Green Eagle

I saw a headline that gave me a laugh: "Rick Perry to Attend Next Five Debates" When have we ever had to suffer through endless meaningless "debates" like this?  These are not debates; they are free commercials designed to give the press an excuse to provide national news coverage to a bunch of clowns that have done absolutely nothing to deserve our attention.  And of course, the press plays along, pretending that there is something newsworthy in the sight of a bunch of Republicans spouting the same self-serving lies that they have told for decades, and which have put our country in the condition it is today. Obama has not been a particularly strong President, but the notion that any of these fools could possibly be a viable alternative to him is just crazy.  Yet, the press is going to continue to serve the Republican party and its rich masters by doing everything it can to make ignorant voters think that it would be a really good idea to turn our country back ...

The Huffington Post reports: "WASHINGTON -- The family of Gabe Zimmerman, the congressional aide to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) who was killed in the Tucson shootings in January, sent a letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday urging him to allow a House vote on a stalled resolution that would name a room in the Capitol Visitor Center after Gabe. The resolution, sponsored by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), has more than 350 cosponsors and doesn't cost taxpayers anything, save the costs of hanging a sign outside of a room. Still, it hasn't moved since it was filed in July for reasons that remain unclear to just about anyone." It remains unclear to just about anyone?   What kind of idiot could say that?  Just for the record, let me state that it is one hundred percent clear that the Republican party is composed of a collection of corrupt, evil pigs that can't allow Democrats even the simple dignity of honoring one of their own who ...

...In one easy lesson, courtesy of Former Dittohead, via Kos: "Only Countries with Socialized Medicine have AAA Bond ratings. AAA countries according to Standard & Poor’s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_credit_rating     Austrailia     Austria     Canada     Denmark     Finland     France     Germany     Guernsey     Hong Kong     Isle of Man     Liechtenstein     Luxembourg     Netherlands     Norway     Singapore     Sweden     Switzerland     United Kingdom" One more outrageous Republican lie- that we can only insure a sound economy by screwing ordinary people- demolished by the facts. Hardly a new phenomenon, but every one of their lies has ten more standing behind it r...

 Life through the looking glass: To begin with, the award for the first right winger out of the box with the usual anti-global warming lies, since the Koch-funded Berkeley study revealed the climate scientists to be right all along: Michael Barone, Town Hall:  "Cult of Global Warming Is Losing Influence" Well, it turns out that it is the people on Michaels's side that have been lying all along, which is not surprising, because they are all financed by oil companies, but what's a little lying between friends, huh? Katie Kieffer, Town Hall:  "Sex Sells Socialism...When all else fails, sex sells. The only way to sell the American public on socialism is to use sex appeal because socialism does not appeal to reason or justice. And watching handsome high rollers head to prison is no doubt an Occupy Wall Streeter’s notion of ultimate bondage sex appeal." Not my definition of sex, but there you go.  And who is this Katie woman? "Katie Kieffer is a c...

From the Portland Maine Press Herald: "PORTLAND — Portland police are looking for the person who threw a chemical bomb at the Occupy Maine encampment in Portland during the early morning hours on Sunday. Sgt. Glen McGary said police responded around 4 a.m. Sunday to an explosion in Lincoln Park at Congress and Pearl streets" I checked the first six pages of google hits for "Maine occupy wall street bomb," and there was not a single hit from a mainstream news outlet.  Apparently, right wing acts of terror against liberals are not worthy of being reported.  You know that if something like this happened as a teabag event, every national news outlet would be screaming about this for days, and there would be nothing else on Fox News and CNN.  Instead, when real people not paid for by the Koch brothers get attacked, it's just fine.

I just couldn't resist posting this wonderful graph of the results of Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax proposal.  It's a little small, so let me tell you that the first four columns are the bottom four quintiles of the American populace, while the column at the far left is the top .1%: No comment needed.

Here's a little tidbit from a post at American Thinker which amused me: "Perhaps the most stunning element of the Revolutionary Communist Party's manifesto is the call for black Americans to unite into a separate, autonomous republic in the American South.  Wilson cited the Revolutionary Communist Party's constitution, which called upon African-Americans to forge an autonomous region comprising "the southern part of the former imperialist United States of America."  That decision would be made by a special vote in which only African-Americans would be eligible to participate.   Insane?  Yes." Oh, totally insane.  After all, just imagine the absurdity of the thought that White Americans would ever call for the forging of  " an autonomous region comprising  the southern part of the  United States of America."  And imagine what an idiot you would have to be to imagine that such a thing would be decided by a vote in which only white ...

I don't want to devote too much time to this, but for the record, a climate study funded by the Koch brothers made the huge mistake of hiring an honest climate sceptic (apparently, as hard as it is to believe, there was at least one) who discovered that it is all true!   Here is a chart comparing his results (referred to on the chart as "Berkeley") to several well-known climate studies that have been the subject of endless derision and accusations of fraud by climate deniers, and all of the other usual right wing fools: Well, what do you know?  The scientists were telling the truth, and it was the people taking money from the oil companies that were lying.  Who could have ever predicted that? I just know that, when I write my next Wingnut Wrapup I'm going to find all sorts of posts apologizing for having trusted a bunch of corporate shills.

Well, I can't resist devoting a large part of today's garbage collection to the wingnuts' analysis of a left-wing movement that has, in one month, and without financial support from the Koch Brothers, spread to over a thousand cities around the world.  I want to start with a true milestone in wilful self-delusion: Pajamas Media:  "Bizarre neo-swastika reminiscent of “The Great Dictator” used as power symbol by OWS leaders...El Marco, one of the best citizen photojournalists in the country, this morning published an outstanding photo-essay about the Occupy Denver protests over the weekend, and in it he makes this highly disturbing observation:  Note how when the “leaders” put the symbol on their sleeves (as in the first and third photos), it is rotated 45 degrees just like the Nazi swastika was...Don’t these people see an echo of the swastika in their new power symbol?" Not too familiar with Twitter hash tags, huh, guys?  Or are you convinced at this point that...

So Obama is ending the colossal Republican military blunder in Iraq.  Here's George Romney's response to this: "President Obama’s astonishing failure to secure an orderly transition in Iraq has unnecessarily put at risk the victories that were won through the blood and sacrifice of thousands of American men and women," Romney said in a statement. "The unavoidable question is whether this decision is the result of a naked political calculation or simply sheer ineptitude in negotiations with the Iraqi government." What victories and how did Obama put them at risk?  This entire statement is a malignant smear.  That is all the Republicans have, but given the collaboration of the press, it's all they may need.

with this headline from Daily Kos: "Half of wage earners made less than $26,400 in 2010" I don't think I need to say any more, really, although you are free to click the link and read the rest, if you aren't already depressed enough. I f it makes you feel any better, 81 people in the U.S. made more than 50 million.  For those who are still wondering who the Republicans' real constituency is, well there they are- all 81 of them.  The rest of us can just go to hell as far as they are concerned.

Courtesy of Mitt Romney, from the Republican Presidential "debate" the other day: "The -- the idea that 49 states can tell Nevada, "We want to give you our nuclear waste," doesn't make a lot of sense. I think the people of Nevada ought to have the final say as to whether they want that...Let -- let the free market work. And on that basis, the places that are geologically safe, according to science, and where the people say the deal's a good one will decide where we put this stuff. That's the right course for America. (APPLAUSE)" Oh yes, the American people, who can't even understand their own mortgages, and half of whom don't seem to understand that the earth is older than 6,000 years, are going to: A) read the technical geological reports about the areas concerned, and B) understand them, and finally C) fight their way through the propaganda campaigns paid for by the nuclear industry, to make a sensible decision about issues...

From the BBC , another appalling story of the moral bankruptcy of the Catholic Church: "Spanish society has been shaken by allegations of the theft and trafficking of thousands of babies by nuns, priests and doctors, which started under Franco and continued up to the 1990s. The scale of the baby trafficking was unknown until this year, when two men - Antonio Barroso and Juan Luis Moreno, childhood friends from a seaside town near Barcelona - discovered that they had been bought from a nun. Their parents weren't their real parents, and their life had been built on a lie. The pair went to the press and suddenly the story was everywhere. Mothers began to come forward across Spain with disturbingly similar stories." Lawyers believe that up to 300,000 babies were taken. The scandal is closely linked to the Catholic Church, which under Franco assumed a prominent role in Spain's social services including hospitals, schools and children's homes. Nuns and prie...

Here is one of the most important stories about the coming election that you will ever read.  It relates a Pew study of press coverage of the various presidential candidates. We have all heard, so many times, the Republican lies about the supposed liberal bias of the mainstream press.  Well, here is the truth: As you can see from the above chart, Obama is given favorable coverage in only nine percent of mainstream press stories.  This compares to 31% favorable coverage of Palin and Bachmann, and 28% favorable for Herman Cain, all three of whom are ignorant pathological liars who would be disastrous as President of the United States, and who shouldn't be taken seriously by any sane person. This is what every Democratic Presidential candidate for decades has had to bear, and it is coming again, from a corporate press which is determined to see a Republican back in the White House, despite the near fatal damage caused by the last one.  Add this to the billions in...

From the New York Times , this solution to immigration from current Republican front-runner Herman Cain: "Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said Saturday that part of his immigration policy would be to build an electrified fence on the country’s border with Mexico that could kill people trying to enter the country illegally. The remarks, which came at two campaign rallies in Tennessee as part of a barnstorming bus tour across the state, drew loud cheers from crowds of several hundred people at each rally. At the second stop, in Harriman, Tenn., Mr. Cain added that he also would consider using military troops “with real guns and real bullets” on the border to stop illegal immigration." Entering the United States illegally is a misdemeanor in most cases.  Here's a Republican leader openly advocating killing masses of people for committing a misdemeanor, to open cheers from his audience. You would have to be an idiot not to understand where this sort of th...

And yes, this is real, and not some sick creation by Green Eagle.  There is nothing so simple and innocent that "Christians" can't ruin it by trying to suck the energy out of it for their own selfish ends.

 Read on and weep.  I hope these excerpts from a recent legal decision involving a lawsuit against Monsanto will be readable- I had to go to some trouble to get them into this post.  Well, I bet you didn't know this:   If you didn't see it in the original, you wouldn't believe it.  You do not have the right to own a cow, or consume the food of your choice.  If this is true, I wonder what rights you do have? Well, here's the capper: "The Wisconsin judge who recently ruled that we have no right to own a cow or drink its milk resigned to join one of Monsanto’s law firms." This nation now belongs to the corporations, and the simplest, most basic acts you may wish to perform are forbidden if they interfere with corporate profits.  And this is before we really feel the effects of the recent Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to openly buy candidates for national offices.  Pray that something like Occupy Wall Street works; otherwis...

Again!  Again I taunt you with the mighty reasoning of the right!  And here I go! Guy Benson, Town Hall:  "Earlier today, Katie posted a clip from last night's Freedom Watch, in which a retired US Army officer suggests the foiled Iranian-backed terrorist plot might be a manufactured crisis by the Obama administration.  The segment was brimming with conjecture and dark theorizing.  If true, the allegations raised would represent a stunning betrayal of a the public trust..." Of course, it was just fine when Bush manufactured a phony crisis in Iraq, at a cost of two trillion dollars, and a result of nothing except big profits for Halliburton and Blackwater.   Mr. Benson reluctantly concedes that the right is going to be unable to convince very many people that this malignant fable is true, but he finishes by encouraging right wingers everywhere to keep looking for any other lie that they can pin on Obama. Soren Dayton, Red State:  "Fraud in sig...

No, it's not the mark of the beast, upside down, it's the latest Republican miracle to save the economy. Finally one of the Republican candidates has come up with an economic plan.  That would be Herman Cain, with his 9-9-9 proposal.  That consists in setting the personal and corporate tax rate for everyone at 9%, and making up the difference with a 9% sales tax on everything you spend, including food. Now, of course, it has already been demonstrated that, like everything the Republicans do to the economy, this ludicrous proposal would balloon the deficit without any benefit to the nation at all.  But even if it was revenue neutral, this idiotic plan would be nothing but a huge giveaway to the rich, like everything Republican.  Here's a quick little bit of arithmetic, based on the following table of current tax rates:  Note that this is based on income after deductions: FEDERAL INCOME TAX BRACKETS $0-$8,375         ...

As absolutely inevitable as things like this have become: "In what is almost too predictable to be true, the lead sponsor of a Tennessee law allowing handgun permit holders to bring guns into bars “has been arrested on charges of drunken driving and possession of a gun while under the influence.” Pulled over in Nashville, Tennessee late yesterday, state Rep. Curry Todd (R) “failed a roadside sobriety test and refused to take a breathalyzer. A loaded Smith & Wesson 38 Special was found in a holster stuffed between the driver seat and the center console." Actually, I was pretty much too lazy to post this, until I saw the guy's mugshot: State Representative Curry Todd.  That would be (I  hardly need to say it) Republican State Representative Curry Todd. You can't make things like this up.  Aren't we blessed that decisions about who can go around with a loaded gun are in the hands of guys like this?

 I've gotten so bored with the usual right wing jackasses I cover in Wingnut Wrapup.  I thought I'd see how close to their mendacity and viciousness our more mainstream political figures are getting these days.  Here's a little collection I've seen recently.  It's a sad comment on our country that this sort of thing is considered an acceptable part of our discourse: Republican representative Peter King, speaking about Occupy Wall Street:  "“We have to be careful not to allow this to get any legitimacy,” he said, adding “I’m taking this seriously in that I’m old enough to remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy. We can’t allow that to happen.” It ended up shaping policy by ending a vicious war of aggression in which we murdered over two million civilians, and also in driving a corrupt criminal out of the White House.  Oh yes, those were horrid times we'd...

Today's nominee, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, for this brilliant remark about the Wall Street Protesters:  “Civil disobedience doesn’t work for Boston...” Really, Tommy boy? Man, there are some people who don't care what fools they make of themselves.

Just sayin'

Religious Hatemonger Bryan Fischer, at the ludicruously-named "Values Voters' Summit:" “not a single one of our unalienable rights will be safe in the hands of a president who believes that we evolved from slime and that we are the descendents of apes and baboons.” Don't worry, Bryan.  We don't believe that you evolved from slime.  In your case, you are still slime.

I want to make a more serious comment about the proliferation of marijuana dispensaries.  I live (normally) in Los Angeles, and it stuns me to drive around and see a place openly selling marijuana every six blocks or so.  Who ever thought we would live to see such a thing? This situation is clearly unsustainable, but I believe there is a simple solution: free enterprise.  Yes, for once I am going to advocate the good old Republican answer to everything (not that they really believe what they are saying when it hurts them personally, but that is another conversation.)  Let these stores battle it out for supremacy, and see which ones survive.  Not only will the number of outlets inevitably decrease, but let's face it- the retail price of marijuana is wildly out of line with its production cost, and the competition could only benefit the consumer.  This may be a rare example, but it may also be one where right wing cant could actually work.

One more piece of news documenting the insane stupidity of the Obama administration: "Feds cracking down on California medical marijuana dispensaries ...Federal prosecutors in California are threatening to shut down medical marijuana dispensaries throughout the state, sending letters to warn landlords to stop sales of the drug within 45 days or face the possibility that their property will be seized and they will be sent to prison." If this idiot spends one cent on marijuana, it is further proof that he doesn't have a clue about what his job is supposed to be.  And I don't care how you feel about marijuana- this is a colossal waste of money, a capitulation to the meaningless cant of the right, and one more abandonment of his campaign promises: "As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama said the federal government should not raid medical marijuana users and caregivers... The latest letters have baffled the state’s medical marijuana activists, who belie...

Two jobs in the news today-  Steve Jobs and American jobs.  Both seem to be in about the same condition.

Nicole Wallace, former Bush press secretary, about the premise of her new novel: " What if somebody who was ill-equipped for the office were to ascend to the presidency or vice presidency? What would they do? How long would it take for people to figure it out? I became consumed by this question." Nicole, you had eight years to figure that out, and a front row seat to observe it, you stupid slug. If you don't get it by now, just forget the whole thing and go home.

In this chart, stolen from our good friend Ryan Trask: And in fact, a good demonstration of why, every time you turn around, fewer and fewer people have everything in this country. Just keep this up, America.  Soon, our society will be back to the kind of government they had in about the tenth century B.C.  Won't that be fun.

This news just in , from Think Progress: "The Los Angeles Times reports that presidential contender Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) recently thanked a caller on a radio show who said he’d rather vote for infamous serial killer Charles Manson over President Obama. “Hey, thank you for saying that,” she replied." Maybe it wasn't a mistake when she "accidentally"  praised John Wayne Gacy. Elisabeth Meineke, Town Hall:  "How Multiculturalism Failed Europe" Yes indeed, we all understand that the current collapse of European banks is solely attributable to treating brown people just like white people.  Because, of course, what is multiculturalism anyway?  Elizabeth clarifies this vital issue: "Multiculturalism--sometime called cultural Marxism--is credited with creating tragedy on both sides." Credited by whom?  These guys? And while we're on the subject: Star Parker, Town Hall:  "Sadly, more of the same from the Black Caucus...

Hard to believe, but true: "Cheney: Obama Should Apologize For Badmouthing War On Terror Tactics...Referring to a speech in which Obama accused the Bush administration of  “overreacting to the events of 9/11” and engaging in torture, Cheney made his displeasure clear... Cheney said. “He said that we walked away from our basic fundamental ideals. That simply wasn’t the case.” And for once, Cheney is telling it like it is.  If you think a little torture is contrary to Dick Cheney's fundamental ideals, well, you don't know Dick.

That will undoubtedly get far less attention from the mainstream press than, say, Michelle Obama's shopping trip to Target.  From Bloomberg : "A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries -- in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East -- has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism. Internal company documents show that the company made those sales through foreign subsidiaries, thwarting a U.S. trade ban." From the number one source of financing for the Teabaggers, a true taste of what patriotism means when it stands in the way of profits.  Because the Koch Brothers' $50 billion net worth is just not enough- they have to give aid to our enemies to make even more.  But like I said, Michelle's shopping habits or Barack's preacher are far more important than this act of open treason.  To Republica...

Here is a great quote from a speech by Adam Posen.  It is in an opinion piece by Paul Krugman, which is definitely worth a read: "Both the UK and the global economy are facing a familiar foe at present: policy defeatism. Throughout modern economic history, whether in Western Europe in the 1920s, in the US and elsewhere in the 1930s, or in Japan in the 1990s, every major financial crisis-driven downturn has been followed by premature abandonment—if not reversal—of the macroeconomic stimulus policies that are necessary to sustained recovery. Every time, this was due to unduly influential voices claiming some combination of the destructiveness of further policy stimulus, the ineffectiveness of further policy stimulus, or the political corruption from further policy stimulus. Every time those voices were wrong on each and every count. Those voices are being heard again today, much too loudly. " Let me once again state the obvious- a point that Krugman makes over ...