Green Eagle

The natives are restless today: Michael Barone, Town Hall:  "Entitlement, Not Tax Cuts, Widen the Wealth Gap...Supercommittee Democrats argue that income inequality has been increasing and can be at least partially reversed by higher tax rates on high earners. They refused to agree on any deal that didn't include such tax increases." Well, that sure makes sense- giving money to the poor makes them poorer, while giving money to the rich makes poor people richer.  That's about the gist of Michael's remarks, and who could argue with rock-solid logic like that?  Michael continues: "In effect, Social Security and Medicare have been transferring money from low-earning young people (who don't pay income but are hit by the payroll tax) to increasingly affluent old people." Well, except for the fact that the "increasingly affluent" old people paid for their social security benefits every week of their whole work life.  So, let's take away...

As usual. I'm working here in Charleston, SC.  No Stephanie Miller or Randi Rhodes here, that's for sure.  So, I'm listening to that vicious den of liberal bias, NPR, on the way to work, when on comes a segment that must have been close to ten minutes long, about Newt Gingrich.  Yes, this is the same Newt Gingrich that said the following a few days ago: "You say to somebody, you shouldn't go to work before you're what, 14, 16 years of age, fine. You're totally poor...Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they'd begin the process of rising. "You're going to see from me extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America and give people a chance to rise very rapidly." So, taking poor kids out of science...

caused by a foreign company, South American style, if you care.  And believe me, no one is apologizing to the oil company.  Too bad we don't get that kind of government in the Greatest Country on Earth.

One of the most consistent right wing responses to Obama's success in helping drive Moammar Gaddafi from power, to be found from a nasty piece of work like Pam Geller, all the way to the Republican presidential hopefuls, was that Obama was a total failure when he removed Gaddafi, because he had just turned Libya over to a pack of Islamist radicals.  Not so true, I guess: "Prime minister Abdurrahim el-Keib has sent Libya on a bumpy road towards democracy by naming a cabinet of secularists and thereby snubbing prominent Islamists. The biggest surprise on the list was Osama al-Juwali, chief of the Zintan military council, who was appointed defence minister at the expense of Islamist Hakim Bilhaj." Once again, the Republicans, still reeling from the utter failure of their dream administration to accomplish anything but disaster on every front, tries to find similar failures in everything Obama does- this time in the ludicrous notion that Obama is as dreadful at foreign p...

And you thought waterboarding was bad.  Just wait until Green Eagle gets done with you: Katie Pavlich, Town Hall:  "Glenn Beck Receives Major Credit From Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu...You know you've made it in the big leagues when a true world leader like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is praising your efforts." You know what a colossal mistake the Israeli people made when they elected Netanyahu.  A "true world leader" who is the head of a country with less people than Los Angeles, and who encourages Glenn Beck.  Sheesh. Star Parker, Town Hall:  "The Declaration of Independence Defines Our Principles" It used to be the Constitution, until they started discovering what it really says. Katie Pavlich, Town Hall:  "Dems to Obama: Yeah, You Should Probably Just Quit" Two of them.  Katie found two Democrats willing to say that, including the execrable, self-serving pseudo-Democrat Pat Caddell.  I had some experience with th...

Maybe you thought that it was only the leaders of the Republican party who snarled out their supposed love of the military at every occasion, while actually not giving a damn about them in real life.  No, it's all of the rest of the lying pack of "patriots" on the right: "First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden were grand marshals  at today’s NASCAR season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, appearing as part of their charitable campaign to support military veterans and their families. But their benign, bipartisan cause wasn’t enough to prevent public fallout from the nation’s polarized political climate as they were introduced before the crowd. ESPN video from the event documented loud boos from some in the stands as the announcer named Obama and Biden, seconds before they delivered the “most famous words in motorsports,” telling drivers to start their engines." None of these people care in any way about anything but their tax cuts.  Th...

Paul Krugman on Newt Gingrich: 'He's a stupid man's idea of what a smart person sounds like.'

From that radical publication , Forbes: "The Top 0.1% Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains" I don't think I need to add anything to that.  It pretty much speaks for itself.  Please remember this when you hear Republicans endlessly calling for reductions in the capital gains tax rate.

I'd like to continue the theme of my last little post with a comment on the government reaction to the Occupy protests.  Before beginning, let's be clear- this movement has absolutely no power at the present time, other than its moral righteousness.  It poses no threat whatsoever to the people who really control the government.  All they would have to do is ignore the protests long enough, and that would be that.  In truth, Americans are mostly too complacent, too propagandized, and to be blunt, just too damned lazy to do anything to impede their own destruction. But even the pathetic threat represented by these demonstrators is too much for the people who want to turn this country into an oligarchy.  So, here is where we are today , as described by Robert Hass, the 70 year old former Poet Laureate of the United States, who, along with his wife, was beaten by police at a demonstration he went to observe: "...the deputies in the cordon surged forward and, usi...

Here it is: This is the fruit of a nation that accepts torture and aggression against innocent countries.  This is the fruit of a nation that has apparently decided that those in control can do nothing that justifies any sort of penalty.  And believe me, this fruit is far from ripe.  The leaders of the Republican party have, over the last year or so, engaged in a continuous campaign to acclimatize their followers to the notion that anything they choose to do to their enemies is justified, no matter how savage.  Now, the nation will pay the price of standing by and doing nothing while the rich raped the planet. And a little more:   Here's a comment on this incident by wingnut mainstay Jim Hoft: "Sorry Libs… You can quit your squawking and take you leftie-indoctrinated butts back to class.  The UC Davis Pepper Spray Incident Was “Standard Police Procedure”  And I'm afraid that Mr. Hoft is right- this is standard police procedure in today's...

This cheery news, from Yahoo: "KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - The top Roman Catholic official for the Kansas City Diocese agreed on Tuesday to have his actions monitored by prosecutors in order to avoid criminal charges for failing to turn in a priest suspected of creating child pornography. Bishop Robert Finn, the leader of the 134,000-member diocese, is the highest-ranking Catholic official ever to face U.S. criminal charges in a child sexual abuse case." Since he is, however, the "highest ranking Catholic official ever to face U.S. criminal charges in a child sexual abuse case,"  "facing" charges actually means not being charged.  So, he joins the Bush torturers and the Wall Street crooks in that august group "too big to fail." As Glenn Greenwald has lately been pointing out, in the United States, we have more people in prison than anywhere else on earth, and harsher punishments than most anywhere else, too.  But, not for the rich a...

We learn from Media Matters that Sean Hannity on Fox "News" hosted Joseph Farah last night to hold this conversation: "FARAH: From a journalistic perspective, there's nothing to report about the charges about Herman Cain. And that's the thing I think that everybody's missing. HANNITY: I said that from day one. I agree with you. FARAH: Look, there are people out there right now who make far more substantive charges, worse charges about Barack Obama, who claimed to have done all kinds of things with -- you wouldn't report that, Sean, I wouldn't report that, nobody in the media would report it. Why is it that we report this conjecture, this -- these unsubstantiated, uncorroborated charges?" That would be Joseph Farah, whose website World Net Daily, a perpetual staple here of Wingnut Wrapup, is the number one source of stories about how President Obama was born in Kenya,   That would be the same World Net Daily that provides a continuous plat...

Or, Green Eagle defends Herman Cain! There has been a great deal of hoopla about a video which has been circulating the last couple of days, of Herman Cain answering a question about Libya. Well, I'm sorry, but I think that, after the first minute or so of this five minute discussion, Cain gives a far more honest and acceptable answer to this question than the focus-group crafted attacks and talking points that are all we would have gotten from any other Republican candidate.  Watch if you would like and see if you disagree with me: I think this is a great example of the unthinking herd behavior of the mainstream press.  Now that they have had a taste of Cain's blood, they are determined to fit him into the image of a buffoon.  Well, I suspect that he is a buffoon, but you can't prove it with this clip.

Today, documented by the New York Times: "Felons Finding It Easy to Get Gun Rights Reinstated...Decades of lobbying by pro-gun groups have loosened laws across the nation, allowing thousands of felons each year to regain their gun rights, often with little or no review.  While previously a small number of felons were able to reclaim their gun rights, the process became commonplace in many states in the late 1980s, after Congress started allowing state laws to dictate these reinstatements — part of an overhaul of federal gun laws orchestrated by the National Rifle Association." Brought to you by the Law and Order party.  They don't give a damn about anything that doesn't stand in the way of businesses getting whatever they want- in this case, public safety means nothing when it prevents someone from selling a gun.  This truly is a kind of madness, and it is going to end very badly.

Boy, there hasn't been much news worth paying attention to lately.  Anyway, as a substitute for saying anything meaningful, here is the latest load of right wing lies to come to the attention of Green Eagle: Katie Pavlich, Town Hall:  "Twenty Minutes Before SEALs Killed Bin Laden, Obama Was Playing Golf" Well, not quite: "According to a new book, however, the President was not nearly that engaged – and was actually playing golf until 20 minutes before the operation began in earnest." 20 minutes before the operation began, not until Bin Laden was killed.  These people don't even care enough about the truth to stick with it when their own columns prove them to be liars five or six sentences later.  Luckily for them, neither do their readers, so I guess it's all okay. Moe Lane, Red State:  "If this story is accurate, Herman Cain will not win Iowa." Luckily for Cain, since the story appeared at Red State, he doesn't have much to wor...

Liz Cheney on Face the Nation:   "Barack Obama likes to talk about what he inherited. He inherited a victory in Iraq. He inherited a AAA bond rating." BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, I mean, I take your point." You've got to laugh.  I guess.

I wonder if this story will be covered by the mainstream press: "NEW ORLEANS (CN) - Ruling in favor of Transocean and BP, a federal judge on Thursday dismissed third-party environmental claims in a giant pleading bundle in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill litigation, saying the fact that the oil flow has stopped makes those lawsuits irrelevant." In other news, a Federal judge ruled today that O. J. Simpson is not responsible for the murders he committed, since his victims are already dead.

If I don't force this garbage on you, it will stay in my computer and rot it from the inside, and soon it will be posting right wing crap all on its own.  No, really. The lead story at Town Hall today:  "House Reaffirms 'In God We Trust' as US Motto" Aren't we so happy that our House of Representatives has, keeping a promise that Republicans made when they took control of it from Democrats, focused like a laser beam on the important things? Town Hall:  "Rice: Mideast Peace Prospects Worsened Under Obama" Unlike what they did under her boss, George W. Bush.  Thomas W. Sowell, Town Hall:  "Democracy Versus Mob Rule...In various cities across the country, mobs of mostly young, mostly incoherent, often noisy and sometimes violent demonstrators are making themselves a major nuisance." Real democracy, right wing style, consists of billionaires bussing people in to synthetic demonstrations, not real people making a "nuisance"...

 And Al Gore is fat.  Just sayin' "WASHINGTON (AP) — The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world's efforts are at slowing man-made global warming. The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago." Nothing to see here.  Time to go back to covering the latest Republican "debate."

An amusing take on things, courtesy of CNBC: "European leaders were angered by Papandreou's surprise unilateral announcement on Monday of a referendum on a bailout deal reached with euro zone leaders at a summit last week." And who could expect anything else from their "leaders" than anger?  Submitting major decisions about the fate of your nation to a vote of the people, rather than just doing whatever the bankers want, regardless of the destruction it causes- what a subversive idea. Luckily for us, no one needs to worry about that sort of Communistic thinking taking hold in this country.

Yes, as detailed by Red State: "The investigation revealed that Johnson and her husband, Ernest Sinclair Johnson, Jr., approached voters and obtained their agreement to vote, after which the voters were asked to sign an “Absentee Ballot Request Form.” ...In 2010, Florida law required ballots to be sent to a voter’s registered address unless the voter was absent from the county, hospitalized, or temporarily unable to occupy their residence. The Johnsons retrieved the ballots from the third party locations, brought the ballots to the voter, waited for the person to vote, and then returned the ballots to the Supervisor of Elections...Good thing that the FBI doesn’t believe the left’s claim that voter fraud doesn’t exist." Notice that, in this massive "fraud," there is not one shred of evidence that anyone voted that was not a legally registered voter- not one vote was cast by someone who did not have a legal right to vote.  Still, this is a horrible crime ...

Another bunch of right wing terrorists for the mainstream media to ignore: "Four Georgia men who belonged to a “fringe militia group” were arrested by FBI agents on Tuesday and charged with plotting an attack against U.S. citizens and federal employees using the biological toxin ricin. Authorities say 73-year-old Frederick Thomas of Cleveland; 67-year-old Dan Roberts; 65-year-old Ray H. Adams; and 68-year-old Samuel J. Crump, all of Toccoa, Ga. began meeting in March 2011 as part of a covert group that called itself, well, the “covert group.” Thomas allegedly said that there “is no way for us, as militiamen, to save this country, to save Georgia, without doing something that’s highly highly illegal. Murder. That’s fucking illegal, but it’s gotta be done,” Thomas allegedly said. “When it comes time to saving the Constitution, that means some people gotta die,” Thomas allegedly said." Nothing to see here, really.  Nothing at all.  Keep hiding under your beds and quak...