Green Eagle

From Daily Kos: "On December 20, 2009, the Chicago Tribune released a report that detailed how the healthcare industry spent upwards of $635 million over the past two years to shape the healthcare bill." There you go. Six hundred million dollars. How much do you think we are going to see corporations spend on candidates in the future, thanks to five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court? And by the way, guys, keep sending in those $25 and $50 donations to support your views. It will only take about twelve or fifteen million of them to balance out the money from one industry.

The stupid, ignorant, malicious slime, "Rev." Grant Swank, has spread more of his hatemongering again, today at Renew America . This time, he takes on the subject of Israel, whose people turn out to be six million more pawns in his demented plans for the world: "Grassroots Israelis true to their own heritage are angry with their politicians playing up to Barack Hussein Obama." "Their own heritage?" And what would that be, Grant? Maybe it would have helped if you cited a single example in your article, so everybody could know that you are talking about a demented half of a percent of the Israeli population, practically all of them transplants from the good old U. S. A. "These Israeli leaders in recent days changed their rhetoric not to offend Muslims so as not to offend Muslim Obama. Now they are slowly changing their vernacular due to pressure from the citizenry." Muslim Obama. Well, I guess we can see where that is going. By the way, of cou...

Susan, Collins, one of the two "reasonable" Republicans: "this administration cannot see a foreign terrorist even when he stands right in front of them, fresh from an attempt to blow a plane out of the sky on Christmas Day" Thanks, Susan, for giving me another chance to point out that there is no such thing as an honest Republican. The best they have are corrupt liars. (The worst are greed-maddened, self-serving lunatics like Sarah Palin.)

Kiki Vandeweghe, of the pathetic New Jersey Nets: "I told the guys that they would win when they decided enough is enough." What he should have said: "I told the guys that they would win when the Clippers come to town." That's how boring politics has gotten these days- I've been reduced to ragging on the Clippers. Talk about pathetic, huh?

Hey, you didn't think I was going to give up on them forever, did you? Actually, they were pretty out there today, for a Saturday, so let's just dive right into the swamp: Jon Sanders, Town Hall: "Twelve Simple Ways to Fight This Climate Change" Twelve? So far, you guys have only found one- paying people to lie their asses off about it. Jackie Gingrich Cushman, Town Hall: " Creating Our Nation's Future -- No More Bread and Circuses" No more bread, anyway. Not for the bottom 99% of us. Neil Stevens, Red State: "We’ve spent the whole time bashing Republicans and talking about how great Obama looks on television, when we missed what the true, underlying message was: The President spent his first year in office trying to ignore us, but now has had to come crawling back like the miserable failure that he is." He came crawling back, and beat the crap out of you. Unfortunately, only the beating was on national TV, not the crawling. And now a s...

Again, the news from the "real" world tops the demented maundering of the wingnuts: First, this from a Democrat who apparently just woke up from an eight year nap: "Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) on Thursday admitted the "general feeling on the Democratic side" was that Republicans have so far been able to cast controversial protest votes and stall important legislation "with impunity." "Some of the votes [Republicans] cast -- we would be on trial for treason if we had voted against defense appropriations in the midst of a war," he told reporters on his way to the Senate chamber. Durbin was referring to GOP members who tried to block the defense bill out of concern that a hate crimes bill was attached to it. "They did it with impunity," Durbin lamented." So you just noticed? And what are you going to do about it, Dick? Just roll over another thousand times? Just what will you do to see to it that Rep...

"WICHITA, Kan.—A jury took less than 40 minutes Friday to find Scott Roeder guilty of first-degree murder for shooting abortion provider George Tiller in a church here last May." The only thing sad about this is that, since he was convicted in a State court, he can't be sent to Guantanamo and waterboarded a couple of hundred times, so we can find out everything we can about his terrorist associates. After all, since 9/11, Roeder by himself has killed more civilians in the United States than Al Qaida. "(Roeder's attorney) compared his client to Martin Luther King Jr. and other heroes who fought injustice around the world, saying: "We celebrate individuals who stood up and made the world a better place." This terrorist scum should have had two or three more life sentences for allowing his attorney to say such a perverted, sick thing. Update: This, from the L.A. Times: "In a trial that never became the referendum on abortion that some abortion foe...

From the New York Times today: "U.S. Economy Grew at Fastest Pace in 6 Years Last Quarter Gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter...The strong growth in the fourth quarter capped a year of the biggest contraction since 1946, when the country was still cooling off from World War II." But, of course, don't you dare give the Obama administration a shred of credit for taking the right actions to undo eight years of Republican criminality. Oh no, Democrats can never do something that works. Only Republicans can succeed at anything. Like Iraq. And Katrina. And Enron. And the economy. And successful interrogation of prisoners. And maintaining our positive image in the world. I could go on here, but I guess you get the idea.

Digby points out that the Republican response to Obama's State of the Union address yesterday was delivered in the room where Jefferson Davis delivered his second inaugural address (not where he was inaugurated as I first had written- sorry.) Too bad the Reich Chancellery was burned down, or they could have their response there, next year. Note: the comment on Jefferson Davis has been changed to the right information, thanks to a correction from Derek.

I know how you have been looking forward to this- a concrete demonstration of why that cranky bird Green Eagle has no chance of ever becoming president. Here is what he would have had to say last night: When I took my oath of office a year ago, I swore to defend this country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We are accustomed to hear politicians endlessly trying to alarm us about foreign enemies who, in fact, have not killed a single American civilian here at home for over eight years. What no one is willing to talk about is a domestic enemy- an enemy which poses a far greater threat, and which is eating away at what this country is supposed to be, every single day. This is an enemy of a kind that has never been faced by any president, any government, any populace, since the United States was founded. It has it in its power to destroy us all, and leave America little more than a shattered third world country with vast masses of virtually penniless people, struggling daily f...

Those of you who who enjoy keeping an eye on the teabag "movement," as Green Eagle does, may remember my report about the miserable failure of their national strike a week ago. Now their grand teabag convention, to be headlined headlined by the ever-altruistic Sarah Palin, for a measly $125,000 or so, seems to be in running into trouble. Today, the Republican dream girl, Michelle Bachmann, announced that she is pulling out of her scheduled appearance at the event. What was the last time you saw Michelle Bachmann turn her back on a chance to humiliate herself in public? It has long been my belief that the teabag movement is nothing but an artificial creation, sustained by corporate money and free promotion on Fox News and the right wing blogs, and made to appear significant only through a perpetual, and vast, exaggeration of the level of participation. Yet as long as the money to promote it is there, the illusion will be maintained, and of course, our mainstream press will...

Screw the wingnuts. We can have just as much fun with the "real" news: First this, and are you surprised? "Well, it's official now: John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who affirmed claims that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists, says he didn't know what he was talking about. ...Kiriakou adds that he didn't have any first hand knowledge of anything relating to CIA torture routines, and still doesn't. And he claims that the disinformation he helped spread was a CIA dirty trick: "In retrospect, it was a valuable lesson in how the CIA uses the fine arts of deception even among its own." Never would have guessed that Dick Cheney was lying about torture, would you, now? And now a little perspective on Haiti's troubles: "Western governments have been urged to write off Haiti's international debts of nearly $1 billion (£620 million) after its prime minister said rebuilding the country could take a dec...

This just in: "HOUSTON—Halliburton Co. said Monday that...fourth-quarter earnings fell 48% as revenue weakened." What a difference it makes when you don't have your corrupt CEO sitting in the vice president's chair, steering billions in no-bid contracts your way.

Harold Ford, who hopes to be the "Democratic" Senator from New York: "To address the anxiety Americans are feeling, Mr. Ford thinks that the White House needs to focus squarely on the economy. "First we need to cut taxes for businesses in the country, small and large," he says. "We ought to provide a six-month exemption from the payroll tax for all firms less than five years old. We ought to extend the current capital gains and dividend tax rates through 2012. We ought to make permanent all the research and development tax credits for businesses making those investments. And we ought to lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%." Just what we need, huh? Another so-called Democrat pushing the entire Republican everything-for-the-rich agenda. This guy is worse than Joe Lieberman. What a surprise that the Wall Street Journal is totally behind him. How many corporate finanaced campaign commercials for this tool do you think New Yorkers will have to...

Green Eagle wants to present to you what may be the most preposterous thing he has ever found on the internet. It is from the website of the great Henry Makow, one of the looniest of all right wingers, and easily surpasses even a lot of his ground-breaking ventures into the deep recesses of the human mind. Well, here it is, you lucky people. Prepare to be enlightened: All Laws Exist in A Fiction by Rob Hay -T ax Resistor Illustration from the article. Without this, the whole thing wouldn't make any sense. "What if I told you, you did not live in a country, nor do you have a true name, a true birth date and you did not have to file taxes or follow any laws? As many of you scoff, stop for a moment and examine these facts." What if I didn't have a brain? Then I would be Rob Hay. But that would be okay, because everybody knows that people without brains don't have to pay taxes. And what else matters to wingnuts? So there. "If you look at the definition...

Bernanke to stay on until after finals

I have to say that I am getting rather tired of right wing hatemongers lately. I do believe there is a reason for somebody to keep a pretty close watch on them, but I also feel that it helps if the things can be seen with a little humor- otherwise it is really painful to wade through it. And it's getting harder and harder to find anything to laugh at in their endless lies and hatred. It took days to find the material here, and I have been thinking of just giving up on Wingnut Wrapup for a while. We'll see. Brian Faughnan, Red State: "House Democrats: You Know What Seems Like a Good Idea? Extending George Bush’s Tax Cuts" Oh sure. That'll help a lot. And while we're at it, maybe we should spend a couple more trillion invading another innocent country, or maybe we should let another American city drown. After all, it might be fun to have a real depression. Sher Zieve, Renew America: "according to leftist leaning "news" organizations (CNN ...

I am currently reading Winston Churchill's account of World War II. In talking about England and France's endless, fatal dithering about what to do in the eight months leading up to Germany's invasion of Norway, he quotes the following lines: He who will not when he may, When he will, he shall have nay. I guess it's pretty obvious what I am talking about. Everywhere I turn today, I see stories implying that the Democrats are about to strip their health care "reform" bill of the provision to forbid insurance companies to deny coverage on the basis of existing conditions. What do we have left in this mockery, if this happens? A law requiring millions of people to buy insurance from the existing companies that savage us for profit, with no compensating demands on the insurance companies. That's what I see: A gigantic transfer of wealth to these jackals, and nothing else- a bill which actually increases their ability to feast on the America...

Well, the Dow has now lost over 500 points since the election of Scott Brown. Of course, the Republicans who tried to blame the fall of the stock market on Obama until it started zooming upward, when strangely enough, he had nothing to do with it, will deny to their dying breath that the current mini-collapse is in any way related to Scott Brown. Well, here's what I think: The market collapsed in 2008 due to the miserable Republican "management" of our economy. All of a sudden, people are afraid that what seemed impossible could very well happen: that the stupid American electorate can be gulled into giving control of our country back to the very people who caused all of the damage. It didn't seem possible that Americans could be so self destructive, but now investors are beginning to worry. And most businesses have figured out that nothing could have done more for them than for the government to take the burden of providing health care off of their backs; but no...

I was watching CNN today, and I saw someone make the following point in regard to yesterday's Supreme Court decision to allow corporations to spend money in our political campaigns: Many of our largest and richest corporations are foreign-owned, and this ruling would seem to give non-Americans the legal right to influence our political campaigns. Fair enough, but I don't think this reasoning goes far enough. I would like to know what prevents the Saudi rulers, or the Chinese government, or for that matter, Al Qaida from going online to Legal Zoom and spending a couple hundred dollars to form a corporation, through which they could spend billions to support candidates of their choice? These countries could easily spend sums of money that dwarf even the atrocious sums currently spent in American elections, and could end up owning Congressmen, Senators or even the President. Well, there you go. It only remains for me to point out that these five Supreme Court Justices are not ...

Paul Krugman today: "So, House Democrats have a choice: do they pass the Senate bill, or do they go back to the drawing board and spend several months cobbling together a plan that’s worse in almost every dimension, generating thousands of stories about hapless Democrats — and almost surely find that Senate Republicans block the new plan, too." No, Paul. There is a third alternative. They can spend several minutes "cobbling together" a plan which involves letting anyone buy in to Medicare. They can then pass it by reconciliation, forgetting about Nelson, Lincoln, Lieberman and the other couple of worthless pseudo-Democrats, and stripping them of their self-awarded power to control the destiny of the country, and by the way, teaching the Republicans a lesson about what happens when you play hardball.

Here is some potentially good news, reported this morning at TPM: "Pelosi: There Aren't Enough Votes To Pass The Senate Bill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just told reporters that she does not believe she has enough votes in the House to pass the Senate health care reform bill as-is -- at least not yet. "In every meeting that we have had, there would be nothing to give me any thought that that bill could pass right now the way that it is," she said. "There isn't a market right now for proceeding with the full bill unless some big changes are made." Now that Obama and Reid can finally turn their backs on the notion that they were ever going to get sixty votes in the Senate for any kind of meaningful health care bill, they can face the choice of ending up as utter failures, or passing the bill with a simple majority through reconciliation; i.e. the way democracy is supposed to work. That means turning their backs on Max Baucus, Mary Landrieu, Evan Bayh and...

From Felix Salmon at Reuters, this statement from a White House press release: "President Obama joined Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve; Bill Donaldson, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission; Congressman Barney Frank, House Financial Services Chairman; Senator Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Banking Committee and the President’s economic team to call for new restrictions on the size and scope of banks and other financial institutions to rein in excessive risk taking and to protect taxpayers." Perhaps the best news in the whole article is Mr. Salmon's next comment: "Note here how Geithner and Summers just become part of “the President’s economic team”, while Volcker gets top billing." Has Obama come to understand what it took FDR two years to realize- that, however much you might desire a solution that everyone will like, you can never sate the rapaciousness of the rich, and there is no program that will work for ordinary peo...

From a Kansas TV station, a story about one of our great teabagging patriots: " We come home and those bastards want to talk about how we're domestic terrorists and a threat to this country. It makes me so angry," said Charles Dyer, who has been accused of committing rape. Dyer has been charged with first degree rape. When police searched Dyer's home for evidence on that charge, they found a grenade launcher that matched the description of one of three that were reportedly stolen from an Army post in California. "Join the military?", said Dyer. "Depends on what you want to do with it. Me? Im going to use my training and become one of those domestic terrorists that you're so afraid of from the DHS reports." "I'm certainly not going to be hiding from my command anymore. I'm not hiding from ATF. Not hiding from FBI. Any organization." Terrorism and Rape. No, Charles, you won't...

Here's a question for you. When Republicans lose an election, they come out of it nastier, more intolerant and bigger liars than ever. Why is it that, when Democrats lose an election, they decide that the right thing to do is to just lay down in a ditch, roll over, and give themselves over to prozac-level despair?

This electrifying news just in, from Think Progress: "A new professional basketball league called the All-American Basketball Alliance (AABA) sent out a press release on Sunday saying that it intends to start its inaugural season in June, with teams in 12 U.S. cities. However, the AABA is different from other sports leagues because only players who are “natural born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race are eligible to play in the league." I hope they are planning on putting the baskets at oh, say, 8'-6" or so. Otherwise, those are going to be some low scoring games.

And now, as if anyone cares, Green Eagle's take on the Democratic humiliation in Massachusetts yesterday. First of all, just in general, I lived in Massachusetts when I was in graduate school (I voted for both Teddy and Tip O'Neil at the time) and I have never met a bigger bunch of greedy, self absorbed people in my life. They are still deeply infected by the "screw you, I've got mine" attitude of their Puritan ancestors; the same attitude that led to evangelical Christianity as we unfortunately know it today. So I don't really have much respect for anything they do. Second, I don't give a damn about Martha Coakley, whom I was only vaguely conscious of before this nonsense (how many other State Attorneys General could any of us name?) and whom I hope to never hear of again. The question is not why she ran such a miserable campaign, but why the Democratic party was so complacent and arrogant that it just assumed that whoever they picked, however weak, w...

Well, here it is- the business world's response to the great teabag victory in Massachusetts: And here I thought that they were going to jump for joy when a hard core member of the dishonest, lying, incompetent political party that nearly drove us off a cliff a year ago won a Senate race. I hope you are enjoying that, conservatives. You may be able to sucker the voters of Massachusetts, but apparently the boys on Wall Street aren't quite so stupid.

Here is an excellent comment about what brought Haiti to the economic and political condition it is in now, from a blog called Lenin's Tomb: "The wretched subjugation of Haiti by the 'international community', particularly since the multilateral anti-Lavalas coup in 2004, is angrily and movingly described by Peter Hallward in today's Guardian, and there is more here (the Tomb's coverage of the coup is here). The coup was promoted to advance the process of neoliberal capital accumulation, break the left and the unions, and break Famni Lavalas and the civil society organisations sustaining resistance. For years, UN 'peacekeepers' have slaughtered thousands of Haitians, and the residents have been put through rigged election procedures. Lavalas members, priests, and activists have been subject to political imprisonment and murder, some of them characterised as 'gang' members. This is all for the aid of sweatshop bosses such as Andy Apaid, and the...

Here is the screen capture I showed you a few days ago, about the great Teabagger National Strike, called for January 20th: And here is their website as of today: Notice anything different? Yes, their great demonstration of Teabagging power was on its way to becoming a hilarious, epic failure, and so they caved. All of a sudden, not a word about what they were supposed to be up to- it never happened. So the teabaggers' record of endless success in drawing out millions of people (most of them invisible, admittedly) remains intact! But they are all still there, seething with anger, you betcha! And boy are they going to change this country with their power! If they ever decide to show up.

Here's an amusing example, from Confederate Yankee, of how far wingnuts will go to deny reality: "Our "Elite" Media: Anyone With a Gun is a Sniper" Anyon with a gun. I see. Mr. Yankee continues: "A wonderful example of selling fear is the story of the so-called "Berea Sniper." Someone has been shooting at cars in this Ohio town since this past August. No one has been injured by the shooter..." Of course, the underwear bomber didn't injure anyone but himself either. However, wingnuts have no problem calling him a terrorist, rather than a person with a very faulty undergarment. "The suspect, Paul Hausmann, has been tooling around this Cleveland suburb plinking at his fellow citizens with a .22-caliber replica of an old cowboy six-gun." "Plinking." I.e. hiding and shooting at them with a gun which is very well capable of killing them. I always pretty much thought that was what a sniper is, but I guess I was wrong:...

I must say that I am absolutely sickened by the right wing response to the earthquake in Haiti. We have all heard about the disgusting comments by the likes of Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh. Here are a couple of excerpts from a post at Town Hal l, by some thug named Steve Chapman, that seem to sum up a lot of the contemptible Republican line on Haiti: "we on average are more productive, disciplined, future-oriented and law-abiding than Haitians" Oh, of course we are. That's why we just averted sending ourselves into a depression by the worship of greed, the new Republican religion, also known as Reaganomics. How to lift Haitians out of misery is an enduring puzzle. U.S. intervention, undertaken periodically for nearly a century, hasn’t worked." Maybe that's because U. S. intervention has consisted of removing legally elected liberal governments and replacing them with corrupt right wing dictatorships. "Left-wing despots haven’t led the way to salvatio...

Here's a story that is all over the right wing web: "Hartford, CT- Joe Lieberman may be close to announcing his suppport for Massachusetts Senate Candidate Scott Brown. Citing the historical Healthcare Reform Bill as the main issue attracting Lieberman to endorse Brown's Campaign. Scott Brown is vehemently opposed to the proposed Healthcare Legislation. Speculation is such that if Lieberman were to endorse Scott Brown over the coming weekend that would most likely seal the defeat of Martha Coakley for Senate." Like anything from wingnuts, you have to take it with a grain of salt, but if this should be true, I think maybe it's time for a necktie party. Not for Lieberman, no...for Obama and Reid and the other gutless Democrats that have let Lieberman get away with his evil behavior for so long.

They never change, they never learn, and above all, they never tell the truth. It's a point of honor with them. It's a point of honor with Green Eagle to squawk in derision: Michael Barone, Town Hall: "the tea party protesters...are interested in substantive political issues. They decry the dangers of expanding the national debt, increasing government spending and putting government in command of the health care sector." Sure they do, Michael. They're really after serious solutions. That's why they are behind Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, the two most stupid, self-serving demagogues in the country. Erick Erickson, Red State: "The reaction people have to Sarah Palin is very much the reaction many people have to Jesus" Really? I missed the part in the Bible where Jesus abandoned his responsibilities, so he could get rich selling his ghost written, maundering book of self-serving distortions. I also missed the part where he got a job on Fox news. E...

Here is a cheerful note, from Think Progress: "Analysts estimate that Wall Street’s 2009 bonus pool could total $200 billion " Two hundred billion in bonuses for the criminals who robbed the rest of us of half of everything we own. Now, I am not here to scream about the grotesque injustice of this, but to simply point out one thing: As far as the Republican party is concerned, ninety billion a year to give tens of millions of people health care is an absolutely inexcusable waste of money, but twice as much to enrich a few thousand evil, greed maddened, self serving people who should be in prison, is just fine. That's patriotism for you, that's family values.

People who know me are aware that my interest in deeply confused lunatics doesn't stop with wingnuts. I am fascinated by all sorts of pseudoscience and fringe beliefs. Here is a website that I came across recently, which has the following to say: "”Fractality Causes Charge to ACCELERATE! - Since all biologic growth is limited by ability to absorb energy it is self evident the best way to compress that in to nourish biology is FRACTAL! Recursive Feedback=Self Awareness=Fractality. 100 Years of Writing Field Equations, yet has physics investigated whether the same fractal field that causes gravity could also most nourish DNA-" Uh huh. If you have a chance, take a look at it here. I ask because I have a question in mind. Does the same mental confusion that is revealed in the content of sites like this, lead to their violently colored and terminally confused appearance? I really am not sure why sites like this so often look this way, but they do. Below- a small sample...

Today is January 15th- it's only five days until the teabaggers' mighty national strike, called for January 20th! I just want to keep this in everybody's mind, so that when it turns out to be the biggest flop since Howard the Duck, we can all have a good laugh. Of course, if you read World Net Daily, you will probably think 50 or 60 million people participated.

How worthless is our majority leader? From the Huffington Post: "Harry Reid: Lieberman 'Double-Crossed Me' On Health Care" No he didn't, Harry. He double crossed the American people, and you helped him do it.