Rick Sanchez FTMFW!!!!!

Got damn it feels good to see some real journalism. The way Rick Sanchez confronted John Ensign over his scandal over his protestations should be shown to the rest of the so called journalists employed by CNN.

What Kinda Fuckery Is This?

Before you ask, yes this is a real commercial.

I have to say that if you are dumb enough to let these fools handle your taxes than you deserve to get robbed and then audited a few years down the road.

REAL TALK

Congressman Massa Brings The Awesome Sauce AGAIN

Congressman Massa in addition to his appearance on the Ed Show last night has now also penned a diary on dailykos.

I for one am sick and tired of these Bush-era chicken hawk politicians that never served in uniform attacking Democrats on National Security when in fact, they are largely to blame for our Nation's current national security problems. Apparently former Vice President Cheney and the likes of Senator Jim DeMint actually believe that they can score political points by forcing America to remember the incredible failures of the previous Administration and to that I say - "Bring it on." I have no problem running against their record of global economic failure, avarice, corporate greed run amok, no-bid insider contracts, and disastrous foreign policy decisions that left us isolated on the international stage at the very moment when we needed to count our allies. I welcome the opportunity for the Vice President to relive his glory days. And I welcome the opportunity to call him out and debate him one on one. Personally, I think it's time for Vice President Cheney to either put up or shut up.

If it were up to me the DNC, DCCC and the DSCC would print out his diary and hand it out to all their members to memorize so the rest of the Democrats in Washington can learn how to attack Republicans where they live instead of hiding their heads in the sand and hoping it all blows over. I hope the Democrats who remain silent on this issue are just opening themselves up to the very same attacks that President Obama is facing now, later. You can either attack now and put them on the defensive, or get attacked later and look like a weakling. Your choice.

Rachel Gives Democrats The Blueprint

Now the question is if they will follow...

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Goldman Sachs Stacked The Deck

After this reporting by McClatchy on how Goldman Sachs rigged their securities so that practically no matter what their investors would lose and they would win I have two thoughts running through my mind.

1. Why haven't the Goldman Sachs executives been summoned on the Hill for some hearings and grillings like the AIG and Citibank folks etc have?

2. Now that it turns out that many of the risky investments that helped bring down our financial system last year were dealing with mortgages in the Cayman islands rather than just mortgages here in the States, is there anyone still foolish enough to believe that the government forcing banks to give poor brown people mortgages was really the root cause?

I don't know how much longer the Obama administration and Congress can continue to effectively look the other way when it comes to Goldman Sachs and expect the people of this country not to act a damn fool.

Ed Schultz And Eric Massa Just Went In On Dick Cheney

Will post video as soon as it comes available. Must see TV

Update: As promised. Enjoy

If You Want Something Done Guess You Gotta Do It Yourself

Since Congressional Democrats have basically been mute over the GOP attacks on President Obama after the Northwest flight 253 attempted terrorist attack, the White House decided to pushback themselves.

Hard...

The Same Old Washington Blame Game
Posted by Dan Pfeiffer on December 30, 2009 at 03:34 PM EST

There has been a lot of discussion online and in the mainstream media about our response to various critics of the President, specifically former Vice President Cheney, who have been coming out of the woodwork since the incident on Christmas Day. I think we all agree that there should be honest debate about these issues, but it is telling that Vice President Cheney and others seem to be more focused on criticizing the Administration than condemning the attackers. Unfortunately too many are engaged in the typical Washington game of pointing fingers and making political hay, instead of working together to find solutions to make our country safer.

First, it’s important that the substantive context be clear: for seven years after 9/11, while our national security was overwhelmingly focused on Iraq – a country that had no al Qaeda presence before our invasion – Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda's leadership was able to set up camp in the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where they continued to plot attacks against the United States. Meanwhile, al Qaeda also regenerated in places like Yemen and Somalia, establishing new safe-havens that have grown over a period of years. It was President Obama who finally implemented a strategy of winding down the war in Iraq, and actually focusing our resources on the war against al Qaeda – more than doubling our troops in Afghanistan, and building partnerships to target al Qaeda’s safe-havens in Yemen and Somalia. And in less than one year, we have already seen many al Qaeda leaders taken out, our alliances strengthened, and the pressure on al Qaeda increased worldwide.

To put it simply: this President is not interested in bellicose rhetoric, he is focused on action. Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country. And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the President.

Second, the former Vice President makes the clearly untrue claim that the President – who is this nation’s Commander-in-Chief – needs to realize we are at War. I don’t think anyone realizes this very hard reality more than President Obama. In his inaugural, the President said “our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.” In a recent speech, Assistant to the President for Terrorism and Homeland Security John Brennan said “Instead, as the president has made clear, we are at war with al-Qaida, which attacked us on 9/11 and killed 3,000 people. We are at war with its violent extremist allies who seek to carry on al-Qaida’s murderous agenda. These are the terrorists we will destroy; these are the extremists we will defeat.” At West Point, the President told the nation why it was “in our vital national interest” to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to fight the war in Afghanistan, adding that as Commander in Chief, “I see firsthand the terrible wages of war.” And at Oslo, in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, the President said, “We are at war, and I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land.”

There are numerous other such public statements that explicitly state we are at war. The difference is this: President Obama doesn’t need to beat his chest to prove it, and – unlike the last Administration – we are not at war with a tactic (“terrorism”), we at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies. And we will prosecute that war as long as the American people are endangered.

I couldn't really find a way to excerpt that post by Dan Pfieffer and I hope they don't mind but I thought it important enough to quote the whole thing. Of course if there were some Democrats in Washington willing to hit back themselves, this post wouldn't be necessary. But as we have seen by now with the health care fight, Democrats in Washington are still looking for a spine.

Meh

Now This Is Rich

Andrew Sullivan has taken to his blog to demand accountability in the form of Janet Napolitiano getting fired over the attempted bombing on Northwest flight 253 on Christmas. He can't actually come up with anything she did wrong but its his contention that SOMEONE must be fired in order for President Obama to prove he isn't like Bush. Mind you as far as is publicly known this was a failure of intelligence sharing which falls a lot more under DCI Dennis Blair's watch than it does Napolitano, but you don't see Mr Accountability Sullivan asking for HIS head.

Anybody with two brain cells can probably figure out that this is all about the bogus right wing framing of her out of context commments on Sunday but you will never get Mr. Acocountability Sullivan to admit that.

Just to remind you that Sully is basically the only blogger over at the Atlantic now who doesn't allow comments. They have a system where you have to register with the site just to leave a comment and you can be banned for inappropriate responses and yet he STILL will not allow comments. Its really ironic that a guy who won't subject himself to accountability by his own readers in the form of comments that he alone could control whether they were actually published or not, is now screaming at President Obama because he isn't being as reactionary, and in this case stupid, as he would like.

Gotta love it!

Rosen's Fix For The Sunday Shows

Jay Rosen may be on to something with his "Wednesday Fact Check" fix for the Sunday shows. Especially with the lengths Republicans are willing to go through these days to lie and misinform the public. I also like Jason Linkin's proposal of real time fact checking but I know in my heart that there is no way David Gregory would ever call bullshit to say John McCain to his face on air.

President Obama Can't Rebuke Janet Napolitano When He Is Busy Agreeing With Her

Yesterday afternoon Chris Good had a post over at Marc Ambinder's spot entitled
"Systemic Failure": A Full Rebuke Of "The System Worked" in which he used the right wing out of context framing of Janet Napolitano's words on CNN over the weekend to profer that President Obama was rebuking what she had said.

It was also a complete 180 from what Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on CNN's "State of the Union" two days after the attempted attack was foiled--that "the system worked"--a direct and total rebuke of that initial assertion.

Except, that is not what Napolitano said on CNN's "State of the Union" AND he evidently missed the part of President Obama's speech where in fact he agreed with and endorsed what she actually DID say, in context, on Sunday as is evidenced in this Rachel Maddow clip from last night.

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See when her whole quote is allowed in context and you can see that she was speaking of the RESPONSE to the attempted terrorist attack and not the events leading up to it that allowed the attempt to take place at all she sounds perfectly reasonable and in this case perfectly right. But that never stopped wingnuts from shrieking of course and so they took it out of context and ran with it for the last few days. And unsurprisingly they found someone in the quasi mainstream media realm to validate their shrieking in Chris Good who obviously didn't hear the part in the speech where President Obama agreed with her lest his whole post lose its relevance. Thankfully a commenter pointed this out to him and today he posted a retraction. But notice how he is still unwilling or unable to fully call bullshit.

Obama, as I failed to mention in that post, cast Napolitano's analysis as correct, saying that "once the suspect attempted to take down Flight 253, after his attempt, it's clear that passengers and crew, our homeland security systems and our aviation security took all appropriate actions."

Obama's "systemic failure" spoke to a different part of the security process than what Napolitano had originally addressed. When Napolitano said that the "system worked," she was talking about the response to the incident, not the cause.

"Everybody played an important role here," Napolitano said on CNN's "State of the Union." "The passengers and crew of the flight took appropriate action, within literally an hour to 90 minutes of the incident occurring all 128 flights in the air had been notified to take some special measures in light of what had occurred on the Northwest Airlines flight."

snip

I still feel that Obama's remarks in Hawaii were a response to criticism of Napolitano--to the notion that the system didn't, in fact, work to prevent the attack from almost occurring--which is something Napolitano had already said. After the protestations against Napolitano's comment, whether or not they were merited, it became somewhat necessary for the president to come out and say that the system had failed.

But to call this a "rebuke" of Napolitano was misguided.

Whether or not they were merited? Its pretty fucking simple, THEY WEREN'T MERITED. And the proof is in the fact that he had to post a retraction in the first place. But you just can't call wingnuts liars in this day and age I guess. You have to give them "the benefit of the doubt". Funny, but it didn't seem like Good gave Napolitano the same benefit of the doubt though, did he? If anything was rebuked it was the right wing framing of what she had said, but you won't get that post title anytime soon I am sure.

I guess I should just be glad he posted a retraction, because you can best believe if this was the Washinton Post no such retraction would be forthcoming. But you still have to marvel and despair at how the right wing can frame any story even in the face of evidence easily accessed to the contrary.

Wired for Republicans, Washington still is...

GOP Putting Politics Over Security

My Kingdom for a Congressional Democrat who would be willing to stand up and say the Republicans are putting politics over the security of the American people!

Well I guess for now Rachel Maddow will have to do...

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Family Values And All That

Karl Rove just divorced his wife. I am sure most folks feel he did her a favor but its just another example of right wing hypocrisy on social issues. I wonder if he got caught hiking the Appalachian Trail lol.

Knowing Karl Rove he will now call out President Obama for having a good marriage as further proof that he is against freedom.

Jim DeMint, Terrorist Sympathizer

Why does Republican Senator Jim DeMint want to hinder our ability to keep airline passengers safe by putting a hold on President Obama's nominee to head the TSA?

Its because he hates America of course, and is soft on terrorism, and is an appeaser....yadda yadda yadda.

Seriously, where is our liberal version of Pete Hoekstra out there pounding this dumbass into submission?

Spencer Ackerman PWNS Crazy Pete Hoekstra

Spencer catches Congressman Hoekstra fundraising off of fear mongering over the attempted terrorist attack on Northwest flight 253. Further he hits him over the head with the fact that the terrorist who attempted said attacked is being housed right there in Michigan with all his terrorist super powers and other worldly abilities.

Somebody better get the fainting couch ready! LOL

Hope It Was Worth It

I am not sure what the percentage is of tea baggers who truly believe in their cause and really do believe that the tea bagging movement isn't really Republican but just "anti establishment", but for those poor ignorant souls I certainly hope they have reciepts for whatever money they donated to the Tea Party Express PAC, considering the fact that about 2/3 of its spending went to GOP firms.

Man, you have to be a special kinda dumb to have bought that line of bullshit anyway though so I doubt many of them will be asking for their money back lol.