I'm just tired of the lies and nonsense coming from the GOP, so this is my little contribution to combat the nonsense!
And so, the return of Keith Olbermann has officially began, with the launch of FOK News Channel. Olbermann previously made the announcement in a tweet, saying “Proud to announce: Coming very very soon – your FOKNewsChannel website… #FOK” – [Friends Of Keith]
As described on the website,
Three-time Murrow-Award Winner Keith Olbermann is the “K” in “Friends Of Keith” and “Friends Of Keith” is the FOK in the not-for-profit FOKNewsChannel.
Next for Mr. Olbermann… his return to television.
Earlier this week, when a blogger called Wisconsin’s governor Scott Walker, pretending to be David Koch and talking to the governor for about 20 minutes, the joke apparently did not go down too well in the Koch compound. In an interview with National Review Online, Mark Holden, the general council for Koch Industries said the call was “fraudulent” ;
“There are serious fiscal issues at play in Wisconsin. Yet our opponents are interjecting us falsely into this story. But our Wisconsin story is about bringing and keeping good manufacturing jobs in the state. It is disturbing that when a blogger calls using the Koch name, it is used as an opportunity to attack the company.”
Mr. Holden wasn’t the only one upset. Richard Fink, the executive vice president of Koch Industries also voiced his displeasure, saying, “We will not step back at all.” He then accused the left of trying to “intimidate” the billionaire brothers empire, saying;
“With the Left trying to intimidate the Koch brothers to back off of their support for freedom and signaling to others that this is what happens if you oppose the administration and its allies, we have no choice but to continue to fight.. We will not step back at all. We firmly believe that economic freedom has benefited the overwhelming majority of society, including workers, who earn higher wages when you have open and free markets. When government grows as it has with the Bush and Obama administrations, that is what destroys prosperity.”
The brothers, whose millions have been used to finance the Teaparty movement –where average Americans are used to protest policies that are in their best interest — feel like their backs are up against the wall and they’re coming out swinging. Mr. Fink states that the attacks on the Koch brothers is not just coming from “left-winged bloggers,” but part of a much bigger scheme constructed by the Obama administration. He continued;
It involves the Obama administration, the Center for American Progress, aligned left-wing groups, and their friends in the media. This is just the latest salvo in their attacks on the Koch brothers and Koch Industries. But it is an escalation — they’re now bringing in some labor groups, which they have not done before. We expect this to be part of an ongoing effort against [Koch Industries] as the 2012 presidential campaign approaches.”
But don’t feel sorry for the multi-billionaire brothers just yet. They are fighters, and if the past is any indication, we can expect to see hundreds of little old grandmas and grandpas, pushing their walkers and carrying signs along the streets of Wisconsin, demonstrating again for the poor Koch compound.
Read the rest of the interview here.
That description is not coming from me, but from her fellow Republicans who question whether she should be nominated for President in 2012, or even if her name should be mentioned as a potential candidate.
Steven Thomma reports;
At a recent gathering in South Carolina, the site of a crucial early presidential primary next year, party activists said the former Alaska governor didn’t have the experience, the knowledge of issues or the ability to get beyond folksy slang and bumper-sticker generalities that they think is needed to win and govern.
Many are shopping for someone else. They’re looking at Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., for example, and seeing what they call a smarter, more experienced candidate who’s equally as conservative.
“Sarah Palin with a brain,” said Gail Moore, a Republican from Columbia.
While national polls show that Palin still would win the support of about one in five Republicans in a national face-off today for the nomination, she no longer can claim the dominant role she enjoyed when she burst out of the 2008 campaign as the undisputed star of the party. She’s also losing ground quickly among independents, who hold the keys to the White House.
“Her major weakness is that she needs to bone up on how the government works,” said Don Long, a retiree from Lake Wylie, S.C. “I don’t know if she’s done as much of that as she needs to.”
Equally funny is their assumption that Michele Bachmann has a brain, or is more electable than Palin is. But these potential nominees exemplifies the Republican conundrum. When you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, just pray that you’re not claustrophobic!
Read the rest of the report here.
According to Republicans, it is now acceptable to bring guns to political events and town halls meetings. And they are even recorded on video saying, “there’s nothing wrong with bringing guns to political events.” So it was just a matter of time before someone stood up and asked, “Who is going to shoot Obama?”
Well that question was asked on Tuesday.
According to the Athens Banner Herald, the question was asked at a town hall meeting held by Republican Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia. The report states;
Broun’s press secretary, Jessica Morris, confirmed that the question was indeed, who is going to shoot Obama? “Obviously, the question was inappropriate, so Congressman Broun moved on,” she said.
But instead of Mr. Broun denouncing the question, he played into it, saying;
“The thing is, I know there’s a lot of frustration with this president. We’re going to have an election next year. Hopefully, we’ll elect somebody that’s going to be a conservative, limited-government president that will take a smaller, who will sign a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.”
Broun’s decision not to denounce the question is not a surprise. As reported by Wiki;
On November 10, 2008, one week after the 2008 presidential election, Broun drew national attention when he criticized President-elect Barack Obama’s call for a civilian national service corps, suggesting that Obama might use it to establish a Marxist dictatorship.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Broun said, “That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.” Broun later clarified his statement by saying, “We can’t be lulled into complacency. You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I’m not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I’m saying is there is the potential of going down that road.”
Welcome to civility in America… Republican style.
Early Friday morning, after three days of a Democratic filibusterer, Wisconsin State Assembly voted and passed the bill stripping union public workers of their collective bargaining rights. The bill still has to be approved in the state’s Senate, where Senate Democrats have been missing in action for over a week now.
State Assembly Democrats are not happy with how the vote was held. According to reporting from Huffington Post, many Democratic members did not even know the vote was being called. The report states;
After more than 60 hours in which Democrats threw out dozens of amendments and delivered rambling speeches, Republicans halted debate early Friday. In a matter of seconds, they had approved the bill. Only a few Democrats realized what was going on and managed to vote before the roll was closed.
The Democrats rose from their seats and rushed at the Republicans shouting, “Shame!” as the Republicans exited the chamber.
“I’m incensed. I’m shocked,” said Rep. John Richards, D-Milwaukee. “What a terrible, terrible day for Wisconsin.”
Republicans refused to speak to reporters, though Majority Leader Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, did issue a written statement.
“The vote we took wasn’t the easy thing to do, but it was the right thing to do,” Suder said.
We are witnessing the dismantling of the constitutionally protected first amendment for Wisconsin public employees, where simply having their union representative sit at a negotiating table and speak on their behalf is slowly being taken away.
Read the report here.
In a nation of newspapers, radios, televised media and even the internet including the google, information is still not reaching the masses. Or, maybe the masses don’t want to accept the information that they’re getting. In either case, a new Kaiser Health poll found that only half of Americans know that Health Care was not repealed.
According to the poll, 48% of Americans either believed the law was repealed or did not know enough about the law to say whether it was still in effect. Just 52% of Americans correctly know that the law is still in effect.
Congressional Republicans can therefore exhale. If half of Americans think the bill has already been repealed, then what’s the fuss? John Boehner should just let this segment of society – probably ardent FOX viewers – continue believing that Republicans have done what they promised.
The rest of us – the other half who know the repeal bill will never reach the President’s desk and if it does, it will be vetoed – we will play along, wink wink!
No, I’m not talking about the language against unions in Wisconsin, I’m talking about the language against unions in Indiana. After the Republican majority in Indiana tried to pass the same anti-union bill being debated in Wisconsin, Indiana Democrats fled the state to avoid the vote. Well, it will appear that their antics worked, because according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal, House Republicans in Indiana have decided to dropped the language in the bill that would have reduced the amount of union members in the state. The Wall Street Jorunal Reports;
The speaker of Indiana’s House of Representatives said he and Republican colleagues are dropping a controversial labor bill that caused Democratic representatives to flee to Illinois, but the Democrats said they’re not returning to Indiana for now. Republican House Speaker Brian Bosma said the so-called right-to-work legislation is dead and will not be reintroduced during this session of the Indiana House. Democrats felt so strongly about that bill that they went to Urbana, Ill., Tuesday so that Republicans couldn’t achieve a quorum to vote on the bill.
But then again. This could very well be a ploy by House Republicans to get the Democratic congress back in an effort to trick them into voting for the bill. Read the Wall Street Report Here
Republicans have fooled Americans into thinking they’re all for cutting the deficit. And if you listen to them long enough and fail to do the most minimal of research, you will tend to believe the lies. But here’s a little breakdown from Robert J. Elisberg that shows how concerned Republicans were when the deficit exploded… under Republican Presidents.
During the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the national debt increased a combined 35.6%. It was the largest debt increase in U.S. history. Mr. Reagan alone tripled the national debt from $997 billion to $2.85 trillion.
Yet Republicans didn’t complain, didn’t rise up in anger, didn’t revolt. In fact, what Republicans did do was lionize Ronald Reagan as a patron saint, the near-God of conservatives.
Under George W. Bush, the national debt increased by a combined 27.1%. The U.S. budget went from a $128 billion surplus to a $482 billion deficit. The national debt doubled from $5.7 trillion to $10.7 trillion.
And there was no outcry by Republicans. Republicans didn’t complain, didn’t rise up in anger, didn’t revolt. Even when Vice President Dick Cheney was quoted, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” Republicans didn’t complain.
In Bill Clinton’s administration, the national debt decreased. It went down by a combined 9.7%. Further — he balanced the U.S. budget.
And yet Mr. Clinton didn’t become a hero to conservatives, even the vaunted fiscal ones. The mere mention of his name still today causes body twitches.
Consider, too, that in every full administration since Nixon-Ford in 1973 up through George W. Bush in 2008 — EVERY national debt increase in America has occurred during a Republican administration. And EVERY reduction of national debt has occurred during a Democratic administration.
To this day, Republicans — that party of supposed “fiscal responsibility” — slam the Jimmy Carter presidency for incompetence. Yet the national debt went down 3.3% during the Carter administration.
Yea, there are those who refuses to do the google, and see for themselves. These are the unfortunate souls who still put their belief in the promises of the Republican party that they will “reduce the deficit.” But history is more than a subject taught in school, it also teaches us that those who fail to understand their history, tend to repeat it.
Read the rest of the article here
Seems dismantling the unions of Wisconsin is not the only thing giving Governor Scott Walker a headache these days. CREW – Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a non-partisan watchdog group – has ordered an investigation of Mr. Walker’s use of state troopers to visit the home of Democratic Senate Leader, Mitt Miller.
According to CREW;
Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a non-partisan government watchdog group, asked the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board to investigate whether Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker violated state law by sending the Wisconsin State Patrol (WSP) to the home of Democratic Senate Leader Matt Miller. CREW also submitted open records requests to the Office of the Governor, Office of the Senate Majority Leader and the WSP seeking records regarding the use of the troopers.
“Governor Walker has many tools at his disposal to fight the state’s public employees, but using troopers to track down a political opponent crosses the line,” said CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan. Sloan continued, “The governor’s conduct is especially egregious in light of a Wisconsin law specifically barring troopers from taking part in any dispute between an employer and employee over wages, hours, labor, or working conditions — the subject of the governor’s bill.”
I guess paying attention to existing laws to protect American citizens is not Scott Walker’s strong point. Trying to dismantle them seems to be what he’s more concerned about.
So the theory is true — that proponents for health care reform will get little to no media press coverage as compared to those opposed to it. A few weeks ago when a Republican judge ruled the entire Health Care Reform was unconstitutional and should be thrown out, because of one aspect called the individual mandate, the media went crazy! They were all over the story like white on rice. But yesterday, when the third judge – U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler – ruled in favor of the Obama administration and agreed that the bill is constitutional, we heard crickets!
And I am not the only one saying this. Here’s what Jed Lewison said about the unfair coverage;
coverage of Judge Roger Vinson’s decision against reform saturated the media, even though his ruling had no immediate impact on health reform.
The Vinson ruling received A1 coverage in The New York Times and dominated cable news. The Kessler ruling was covered on A14 of the Times and as far as cable news goes, I was only able to find two references to it — both on Fox, and each for less than a minute. (I’m basing this on closed caption text searches, so it’s possible I missed a couple of references, but there was hardly any coverage at all.)
After the Vinson ruling, Steve Benen pointed out the huge disparity in coverage between the two rulings in favor of reform and the two rulings against reform. Even if you were to dismiss the significance of those numbers on the theory that the rulings against reform were bigger news because they happened after the rulings that upheld reform, yesterday’s ruling should be at least as significant as Vinson’s ruling because it means that three judges have now ruled in favor of reform compared with two who have ruled against it.
If you’re keeping score, it’s 3 Democratic judges for the constitutionality of the bill, and 2 Republican judges against.
But have no dispare. There’s sure to be another Republican judge to rule against Health Care Reform, and then we will once again hear all manner of analysis and theories and punditry, references and cross-references, and interpretation, and evaluations, and breakdowns, and…..
Regardless of your political leanings, no one should ever advocate the killing of American citizens exercising their right to peaceful assembly and free speech. But that is exactly what an Indiana Deputy Attorney General suggested as a way to clear the masses protesting in Wisconsin against Governor Scott Walker’s attempt to silence the unions in his state.
“Use live ammunition” was the tweet of Attorney General Jeff Cox, who also said that the demonstrators were “political enemies” and “thugs!” Well, just hours after the news of this tweeting fool broke, appropriate action was taken in Indiana, and Mr. Cox is now on the unemployment line. According to reports from IndyStar;
Earlier today, the attorney general’s office said it was investigating whether Cox had sent the tweet and said it was a serious matter.
This afternoon, the office issued a statement saying Cox was no longer employed there. The office said it had conducted “a thorough and expeditious review” after it learned of the Mother Jones article.
“Civility and courtesy toward all members of the public are very important to the Indiana Attorney General’s office. We respect individual’s First Amendment right to express their personal views on private online forums, but as public servants we are held by the public to a higher standard, and we should strive for civility,” the office said in a statement.
Read the full report here
Classic that it should come down to this. Like all dictators who can’t control the opposing masses, an attorney general in Indiana is advising that Republican Wisconsin governor Scott Walker to use deadly force against his citizens. His exact words, “use live ammunition.”
Mother Jones reports:
On Saturday night, when Mother Jones staffers tweeted a report that riot police might soon sweep demonstrators out of the Wisconsin capitol building—something that didn’t end up happening—one Twitter user sent out a chilling public response: “Use live ammunition.”
From my own Twitter account, I confronted the user, JCCentCom. He tweeted back that the demonstrators were “political enemies” and “thugs” who were “physically threatening legally elected officials.” In response to such behavior, he said, “You’re damned right I advocate deadly force.” He later called me a “typical leftist,” adding, “liberals hate police.”
Only later did we realize that JCCentCom was a deputy attorney general for the state of Indiana.
The freedom of speech and assembly granted in the constitution means absolutely nothing to these Republicans. But advocating use of deadly force against United States citizens is another low no one would have ever expected. But then again, we are talking about elected officials who have put corporations above human lives.
Read the Mother Jones report here.
