was made up of tax cuts -- tax cuts that have already provided more than $160 billion in relief for families and businesses, and nearly $100 billion of that directly into the pockets of working Americans.

"No one I've met is looking for a handout. And that's not what these tax cuts are. Instead, they're targeted relief to help middle class families weather the storm, to jumpstart our economy, and to bring the fundamentals of the American Dream -- making an honest living, earning an education, owning a home, and raising a family -- back within reach for millions of Americans."

The reality is that this President is standing up for the economic needs of the core demographic of Tea Partiers. Except, you know, he's black.

Cleaning up the legacy of hate to advance a political cause

NYT/Jon Meacham

As the sesquicentennial of Fort Sumter approaches in 2011, the enduring problem for neo-Confederates endures: anyone who seeks an Edenic Southern past in which the war was principally about states’ rights and not slavery is searching in vain, for the Confederacy and slavery are inextricably and forever linked.

That has not, however, stopped Lost Causers who supported Mr. McDonnell’s proclamation from trying to recast the war in more respectable terms. They would like what Lincoln called our “fiery trial” to be seen in a political, not a moral, light. If the slaves are erased from the picture, then what took place between Sumter and Appomattox is not about the fate of human chattel, or a battle between good and evil. It is, instead, more of an ancestral skirmish in the Reagan revolution, a contest between big and small government.

We cannot allow the story of the emancipation of a people and the expiation of America’s original sin to become fodder for conservative politicians playing to their right-wing base. That, to say the very least, is a jump backward we do not need.

Responding to the firestorm that resulted from Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's "Confederate History Month" proclamation that honored the Southern cause in the civil War and left out any mention of slavery, Mississippi gov. (and possible 2012 Presidential candidate) Haley Barbour said:

Politico

When CNN "State of the Union" anchor Candy Crowley asked Barbour, a onetime lobbyist and former head of the RNC, if the slavery omission was a mistake, he said, "I don't think so, my legislature has made an active holiday of Confederate Memorial Day... Anyone who thinks that you have to explain that slavery is a bad thing, it goes without saying... It's sort of feeling that it's a nit, it's not significant, it's trying to make a big deal."

"A nit". Remember this in November, the Republicans consider slavery - America's original sin - "a nit".

The week in Stewart: Pope, sex, nuclear treaty, Fox News misrepresenations