Green Eagle

They've arrested a new guy in the Ricin attacks on President Obama, a judge and two Senators.  This time, it's not an Elvis impersonator, it's a Wayne Newton impersonator. Things like that don't happen in the real world, do they?

It's Be Kind To George W. Bush Week!  If that isn't a depressing way to start off, I don't know what is, except for New Heart for Cheney Day. Mark Davis, Town Hall:  "If George W. Bush Were President Today" God forbid. "So with no archive of articles featuring George W. riffing on events of the last four years, we are left with his record and the handful of quote nuggets he has offered up in interviews this week." We are left with his record.  Right you are, Mark.  His record as the worst President ever.  I don't think that's the tale you are going to be spinning here... "...if he were to spend more than I would like, at least it would be fueled by the engine of an economy energized by lower taxes" Yeah, just like the lower taxes he presided over, which "energized" our economy so much that it drove right off a cliff. "If the fiscal issues would be a mixed bag, at least the social agenda would be returned to ...

Of course, it's come down to this: "Lawmakers press Obama to take action on Syria...Republican senators on Sunday pressed U.S. President Barack Obama to intervene in Syria's civil war...Pressure is mounting on the White House to do more to help Syrian rebels fighting against the government of President Bashar al-Assad" They're calling for Obama to help the rebels, so that if they manipulate him into it, they can then carry on screeching that Obama is in league with Al Qaida and Muslim terrorists, who support a number of rebel groups.  Naturally, this guy is leading the charge: "Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate in 2008, said the United States should step up its support for Syrian rebels even if it turns out that Assad's forces have not used poison gas in the conflict. "We could use Patriot (missile) batteries and cruise missiles," the Arizona lawmaker,  in the U.S. Senate, told NBC's Meet ...

That's the story.   Sounds horrible, doesn't it?  Well, here's the rally: Some rally, huh?  Man, that'll show them.  I remember going to an anti-Iraq war rally in Washington D.C. a few years ago that drew 350,000 people or so, but was virtually ignored by the press.  But this gets national publicity. We all know how our media treat the infantile arguments of the right as equal with the sane positions of the left.  Here's another form of false equivalence.  I first noticed this with the disgusting media hoopla over the Terry Schiavo case.  I have looked at well over a hundred photos of the right wing demonstrators outside of Schiavo's hospital, and I have never seen one that showed more than three or four dozen people.  Yet this was treated to daily media coverage for months.  During the heyday of the Tea Parties, I reported frequently on events that I had attended, and ones that were reported in the press.  The same thing w...

Here is an absolutely masterful Daily Show segment on the history of gun control in Australia: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes , Indecision Political Humor , The Daily Show on Facebook This is one of the most incisive bits I have ever seen from the Daily Show, and really devastates the American right wing on this issue.  If you missed it, give it a listen- you'll really like it.

"Charges in the case were initially filed against an Elvis impersonator but then dropped" Really, what surprises me is that the charges were dropped.  The fact that this sort of thing is not a crime is one of the worst signs of the current decline of American morality.  Just sayin'

First today, the story below about the infantile Republicans in Missouri doing away with their State bureau that issues drivers' licenses, and now this: "GOP Lawmakers Hope to Combat Ammunition Stockpiling by Gov’t Agencies With AMMO Act Republicans in the Senate and House are expected to introduce a joint bill Friday that would limit the amount of ammunition that federal agencies are allowed to buy and stockpile over the next six months, the Washington Free Beacon reports...The bill, titled the Ammunition Management for More Accountability or "AMMO" Act, is being proposed after several lawmakers have voiced concerns about some federal agencies, like the Department of Homeland Security, seemingly stockpiling large quantities of ammo. In a statement provided to the Washington Free Beacon, one of the bill's co-sponsors, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), said federal agencies must provide more "transparency and accountability" in regards to its "stockpiles...

There is apparently no depth of irresponsibility that Republican legislators will not sink to: "Missouri Senate votes to defund driver’s license bureau...Missouri residents could be unable to get driver’s licenses if a funding cut passed Monday by the Missouri Senate were to ultimately become law. If the entire $3.5 million allotment for the Motor Vehicle and Driver Licensing Division ultimately is eliminated: “They will not be able to issue any driver’s licenses,” Schaefer, a Columbia Republican, acknowledged." Why did this happen?  Because of some harebrained conspiracy theory involving gun rights, which apparently was bought into by the Republicans in the Missouri Senate.  Is there any way that Republicans can destroy the functioning of government that they won't stoop to?  I just don't know any more. Before writing this off as sheer lunacy, I must report on the substance of a comment to one of the articles dealing with this idiocy:  This commenter sugge...

I've tried to keep the sickening mass of Conservative attempts to turn the Marathon bombing to their advantage to a minimum.  God knows, I could have filled ten Wingnut Wrapups with their junk, but I've tried to show a little restraint this time.  Next, back to my usual raving: Derek Hunter, Town Hall:  "Progressives can’t help themselves. When normal person hear of a tragedy, they feel the natural range of emotions – fear, anger, sympathy, etc. But progressives are not normal humans. When they hear news of a tragedy their first thought is “How can this help the cause?” There’s something oddly perverse about this mental defect that somehow overrides decency in tragedy’s aftermath...Progressive’s hatred for America is not limited to race. It’s universal against the culture because the culture still insists on embracing liberty and responsibility. As such, it must be attacked." Projection, what? Debra Saunders, Town Hall:  "There is no problem too flimsy for Cali...

"Mormon bishop with Samurai sword runs off attacker" The world is going crazy.

As they always do when they give space to Jennifer Rubin, who has today managed to produce the most offensive pack of lies in one column I have ever seen.  The Washington Post is the major newspaper in the nation's capitol, and is still for some reason regarded as one of the unimpeachable sources of news in our country.  For this reason, I can't let Rubin's column today, a virtual one-woman Wingnut Wrapup go unnoticed.  I'm not going to cite all of it here, but the quantity of the column I'm reproducing below certainly goes beyond normal standards of fair use.  But with an unending stream of malignant lies like this, what does fair use have to do with anything?  Well, hold your breath- here we go: "Unlike Obama’s tenure, there was no successful attack on the homeland after 9/11." After 9/11.  I see.  Bush gets a pass on that one.  And by the way, this is a lie.  What about the anthrax attacks, unsolved and forgotten?  And various r...

Tonight, you can be treated to this overwhelmingly spectacular internet broadcast! Yes, Laurie Roth, perhaps the most deranged talk show host this side of Jeff Rense (Laurie hasn't yet confessed to believing that our government is ruled by lizard people from outer space) is joining together with fellow Renew America stalwart Sher Zieve, to spend three hours presenting the notion that the Sandy Hook shooting was a government conspiracy.  Sher, a perpetual resident of Wingnut Wrapup, is ludicrously described by Laurie as an "investigative journalist;" in actual fact, poor Sher is a person clearly suffering from severe paranoid delusions, who is constantly raving about how Obama is right on the verge of establishing a Muslim Communist State right here in America.  I wouldn't believe either one of these people if they told me that Keith Richards is in the Rolling Stones. This leaves true American patriots with an agonizing choice- are they going to listen to Laurie...

The last half of the old saying, "figures don't lie, but liars can figure."  I'm referring to what is by far the most important story to have surfaced in the last couple of weeks, the tale of a paper written by two Harvard trained economists, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. This paper, called Growth in a time of Debt,   purported to show that, when a nation's debt exceeded 90% of its annual GDP, a tipping point was reached which crushed economic growth.  It has been constantly quoted and hailed far and wide by proponents of the miserable "austerity" policies which have nearly destroyed the European economy, and which continue to damage our own. It now turns out that this paper contained a number of serious errors, the most comic of which (if it wasn't so catastrophic) was a simple Excel coding error that "accidentally" left out the data of several of the most well-off countries.  Including that data, the conclusion of the paper is t...

Respectfully dedicated to Pam Geller, who I usually ignore.  But this was too good to pass up: "The Epic Failure of the Intel Agencies on the Boston Bombing...I find it very disconcerting that thirty-six hours (as of this writing) after the Boston terrorist bombing, law enforcement and counterterrorism officials are running hotlines and calls for "anyone seen with an unusually heavy, dark bag" in the Boston area.  A $50,000 reward has been offered for clues leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator.  Officials are saying that this case is "wide open." Yes, THIRTY SIX HOURS after this anonymous crime was committed, and we STILL HAVEN'T LYNCHED ANY MUSLIMS!  What kind of miserable failures are we? Looking pretty stupid now, huh, Pammy?  I guess it's a miserable failure that it took police four days to catch both bombers.  Because look how much quicker Bush was to catch the mastermind of the 9-11 bombers. Oh wait... Of course, t...

Right now, Chris Matthews is interviewing Rudy Giuliani, to get his opinion about the Marathon bombing.  We're just lucky that Rudy wasn't running Boston's anti-terrorism program, or its headquarters would have been in the basement of the Tsarnayev's house.

When I wrote my post about the endemic nature of Islamic violence around the world a few days ago (yes, before the Boston bombing) I thought of including Chechnya on the list, but I left it off because the situation there was so compromised by nationalism.  I guess I need to give them a star now, and maybe one for Massachusetts too. What a world.

You're already three crises in the past. Learn a lesson from this- never underestimate the short attention span of the American people.

Small explosion: Big explosion:  Here's something you might want to know: Budget for the Homeland Security Department:  $68.9 billion Budget for OSHA:  $565 million Budget for U.S. Chemical Safety Board: $11.4 million (request for next year) $11.4 million, or less than a tenth of what Sheldon Adelson spent on buying elections this year.  This means that in the last five years, the Chemical Safety board has managed to inspect a grand total of six ammonia plants. And yet, corporations and their largely Republican tools are constantly campaigning to destroy even these pathetic attempts to protect American workers, absurdly insisting that corporations are perfectly capable of protecting their workers (and are willing to lift a finger to do so.) We are at war in this country.  We are at war with the greedy, sociopathic monsters who have taken control of most of the world's corporations, and who do us far more damage than terrorist can ever ho...

I had trouble getting to sleep last night and I have been jumpy all day.  I've noticed that the music stations I listened to while I was driving around were all playing jumpy music too.  I bet a lot of other people feel the same way. Well, this is going to be a rant, so I'll try to make it short.  I'm not jumpy because I think I'm going to be blown up the next time I go out in public.  I'm jumpy because I know that we are all going to be forced to live with the deaths of these three people for weeks.  We are going to be bombarded with endless coverage of the Marathon bombing, and endless pontification, which will have exactly zero positive effect, exactly like the same phenomenon after Sandy Hook, after Aurora, after every one of these incidents.  And in the meantime,  thousands of people will be killed with guns in this country every year.  The savaging of the hopes of Americans by the greed and power of the rich will go on.  Mindless wa...

Dennis Prager, the most intellectually dishonest talk show host in the country, has helpfully compiled a list of left wing statements from one single professor, under the title of "Is USC Another Left-Wing Seminary?" Here is what the professor had to say: "California Republicans [are] really stupid and racist." " ... Republicans are 82 percent white. Losers." "The Republican Party in California ... is the last vestige of angry old white people" "The Republicans are trying to prevent people of color and people of lower income from voting by requiring voter ID." "We discovered, and this is generally true, the least flexible voter in America, the person who's less likely to change their mind about anything is an old white guy. Old white guys are stubborn sons of bitches." "There are tens of thousands of people who are now dead because George Bush, even though he got fewer votes, became the president ...

At long last, the tension is over!  Green Eagle can finally reveal the names of the winner of the Boston Marathon Bombings Who Can Attack Obama First contest! But wait! We have a tie here, between two of the highest seeded competitors.  First, from Breitbart News, the ever-dependable Ben Shapiro with this entry: "Obama Does Not Call Boston Bombings Terrorism" But in a dead heat with him, the right wing's champion of stupidity, Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit:  "Crazy… Obama Won’t Call Boston Marathon Bomb Blasts a Terrorist Attack" Yes, in Obama's brief statement today, largely (and appropriately) restricted to discussing the Federal role in the forthcoming investigation, he failed to jump up and down and scream "TERRORISM" at the top of his voice.  He acted like a national leader dealing with a tragedy, not like a paranoid, bloodthirsty jackass only interested in using the incident to spread as much hatred as possible. How dare he? Well,...

This is a very difficult post for me to write, because in the last decade, virtually every negative comment about Islam has been nothing but an outpouring of hatred against Muslims.  This means that any criticism of Islam is immediately (and legitimately) suspect of being nothing but a vicious form of racism.  I have lived in the Middle East, and can assure you that the Muslims that I came in contact with were, without exception decent human beings like the majority of any other people.  Still, there is a serious problem in the Muslim world, and I hope I can write about it without engendering too much hatred. Here is a map I prepared: It shows the Muslim world, and on it are marked areas where violence related to Islam has taken place in recent decades.  I could have added a few more, but I think this is enough to make my point.  Here they are: 1. France-Repeated Muslim attacks against non-Muslims, particularly Jews. 2. Balkans- Violence between Muslims...

Stories I won't be covering:  Dr. Kermit Gosnell.  This guy seems to be a truly malignant human being who is on trial for committing numerous murders of live babies at his "abortion" practice before it was closed in 2011.  He's now on trial for multiple counts of murder.  After ignoring this case for two years, the wingnut blogosphere has erupted in stories about it.  A sample of ten of my most followed right wing blogs today reveals 62 stories about this case, screaming about the mainstream media for not covering a story which they themselves utterly ignored until a few days ago.  This is a classic example of the right wing echo chamber in action, churning out endless outrage on the scandal of the day.  I'm hardly going to defend Gosnell, considering what he seems to have done, so I'll just leave it there.  On to the rest of the wingnuts: Daniel J. Mitchell, Town Hall:  "Why Are Young Americans Supportive of Obama When His Policies Ar...