Green Eagle

Trump gave an unusually lunatic interview yesterday to the New York Times .  I don't want to deal very much with the substance of his comments (there really wasn't much,) but I do want to talk about what he is up to; something which continues to go unnoticed by almost everybody. Trump's behavior, since his childhood, has revolved around bullying other people to get what he wants, which is a sense that he is not a degraded person.  The way this sick person convinces himself of his superiority is to force other, presumably inferior, people to do what he wants.  Now, he can't just beat on people any more, so he satisfies this sick need by making others go along with things he claims which they, he and everyone else know to be false.  When you understand this, you realize that the detachment of his claims from reality is not a defect but a feature.  This is because the whole point of his talk is not to seek the truth or push an ideology, but totally to humiliate t...

As a sort of public service, I would like to link to this post , which links to thirty weekly articles in which Steve Benen documents a grand total of 533 lies told by Mitt Romney in the last thirty weeks.  As Fred Clark, who put together this compilation, points out: "Mitt Romney lies. A lot. He lies more than any other national candidate for office in my lifetime. And I was born before the Nixon administration." Maybe he lies more than anyone in the history of the world- oh, except for his vice presidential pick, who is pretty much running neck and neck with him. Well, not much to be said about this, really, but here it is.  Thanks, guys, for putting this together for those few remaining voters who care about the truth.

Mitt Romney today: "I think there is in this country a war on religion. "I think there is a desire to establish a religion in America known as secularism." If Rick Santorum said something like this, you might be tempted to think that he really meant it.  When Mitt Romney says it, it is nothing but a lie.  Get ready- lies are all we are going to get from Romney for the next eight months.

An honest Republican, I mean.  Case in point today, the poster child for bipartisanship and darling of the Washington insiders, Senator Olympia Snowe: "Retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe has finished grading the president’s report card. President Obama gets an “F” in bipartisanship" Not one word from her, of course, about her Republican Senate colleagues, who made it clear from the day Obama was elected that their number one priority was to destroy him, and who have spent the last three and a half years damaging the country in an effort to make it impossible for him to win reelection. Here's a sample of Olympia Snowe's own "bipartisanship," as described by Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine: "The Obama administration, desperate to win her vote, wooed her with endless meetings and pleas, affording her a once-in-a-generation chance to not only help pass health care reform but make it smarter, more efficient, and more compassionate. Instead, Snowe tor...

Rick Santorum today: "And America sat from 1940 when France fell to December of '41 and did almost nothing," he explained. "Why? Because we're a hopeful people. We think, 'You know it will get better." Why, you lying dick?  The real reason was this:  Roosevelt spent years doing everything he could to support the British and other enemies of the Nazis (for one example, check out the lend-lease act ,) but he was obstructed every step of the way by the Republican party, which did everything it could to prevent any American action against Nazi Germany.  That's the truth, buster.  Try it some time. Do I even need to tell you that the whole reason that Santorum told this lie today is so he could compare Obama to Hitler?  And yet scum like this are presented by the Washington pundits as fully qualified to replace Obama in the White House.  What a world.

As one human being could be. Today, I mean Tom Friedman.  Via Atrios, and thanks to Virtually Speaking, this little contrast.  Friedman now: " the decision to go to war stemmed, for me, from a different choice: Could we collaborate with the people of Iraq to change the political trajectory of this pivotal state in the heart of the Arab world and help tilt it and the region onto a democratizing track?" Friedman, as you will remember, then: "What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand?”   Well, Suck. On. This...We could have hit Saudi Arabia. It was part of that bubble. Could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could. That’s the real truth…" See, it's not just the Republicans.  People like Tom Friedman, hailed far and wide as a responsible, even liberal (my God) journalist, felt free then to indulge in their infantile...

Yes, it can now be officially confirmed that the experts at the Green Eagle Institute have just awarded the Michelle Bachmann Trophy for Historical Advance in the Art of Lying (shown in all of its glory in the official photo below) to none other than Ms. Pamela "shrieking harpy" Geller. And here is the official text of the award certificate: "WHEREAS Ms. Pamela "shreiking harpy" Geller spent the last months endlessly promoting a hatefest to take place in the City of New York, in order to exploit the memory of 9-11, and WHEREAS The aforementioned Ms. Pamela "shreiking harpy" Geller managed, in the account of the Associated Press, to attract less than one thousand people to her pathetic rally, in the largest city in America, actually being outnumbered by proponents of the mosque, and WHEREAS The aforementioned Ms. Pamela "shreiking harpy" Geller within hours was claiming "tens of thousands" of attendees and "forty thousand...

John Yoo in an " opinion" piece - linked to by Daily Kos: Well, let's get this part of it out of the way first: "When she served as dean of Harvard Law School, Kagan prohibited the U.S. military from recruiting students on campus" This is, of course, one more Republican lie. Kagan did no such thing, as is perfectly well known by anyone who has followed this story. Now on to the money quote: "What if a college dean barred from campus recruiting any law firm that provided free representation to al-Qaida terrorists? Suppose she believes that the firms are providing aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime. " This man is allowed to be a professor of law at one of our major universities, and held a high position in the worst presidential administration ever, where he did immense damage to our nation's standing in the world, yet he apparently does not understand one of the most basic principles of American law: the right to counsel. Mr. ...

Those who follow the economy know that it is currently undergoing a rebound that is far beyond anyone's expectations. It is vitally important to the Republicans that they lie hard and fast enough about this fact to keep American voters deluded until the November elections. I quoted a grand champion example of this contemptible behavior in a Wingnut Wrapup a couple of days ago, but my wife thought my explanation was not clear at all. I think this issue is important enough to revisit it. Here is the quote, from Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit. I wish I could tell you he was one of the worst of the liars in the wingnut web world, but he's not- he's just pathetically average: "After GDP Drops 2.5% in One Quarter… Obama Says “ We’re Heading in Right Direction. The gross domestic product just dropped from 5.7% to 3.2% in one quarter. Obama says we’re heading in the right direction?" Now, before I tear this disgusting liar a new one, lets get a few real facts in here. ...

From the New York Times: "When Senator John McCain was asked here this afternoon how he plans to balance the budget, he said that he hoped to do so by stimulating economic growth – and approvingly cited the example of President Ronald Reagan." The national debt tripled during Reagan's presidency.

We can always count on the Reverend Grant Swank to keep us informed about the issues of the day. Today, he turns his massive intellect, recently employed revealing that Obama is a Marxist Muslim Jihadist, toward the issue of climate science. Don't you just know that his comments are going to be so helpful to us? Well, let's just dive right in- the sooner started, the sooner finished: "Let the Creator be in charge of climate." Not that he's doing that good of a job of it these days. But then, having power and then governing with complete incompetence- that's the Republican way, right? And God is a Republican. If I've learned anything from Reverend Swank, it's that. "Mortals are playing God when they move into changing climate and moving continents and sludging taxpayers and kissing up to unbelieving loudmouths and passing legislation that will gouge Americans and so forth." Well, except that we are trying to prevent the climate from cha...

I can't believe it, but I am about to report positively on something I just read at Town Hall: "Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday belittled Dick Cheney's criticism of the Obama administration's commitment to fighting terrorism as either "misinformed or he is misinforming" and said the Iraq wasn't worth it because of "the horrible price" paid. Biden accused Cheney of not listening to what's going on around him and trying to rewrite history." You go, Joe. It's about time that someone in the Obama administration started telling the truth. I want to predict that this is not the last word that we are going to hear about this from the wingnuts, and that the rest of it is not going to be pretty. It will turn out that it is okay for Cheney to tell the most malicious lies about the current administration, but that it is treason to criticize a former (Republican) Vice President.

And this vital story, from Talking Points Memo, about Daniel Pipes, one of of the classic ignorant, stupid neocons who brought you our great adventure in Iraq: "Pipes: Obama Must Bomb Iran To Save His Presidency" Because all the innocent lives that would be wiped out mean nothing compared to a president's ego. That kind of thinking worked for Bush, right? I mean, attacking Iraq saved his presidency- so he could go on for seven more years of incompetence and criminality. This maundering idiot continues: "He needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue..." You're right there. The dramatic gesture he needs is for Republicans like you to stop spending tens of millions of dollars spreading lies to convince people that he is a "light-weight, bumbling ideologue," in comparison to your president, who was exactly that, and ignorant, vicious and corrupt in the process. "According to Pipes, a...

I don't know why, but I've felt an outbreak from Holy Joe Lieberman coming on for days. He just hasn't had a good opportunity to practice his unique brand of malicious double-crossing for so long. Well, here's an interesting story: Holy Joe, running in the Democratic party primary in 2006: "I can do more for you and your families to... get universal health insurance." And running in the 2006 general election, on the "it's all about me" ticket: "I have long supported the goal of universal health care," Lieberman told reporters. "Ned Lamont can talk about it. I've been doing something about it all the time I've been here." Lieberman today, now that the subject is real: "If we create a public option, the public is going to end up paying for it," Lieberman said following an hour-long confab with public-health experts at the Ashmun Street community center of the Monterey Homes public housing complex. "That...