Quickies

• It's good to see people are going to harp all over the media's insistence that Gov. Mitch Daniels is fiscally conservative.

• Cooper makes a great comparison between how unhinged Trump is and how his terrible choice of words goes unchecked by the media.

• Fox News has moved into afterbirther territory by focusing on President Obama's father and the fact he wasn't an American citizen and that interracial marriage was illegal in some parts of the U.S. at the time.  Yet no mention of the fact that Barack only met his father one time after the age of 2.

• Excellent write up from TPM about how absurd the people are who believe the president's long form birth certificate is a fake; and how the conspiracy evolved in just a matter of minutes with help from the Republican right wing.

• Want to know how and why the economy slowed to 1.8% growth in the first quarter this year?  This one graph explains it.

--Go have a good weekend and enjoy what might be some nice weather.  More storms are expected here this weekend so I'm going to enjoy the sun while I can.

NRO Debunks the Photoshopped Afterbirth Conspiracy

It's not often that I link to NRO to support President Obama. But that's just how crazy the birther issue has become.  In other words, it's very sad when a far right wing Republican magazine is the sane, rationale voice in what is a shameful display of modern America.

One of the more ridiculous claims coming from Republican birthers is the long form birth certificate released Wednesday by the president is a photoshopped fake.  No one expected the release of the document to appease the birthers.  They are a crazy group who flourish in this internet age of digital media.  So the endless number of videos popping up on YouTube is no surprise.  However, NRO actually proving just how unhinged the conspiracists are is a welcomed sight.

I'm going to repost Nathan Goulding's Photoshop examination in its entirety just to prove how crazy this whole thing is:

PDF Layers in Obama’s Birth Certificate April 27, 2011 2:35 P.M. By Nathan Goulding     We have received several e-mails today calling into question the validity of the PDF that the White House released, namely that there are embedded layers in the document. There are now severalother people on the case. We looked into it and dismissed it. The PDF is composed of multiple images. That’s correct. Using a photo editor or PDF viewer of your choice, you can extract this image data, view it, hide it, etc. But these layers, as they’re being called, aren’t layers in the traditional photo-editing sense of the word. They are, quite literally, pieces of image data that have been positioned in a PDF container. They appear as text but also contain glyphs, dots, lines, boxes, squiggles, and random garbage. They’re not combined or merged in any way. Quite simply, they look like they were created programmatically, not by a human. What’s plausible is that somewhere along the way — from the scanning device to the PDF-creation software, both of which can perform OCR (optical character recognition) — these partial/pseudo-text images were created and saved. What’s not plausible is that the government spent all this time manufacturing Obama’s birth certificate only to commit the laughably rookie mistake of exporting the layers from Photoshop, or whatever photo editing software they are meant to have used. It’s likely that whoever scanned the birth certificate in Hawaii forgot to turn off the OCR setting on the scanner. Let’s leave it at that. UPDATE: I’ve confirmed that scanning an image, converting it to a PDF, optimizing that PDF, and then opening it up in Illustrator, does in fact create layers similar to what is seen in the birth certificate PDF. You can try it yourself at home.

UPDATE II: For those of you who still aren’t convinced, here’s a one-page PDF that I just scanned and optimized, so you can see for yourself that an optimized PDF shows up in Illustrator as layers. (I didn’t spend hours getting the settings right.)

Again, this won't stop those who want to believe Obama is a fraud from doing so. The people who believe this kind of stuff are the same people who believed President Clinton was a drug dealer that had his opposition murdered, and that Hillary personally shot Vince Foster. They are the same people who screamed for years that Clinton was going to come take their guns away and lock them in concentration camps; that believe government is inherently evil unless of course they are benefiting directly from its social programs.

No, this won't change their minds.  But it does show the rest of us how crazy they are and the lengths they'll sink just because of their own self-delusion.

Fox News Still Intentionally Lying About Polling Data, just to benefit Republicans of course

Three weeks ago, I wrote about how Fox News portrayed polling data of registered Republicans as being all Americans.  It's a sly, tricky way to disguise data to fit your narrative.  Their narrative, of course, being that Republicans are very popular people and that Americans love them.

Yesterday Fox News couldn't help but once again lie about polling results to pretend registered Republicans are a sample of all Americans.  This time they made it appear as if 69% of Americans might consider voting for Romney or Huckabee.  County Fair explains just how wrong and unethical this is.

The After Birthers

There's a lot of talk today about what to call the lunatics who still contend Barack Obama isn't eligible to be president. Some have referred to it as post-birtherism.  I prefer the term afterbirthers. These are the people who have yet to touch and examine Obama's long form birth certificate.  Much like afterbirth, the afterbirthers are hands on, true deciders of Americanness.

Quick Fact That Debunks the 'Waited So Long' Lie

The stereotypical Republican response is clearly going to be that the president could have put all the birther craze to rest years ago had he just released his birth certificate then.

This, of course, denies factual reality.

• In 2008 Sen. Obama released his certified copy of live birth from the State of Hawaii.  This is the official certificate of birth for anyone born in Hawaii and is used to obtain driver's licenses, and fully recognized by the federal government.  Anyone born in Hawaii requesting a copy of their birth would receive this very same document because it is legally their birth certificate.

To any sane person, this put the issue to rest.  It was overkill no doubt.  But necessary because the crying from Republicans was insanely distracting.

No person running for president has ever had to release their birth certificate to prove they were a citizen.  And even after releasing his, Republicans rejected it claiming the certificate of live birth was a forgery.  So, again in 2008, factcheck.com investigated the forgery claims and soundly concluded the certificate to be real and Obama to be a bona fide citizen.  Three years later the president's birth place is still a major talking point for Republicans and their presidential hopefuls.

Even after today's White House release of yet more documented proof of his citizenship, Republicans will continue to doubt his legitimacy to be president.  They have no use for truth, facts or anything that might move the country forward.  They want us to dwell in fear surrounded by conspiracy theories that force us to think in terms of with us or against us.  Keeping the rhetoric as stupid as possible and the American people as fearful as possible is their only hope to regaining power.  For this cause alone, no conspiracy is too wild to spread and no lie is little to tell.

Birther Heads are Exploding

All I got to say is all of y'all are a bunch of idiots.

It's just amazing that President Obama has to prove he's American while the other 43 presidents never once had to. The only explanation for the Republican hysteria over the president's citizenship is pure disbelief that they lost an election instead of being duped.

I'm sure this won't quell the GOP-led birther mania at all. It may quieten it down some but that's all.  Stupid people will continue to do stupid stuff.

Related articles

• Born in the USA (newstatesman.com)

*Update:

I love this reaction from Newt Gingrich: "All I would say, is why did it take so long?"

I'm sure this is going to be the routine, talking point answer from Republicans. But why hasn't Newt released his birth certificate yet? Why didn't George W. Bush? Where is Sarah Palin's? Where is John McCain's, who was actually born in Panama? Oh that's right. They are Republicans and white, so they don't have to prove their Americanness. Only people who don't look like them have to.  No one else has ever had to produce a birth certificate, ever.  But because Republicans feel they were tricked by a Manchurian Candidate and not just flatly beaten at the polls, they have to create conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory.  They are a bunch of madmen poised at turning America into a modern theocratic police state.

There was never any reason to ever doubt President Obama's citizenship. Saying all he had to do was release it denies the fact that he did in 2008 and fuels the notion that because he's black with a funny name he has to prove he's American.  Go suck a big fat one GOP, cause that's the only thing you're good at.

**Update:

aaaahhh yes, Obama only released his birth certificate to keep the conspiracy going. According to Republican nutjob and total tough guy Erick Erickson.

What an idiot.

I'm telling you, there is nothing anyone can do to please Republicans.  They want power back.  And when they are not in power this is how they behave.  They did it to Clinton and they will keep doing it to Obama.  Everything is a conspiracy theory and people who point out how lunatic crazy they are get portrayed by Sarah Palin and the Republican Fox News station as trying to make "curious Americans" sound crazy.  No, you do that all by yourself.

Using Your Vagina

I grew up in a house that had Pat Robertson on the teevee regularly. That's why I have painful flashbacks of my childhood hearing that Rev. Robertson doesn't know lesbian women can use their vaginas for birthing just like non-lesbian women.

Drill All Day, Just Know it Will Have Minimal Effect

As long as the conversation is about drilling the GOP is going to win it. Why? Because more drilling gives us more oil. What isn't getting told, because Democrats have no idea how to message, is no matter how much more we drill, we'll never be able to make an ounce of difference in world oil supply, which is the market that regulates prices. And besides, even if we did drill enough to offset what Saudi Arabia produces, or even a small producing country like Libya, OPEC would just cut back on their production stabilizing the world market to practically what it is today keeping prices sky high.

Sure oil speculators drive up prices because they pry on fear.  That doesn't change the fact the surest way to cut prices is to consume less oil.  At least that's how it works in a market-based economy.

Related articles

• No shortage of crude oil by OPEC (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

*Update:

Something else entirely that goes completely unmentioned in the oil debate is the American government subsidizes oil companies. Yes, the American tax payer subsidizes big oil companies with $4 billion a year in tax breaks.

These are corporations that make tens of billions of dollars in profit every 3 months.  And routinely they pay little to no taxes!  At a time when we are facing trillion dollar budget deficits and fighting two wars on two fronts, it is completely immoral to continue this path.

Meanwhile we are paying $4 a gallon for gas while Big Oil companies profit $10 billion per quarter and pay little to no income taxes on it.  To show how ridiculous this is, Exxon Mobile could cut the price of gasoline to $2/gallon and still profit about $5 billion a quarter.

Another Lesson in Fiscal Conservatism

In 2006 this was called Culture of Corruption. Today it's called fiscal conservatism.

Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY), has funneled more than $236 million in federal funds to nonprofit groups he created since 2000, according to a new report by an ethics watchdog group.

Another $227 million in federal loans, grants and contracts went to a group of private firms linked to Rogers and the nonprofit companies, the report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) found.

"During the past few months, there have been many glowing stories about Rep. Rogers, and how he has supposedly sworn off his porkish ways," CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan said in a statement.

"CREW's research shows, however, this is not an accurate portrayal of the true Hal Rogers," Sloan said. "In reality, Rep. Rogers has built a fiefdom, where millions in federal funding can continue to be funneled to home state projects each year."

These findings present nothing new about Rogers (I've written about him before). Before he ever took over Chair of House Appropriations, he was openly known for lining the pockets of his donors. To be shocked by this is ignorance. The real question is when will WaPo do a sketch about how fiscally responsible Rogers is?

Lest We Forget Mitch Daniels Never Once Cared About Deficits or Paying Bills

WaPo has a completely laughable profile of Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana and his perceived attention to fiscal responsibility.

Daniels presided as George W. Bush's budget director for the first half of Bush's first term.  This begs the attention of anyone who was alive at that time as to how someone can take the largest surplus ever and turn it into chronic deficits and still be treated by the media as a fiscal hawk.

To be certain, let's look at Daniels' fiscal reality.  The Bush tax cuts, which Daniels trumpeted as the greatest budget solvent in American history, robbed the federal government of at least $5 trillion in revenue in Bush's 8 years.

Now Republicans see less government revenue not as a bad thing but as a form of smaller taxes and less money for the government to spend on minorities and poor people.  So a loss of $5 trillion over 8 years is no big deal to them.

But those 8 years were full of endless war where Bush invaded two countries without raising a single penny to pay for them.  Plus it was an era of huge government expansion.  Republicans legislated the largest expansion of Medicare ever, again without a single penny to pay for it-- adding nearly a trillion more dollars to the deficit in 10 years.  By the time Bush left office, he had increased spending by 60%, ran up a $1.4 trillion deficit, doubled the national debt and grew government larger than any president since FDR.

All of this came at the blessing of Mitch Daniels, who never complained one single time about debts when Bush was in power and who has been wrong about every single federal fiscal policy he has ever spoken of.  Needless to say, while chest thumping how great war with Iraq would be, Daniels opined the whole Glorious endeavor would only cost about $60 billion with a few billion more for an occupation.  Wow was he wrong.  So wrong that that alone should be enough to laugh him off the stage.  The opposite is happening, however.  He's viewed stringently as a very serious debt slashing Republican who must be allowed to still give advice on fiscal matters, just so long as we don't bring up his track record on fiscal matters.

*Update:

A reader emails me that Daniels' past could also be chalked up as something else in the GOP's history that never happened.  Indeed it could.

Just End This Stupid Madness

Finally, CNN hammers the idiots who only want to spread conspiracy theories and complain about crap that isn't even true. Why it's taken this long is retarded itself.

*Update:

Speaking of idiots, along with birther Donald Trump, the king of conspiracy theories himself, Ron Paul, has decided to run a third time for president. Has there ever been a crazier field of candidates as what the GOP is putting up now? Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Donald Trump, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Big Love Mitt Romney?? Incredible.  It's like an episode of Howard Stern's Wack Pack.

**Update:

As we delve even deeper into the stupidness that is the GOP field of candidates, we see where Big Love Mitt Romney pens an op-ed attacking President Obama for "one of the biggest peacetime spending binges in American history."  Just a few obvious things wrong with that.  We are fighting wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and doing some sort of covert operations in Pakistan where we kill people via video game inspired drones.  God help us all.

And Then the Rains Came

I had such great plans for the blog yesterday but once again power was knocked out by the storms. I think God has a vendetta against The Fold Blog.

Comments

The Disqus comment system is getting on my nerves. Threaded comments are not working properly at the moment so bare with me.

That's Because It Never Happened, No. 818

Republicans have a long track record of wiping clean history that doesn't fit into their Fantasy World narrative.

For instance, the common Republican insistence that Reagan shrunk government or was fiscally responsible is pure myth. He never shrunk government and he tripled the national debt. To fit it into their make-believe world, Republicans simply rewrite history.

Another great example is how they've managed to convince people Barack Obama created the current budget deficit and has somehow ran up more debt than anyone.  As I've documented numerous times, the GOP is successful at rewriting history because Fox News routinely runs false news stories promoting the Republican Fantasy World version of history.  Like this very common every day story where they claim Obama has tripled the budget deficit when in fact he's done no such thing.

Anyone recall during the 2008 GOP national convention that Republicans were so desperate for America to forget George Bush that they had him address the convention via a video feed-- a convention that was as sparsely attended as a tooth pulling session at a dentist office.  And now that he's finally gone, he's never to be mentioned again.

So, as a member of such an organization it's only natural when you give a speech on the floor of the United States Senate that is filled with an enormous lie you simply have it erased from the record books.  Before you have it erased from history, though, you first have to explain that it was never meant to be taken as a factual statement. That my friends is how you get around facts standing in the way of your world.

Quickies

• The GOP's budget guru who is both a fiscal hawk and a deficit punisher has a budget plan the House passed last week by near party-line vote.  It is without denial the Republican budget alternative to the president's.  Yet here's something you won't hear Republicans admit or see a story about on Fox News.  The Ryan Plan will require the debt ceiling to be raised, violate the GOP's balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, dismantle Medicare and far surpass the GOP's self-imposed spending limit it has placed on itself. 

• The middle class is continually paying more and more income taxes than the rich.

• Polls show the Paul Ryan Plan passed by the GOP-controlled House last week is way more unpopular than the Affordable Care Act ever was.  Way more!

• Eric Cantor is saying he will not oblige the Democrats and let the debt ceiling be raised without first being granted more spending cuts.  The Congressional Budget Office says a debt ceiling is totally ineffective at controlling deficits and debt because the entire process is bound to a totally different legislative factor.  In other words, the whole debt ceiling drama is a political charade.

• I really like Firefox 4.

Times/CBS Poll: Nearly All of GOP Think Obama's Black

According to the recent NYT/CBS poll, 72% of self-identified Republicans believe President Obama is black or wishes he was black. 

Okay, so I'm making that up. But, just as ridiculous is what the poll does show: 45% of Republican voters believe President Obama wasn't born in America. I'm sure those same 45% believe Reagan cut spending, shrunk government, Iraq had something to do with 9/11 and that Obama created the $1.4 trillion deficit we have today.  They are crazy, crazy people.  Wheee!

No Double Standard Here

Uber Patriot and registered Republican Sean Hannity is going to host a Fox News special about......are you ready.....liberal bias in the media!! Hahahahahhahahahaaaaa!!

Why has Comedy Central not purchased Fox News yet?

When Paul Ryan Loved Spending Tax Money

Jon Chait comes across a gem of a quote from government services slasher, fiscal hawk Paul Ryan (R-WI).

"It's too small," Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the most junior member of the Ways and Means Committee but a leading House supply-sider, told me. "It's [the surplus] not big enough to fit all the policy we want."

The quote comes from 2001 and Ryan is talking about how Clinton's budget surplus is not big enough to do all the policy spending Ryan wants.  In those days, Republicans complained the surplus was too small as a way of attacking Clinton.  They wanted more money to spend on services, or what they refer to today as socialism.

Within a few months of Ryan's quote, the Republicans in charge of government rammed through the Bush tax cuts and turned the "too small" surplus into the largest deficit in American history.  Two years after they turned the surplus into a deficit, Paul Ryan and his GOP expanded government services by passing the largest expansion to government-run health care ever-- a bill that was completely unfunded and adds nearly a trillion dollars to the deficit.  Now today, Paul Ryan is revered as a deficit hawk that wants to shrink government.  In fact, he's proposed a plan that would completely eliminate Medicare. You really can't make this stuff up.

It's Not My Big Government, But Yours I Don't Like

Since the beginning of time, circa Jan. 20th, 2009, I have called the Tea Bagger's bluff when it comes to their self-described dislike of Big Government. Time and time again evidence has shown Tea Baggers do not loathe government services as much as they claim.  They only loathe other people getting welfare government services.

• Tea Bagger darling Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky made millions of dollars from Medicare.  He claims Medicare is unconstitutional and that it should be eliminated.  Well, eliminated except for the payments to doctors that is.  I guess it's nice to be a millionaire thanks to a single-payer health care program you think is illegal.

• Who can ever forget Republican Tea Bagger Sharron Angle in Nevada and the fact her entire life she enjoyed the benefit of government-run health care but endlessly campaigned against extending access to health care to anyone else.

• Congressman Stephen Fincher (R-TN) hates subsidies to people for health insurance. Tea Bagger Fincher makes $200,000/year in farm subsidies to do absolutely no work whatsoever. You see, government payments to him are fine.  It's the payments to other people he thinks is socialism.

• Tea Bagging blogger Mike Vanderboegh of Alabama, hates Big Government so much that he has called for people to violently overthrow the American government.  He hates this evil socialism stuff so much that he collects disability checks from the federal government.  Total tool.

• Republican Tea Bagger organizer and self-proclaimed leader of many Tea Bagger groups around the country, Diana Reimer of Pennsylvania, is so motivated by ending the modern welfare state that she uses Medicare for all her medical needs.

I could go on and on with examples of Tea Baggers loving Big Government because the list is infinite and not surprising.  Instead I'll just link to another poll showing Tea Baggers are so against government socialism that 70% of them do no want any cuts to Medicare or Social Security.  There is no way any other group other than Republicans could love Big Government and social services more and still get to be called small government conservatives.

Blog Update

We had some storms plow through the region Tuesday night taking out a lot of power lines with it. I'll try to get things back up today.

Rep. Lamar Smith is Right, Founders Really Didn't Want Everyone to be Equal

A brazenly bold statement from a representative of a state that as recently as last year threatened to secede from the Union because of what it perceived as America's drifting away from the intentions of our Founding Fathers.

Texas Congressman Lamar Smith: "No one can seriously believe that the constitution's authors intended to create a right to same-sex marriage."

Brilliant!  He's right they didn't.  The wealthy, all white, land-owning male authors only intended for wealthy, white, land-owning men just like themselves to be treated equal. The author's exact intentions were for black people to be slaves, women to be second-class citizens, and for poor people not to play any part in society at all.  Should we go back to that too?

None of that, though, has stopped us as a modern industrialized nation from going directly against the intentions of our Founders has it?  Well, yeah it has actually.  The result has been over two-hundred years of struggle for the American Dream to be applied to people the Founders never intended.  All because conservatives-- cut from the same mold of modern Republicans-- want everyone to adhere to a mythical version of the Constitution that was handwritten by Men of God who created a perfect order of harmony blessed from upon high.  Nothing could be further from the truth, however.  Frankly, Rep. Smith's statement is possibly the truest he's ever spoken.  It's also one of the most ignorant arguments ever used to determine the status of equality.

A Spending Problem Republicans are Addicted To

Speaker Boehner's spending problem comments are only half right. Last week he stated the U.S. doesn't have a revenue problem but a spending problem. That's partially true. It's both to be precise. While federal revenues are decreasing we keep spending more and more.  It's kind of insane to keep doing that.  There has to come a time when you want to balance the two problems and bring both under control.

What the Speaker and his Republican Party don't want you to know is that they love spending just as much as they love slashing revenue.

Source: Historical Tables

The two biggest spenders are the fiscal conservatives, Reagan and George W. Bush.

That's not to say Democrats are great fiscal crusaders.  It's just to point out the people who claim to be fiscally conservative, deficit slashing hawks are actually not at all what they proclaim.  Dems may love to increase spending just as well, but at least they aren't campaigning all over the country on lies.  Nor are they now wanting everyone to believe that after decades of fiscal insanity caused primarily by their policies they are now concerned with the budget, the national debt and with the trillion dollar deficit they created. It's actually the GOP trying to pull that off.

Even as a percent of GDP, there is absolutely no track record of Republicans ever being concerned with a spending problem in relation to not enough revenue.

This is clearly an addiction Rush Limbaugh would be proud of.

Tax Day Facts

• Federal income taxes are only 1/5 of the taxes we pay
• Federal income taxes are also less than half of the taxes collected by the feds
• In other words we pay more than just a federal income tax (payroll taxes, sales tax, property tax...)
• The richest Americans actually have a lower effective tax rate (17%) than the middle class and even the poor (22.5%)
• Since 1992, tax rates for the rich have decreased at ten times the rate as middles class or poor, from 27% to 17% versus 9.9% to 9.3%
• Billionaire Donald Trump routinely pays no federal income taxes
• John Paulson made $9 billion in hedge fund fees and will pay no federal income tax on it
• When Reagan was elected president, the top marginal tax rate (the tax rate paid on the last dollar of income earned) was 70 percent. He cut it to 50 percent and then 28 percent starting in 1987. It was raised by George H.W. Bush and Clinton, and then cut by George W. Bush. The top rate is now 35 percent.
• Corporate taxes have dropped 23% since 2000
• Average wage (what people make on average) dropped 6.5% from 2000-2009
• Individual income tax revenue has dropped 30% since 2000
• Despite the 30% drop in revenue, federal spending has increased by almost 60%

Sources: here, here and here

To see your very own personal tax receipt and what you get when you pay your federal income taxes go here.

A final parting note on how unfair our tax system is:

• During seven of the eight George W. Bush years, the IRS report on the top 400 taxpayers was labeled a state secret, a policy that the Obama administration overturned almost instantly after his inauguration.

More Of It

This is the president I voted for:

"When Paul Ryan says his priority is to make sure, he's just being America's accountant ... This is the same guy that voted for two wars that were unpaid for, voted for the Bush tax cuts that were unpaid for, voted for the prescription drug bill that cost as much as my health care bill -- but wasn't paid for," Mr. Obama told his supporters. "So it's not on the level."

The president is absolutely correct to call out Republican hypocrisy. The only problem I have with this is he shouldn't just be doing it behind closed doors in what he thinks are private talks with donors. He should be saying this every day to the press corp and at every public venue he can.  It's the truth.  It should be repeated as often as possible.  Paul Ryan and his Republican Party never once voted for one single program that was funded, paid for or offset.  And now they want everyone to believe they are concerned about the deficit and government spending.  They are frauds in every sense of the word.  How they aren't laughed off the national stage is a lesson in just how unserious the MSM has become and the depths to which the GOP wants everyone to sink.

House Passes Spending Bill With Bipartisan Vote

The hard fought spending bill brokered by President Obama with House Republicans passed the lower chamber today, 260-167. It now heads to the senate where it's expected to sail easily to passage.

108 Dems voted against the measure joining 59 Republicans in opposition. Republican Speaker Boehner needed 39 Democratic votes to pass the bill.  Many House Republicans defected citing the cuts do not go far enough and pledged more would be on the way.

*Update:

No shutdown at least through September.  Senate passes spending bill sending it to the president for signature.  The senate vote 81-19 in favor.

Barry Bonds Found Guilty

Barry Bonds has been found guilty of obstruction of justice while the judge ruled a mistrial on three other felony charges. The conviction, however, lends no proof that he ever took steroids. It simply means he misled prosecutors while being questioned about steroid use.  So now when I call him a liar, it's been proven in a court of law that I'm right.  But when I call him a lying, cheating, racist it's pure speculation.

CBO Has Different Take on Budget Cuts

I'm sitting here reading an amazing article in WaPo telling me that the budget deal House Republicans struck with President Obama really only trims $352 million from the deficit.  Any immediate offset in domestic spending is offset by an increase in war spending, states CBO.

Both President Obama and House Republicans have claimed the deal will save $38 billion.  What it might do, though, is actually increase federal spending by $3 billion after figuring in our tax money for endless war.  Is it possible the whole budget drama was smoke and mirrors?  Please tell me it ain't so!

*Update:

What will be comical, will be to see Republicans use this CBO report as evidence to reject the budget deal.  Even though for the last two years they've been saying CBO cannot and should not be believed especially when its conclusions don't match their ideology.  CBO is all of a sudden going to return as a nonpartisan budget office with expert legislative cost analysis.  Just wait and see...

Conceding Before You Start

This is from a few days back but I really like this post from Jon Chait entitled "I Want to Play Poker Against President Obama."

It seems to those of us who see no point in even paying attention to Republican ideas as a worthless venture by the president to routinely compromise with them.  It's even more absurd, even for a moderate Democrat like myself, to see the president routinely concede issue after issue to people who have no intention of ever compromising in the first place.

Democrats negotiated away a much smaller stimulus package than what was needed to jump start the economy filled with the largest tax cuts in history.  Democrats lost the public option due to what was at the time an anemic Republican minority in Congress.  Democrats lost the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.  So it's common fodder for Dems to view the president as not standing firm enough on our issues.  I think it's a very fair assessment by Dems and one the president is eventually going to have to reconcile.  Sometimes I have to wonder if the president thinks his mere presence alone is enough to please people.  It really doesn't do much for me if that's the case.

Blog Update

Wow, I've been extremely busy this week with everything other than this blog. To be honest, I have no clue what I've been busy doing either. This week has been flying by so I will try and get some posts up today. I do want to point out the St. Louis Cardinals finally found their bats yesterday scoring 15 runs on 17 hits. That's probably my bright spot for the week.

Behold the Cuts

Here is a detailed list of cuts:

41211Finalprogramcuts

Of the $38 billion in overall reductions in the budget that funds the government for the rest of the fiscal year, about $20 billion would come from domestic discretionary programs, while $17.8 billion would be cut from mandatory programs. More than half will come to education, health care and labor. This is by far the largest one-year cuts ever.

Fox News Promotes Secret Obama Brain Surgery, Seriously

Just when I thought I had seen it all, Fox News takes conspiracy to a whole new level of stupid.

It really is a news story from Fox News contemplating the theory Barack Obama might have had secret brain surgery, amongst his other multiple lies of being a Muslim and being born in Africa.

There is no winning when stuff like this happens.  Fox News has saw fit to cast as much doubt as possible about this president.  Nothing is off limits to them.  Whatever they can do to limit his chances at a second term.  Be it a secret Muslim plot to overthrow the government to having his brain removed, Republicans will stop at nothing to get back in power.  Next thing you know Sarah Palin is going to be demanding to see his medical records and quite possibly suggesting that his head isn't real.

*Update:

I wonder if Rep. Burton can get his melon back out of his garden and do some scalpel testing on it.

Palin: I'm Not a Birther, I Just Think Something is Fishy About the Birth Certificate

First things first. This whole rotten episode about the president having a fake birth certificate is about as low as it gets.  Republicans should be ashamed.  The president has made his birth certificate public.  Those who refuse this are refusing reality.  A non-partisan group from factcheck.org inspected the document in August of 2008 and concluded:

FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as "supporting documents" to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.

Republicans just refuse to believe it.  They really believe the whole thing is a hoax. Reading that Sarah Palin wants to keep publicizing it while trying her hardest to publicly back away from it flirts with a level of wingnut conspiracy we've sadly seen before.

In the 90s, Republicans claimed, amongst many other things, Bill Clinton had his opposition murdered. Quite literally, Republican Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana fired a bullet into a melon to test whether or not Hillary Clinton had murdered Vince Foster. Foster's death, by the way, had been investigated by three separate commissions, one of which was the Republican's Ken Starr Commission, and unanimously found to have been a suicide.  Despite three separate investigations, Republicans continued their conspiracy theory politics never accepting the truth.

Today is no different.  They are not interested in truth.  They will never believe the election wasn't stolen from them by a Manchurian candidate.  They are only interested in sensation-filled conspiracy.  The fact that they lost an election is mind boggling to them.  The thought that they are not popular and the American people did not select them to lead this country is foreign to their minds.  The only way possible they could lose an election is because of rampant Democratic voter fraud via ACORN with the help of Obama's pals in the Black Panthers.  Those two things alone led to Obama's victory.

If they can't convince people of that, then surely their backup plan that Obama isn't even a citizen of this country and has fooled millions with a forged birth certificate, should be enough to convince people of the fraud he's committed and the freedom loving liberty that is at stake.  This is how they think.  This is how they want everyone to think.  But before you do, just remember these are the same people that really believe George Bush didn't take us into Iraq under false pretenses.  There's not an ounce of shame or integrity in the whole group.

The Liberal Media

CNN ran a segment earlier today prompting the notion that President Obama was born in America as a theory alongside the discussion that he wasn't. As if believing Obama is not a citizen is equally acceptable in mainstream Americana. And this is the liberal tree hugging terrorist loving network?

What It Boils Down To: Men Cutting Health Care Funding for Women

Excellent read in Huffington Post from Ryan Grim about what's holding up budget negotiations.

Grim pointedly begins:

WASHINGTON -- The United States government is on the verge of shutting down over a dispute about subsidized pap smears, according to sources familiar with the budget negotiations.

This has nothing to do with cutting funds. It's all about social issues.

Sen. Durbin:

"It's not about reducing the deficit. It's about hitting programs. He's [Boehner] gotta cut programs. And we think still we can reach agreement on the money. But he is under enormous pressure and he says it's not from the Tea Party, it's from the old guard, the Republican guard, that wants to once and for all show that they can force through some of these social issues, like abortion," Durbin told reporters Thursday evening in the Capitol. "The rider list gets longer and longer and non-negotiable."

Grim candidly remarks that the budget negotiations are presided over by men.  Men wanting to cut funding for centers that provide health care to women.  That's what this is about.

But I Thought Voter Fraud Gave the Democrat the Election??

Tuesday night the Democratic challenger, JoAnne Kloppenburg, to incumbent Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser was leading by 204 votes. Fearing their guy lost, Republicans immediately went to the media and claimed Democratic voter fraud was the reason.  They had absolutely no proof of any actual cases of fraud, they just knew their guy lost and when they lose it's only because Democrats cheat.

Yesterday Republican Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, a former staffer to incumbent Judge Prosser, found on her computer over 14,000 uncounted votes from a Republican-leaning city. The votes put Prosser ahead of his challenger by over 7,000 votes.

Rather dubious circumstances to be certain.  But mistakes happen and all one can do is take the Republican county clerk at her word that she did indeed forget to save a spreadsheet full of Republican votes.  But could you imagine the hysterical reaction from Republicans if a Democratic county clerk had found on her computer thousands of uncounted Democratic votes???  Holy cow, it would be total hell to pay.

Fortunately we don't have to go back very far-- just five months-- to find out what would happen if a similar incident happened and Democratic votes suddenly appeared.

It's not that I want Democrats to now start yelling and screaming fraud just so we can counter act the GOP.  No not at all.  I just want to point out the differences in mentality and the paranoid sickness that now controls the GOP.  Heck, Fox News still presents ACORN and Black Panthers as stealing the election for Obama.

It's all the same, no matter the story.  Republicans are told they are Real Americans, from Real America.  When they dislike the president, it's because they are Patriots and the president is doing the country wrong.  When others dislike the president, especially a Republican president, it's because they hate America.  They are told, by dishonest media that knowingly misconstrues data, to show their policies are popular and that they are always acting in the best interest of America.

When you are told this stuff day in and day out, you eventually believe it.  Not only do you believe that because you are Republican you are a true Patriot that wants to save America, but you begin to treat people who disagree with you not as different opinions but as people who are enemies that want to destroy your country.  After all, if you truly believe yourself as Real America and that your political agenda is popularly supported by an overwhelming majority of the public, then naturally those who disagree with your politics are wrong and must be stopped at all costs.  It is a sickness.  There's no other way to describe it.

In the Republican Fantasy World, Republicans are America

Citing a WSJ/NBC News poll, Fox News placed a graphic on the screen purporting to show a vast majority of Americans support the Republican Party and do not want it to compromise on budget talks.



Of course, as Think Progress makes clear, the poll doesn't show any such thing. Fox is simply lying to promote the GOP agenda.  That's what it does.  That's what it has always done.  Fox News is the gatekeeper to the Republican Fantasy World. They ensure all information spread to the masses supports the Republican cause. When reality doesn't square with their agenda, they create a false, make-believe world that does.  And then their millions of viewers, armed with their Fox truth, march around demanding everyone else live in their fantasy world as well.

heeeeyy! I just heard on Fox News that Republicans rock!

Ryan's Plan Does Exactly What It Says It Does

As we are knee-deep in the middle of our current operating budget debate, we are already getting a preview of what next year is going to look like.

The proposed budget for next year from Republicans is a plan largely authored by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Ryan's Plan has a lot of problems, some with reality, and some with very real items like ending Medicare and Medicaid.

The plan calls for Medicare to be replaced with a system of vouchers. This means the government will give senior citizens vouchers in which they can purchase health insurance from private companies. The vouchers will be held to the rate of inflation, which is a very cruel trick on the elderly.

So why the rate of inflation and not the actual rate of the growth in health care costs?

Well, if you make the vouchers keep pace with the actual growth rate of health care costs, all the savings Ryan claims in his plan is wiped out.  Here's what he's doing. He dismantles Medicare.  Replaces it with vouchers that won't, by any stretch of the imagination, keep up with the rising costs of health care since health care costs triple the rate of inflation.  Logically, when the vouchers are only covering a portion of the costs, seniors will have to make up for it out of pocket.  CBO has already backed this up and very clearly stated the plan will raise costs for seniors.

Simply said, Ryan's Plan abolishes Medicare, which is right now one of the most popular government social programs ever created.  Why don't he just come right out and say he wants to do away with Medicare and make old people pay more for health care?  Cause you don't get elected doing that.

A Democrat is leading in votes counted to unseat a Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice. You know what that means don't ya??? Time for the GOP to yell Voter Fraud!!!

Every time they lose it's not because they are unpopular and people don't like them.  It's because Democrats cheated.

Giant Ball of Oil

After millions of laughs, the Heritage Foundation has completely wiped clean its model predicting an astronomically low unemployment rate used in the GOP budget plan. As Krugman notes, their wild-eyed Fantasy World math is down the memory hole never to be mentioned again. In its place they've posted new models trending unemployment at 4.27%.

Though the new magic number is easier to believe, Heritage is playing it off as it being no big deal that they have doubled their projected unemployment rate.

Via Weigel: "'We adjusted the full employment unemployment variable," said Beach. "Nothing else changes as a result of that, but the employment number changes.'"

Nothing else changes? You just doubled your unemployment rate and you suggest doing so doesn't change anything when it comes to the federal budget?  No change in tax revenue?  No change in inflation?  Incredible.  It's as if pushing this giant ball of oil out the window is really going to solve everything.

GOP: Federal Money to NPR is Unconstitutional but money to teach kids about talking snakes isn't

Here's something you may not realize. For all the hoopla concerning tax money going to PBS, NPR and other public broadcasting stations, the Christan fundamentalist Republican Liberty University received more federal funding than did the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

At the private Christian jihadist school, where they banned Democratic Party-based clubs from campus, students get to learn about such cutting edge sciences like talking snakes and how the earth is only 6,000 years old.

You know Darren, if you would have told me twenty-five years ago that some day I'd be standing here about to solve the world's energy problems, I would've said you're crazy... Now let's push this giant ball of oil out the window.

One of the many fantasy world items contained in the Paul Ryan alternative GOP budget plan is his assumption, which is based entirely on a right wing think tank's word, that unemployment is going to drop to 2.9%.

That would be great wouldn't it?  Just one thing is a little off with that scenario.  There's no chance of that ever happening.

Creating false assumptions based entirely on a make-believe world is exactly what the GOP does.  In their world, 51% is a mandate.  When their president has a 25% approval rating it means he's a strong leader that doesn't pay attention to the polls.  When they triple the national debt and get another two terms at the presidency and double the debt again, they call themselves fiscal conservatives. When they inherit the largest surplus in history and turn it into a $1.4 trillion deficit, they label themselves as deficit hawks.  It was just two years ago these people introduced a numberless budget and claimed it would balance the budget and shrink the deficit.  There's really no end to their insanity.

Shut Down Days Away, CBO Says GOP Budget Would Increase Debt and Raise Medicare Costs

With a Friday deadline to avoid a government shutdown three days away, talks between Congressional Republicans and President Obama appeared to breakdown this afternoon. The talks seemed to reach an impasse over a deal to cut $33 billion or $40 billion from the 2012 operating budget. Earlier last week the former figure seemed likely.

All this comes on the heels of the CBO report detailing the alternative Republican budget [for FY12] would increase public debt to 70% of GDP by 2022.  That's higher than it would be if current projections are left alone.  In other words, the Republican alternative actually raises the federal debt.  This should come as no surprise since Republicans have no track record of ever doing anything except increasing the federal debt.

CBO also reported Medicare costs would be almost three times more expensive if the Republican plan is adopted than they would if just left alone.  The plan calls for Medicare to be replaced by a voucher system that would allow senior citizens to purchase health care from private insurers.  CBO clearly stated on page 4  the results would force senior citizens to pay more for health care.

"[T]he gradually increasing number of Medicare beneficiaries participating in the new premium support program would bear a much larger share of their health care costs than they would under the current program."

*Editor's Note of Clarity

The proposed GOP alternative budget is for fiscal year 2012 and has nothing to do with the current budget negotiations between the White House and congressional Republicans.

Wisc. Gov. Adds Fuel to Class Warfare With Appointment

If this happened in Illinois, it would be used by Republicans as an example of the corrupted Chicago Machine thuggery.

Just in his mid-20s, Brian Deschane has no college degree, very little management experience and two drunken-driving convictions.

Yet he has landed an $81,500-per-year job in Gov. Scott Walker's administration overseeing environmental and regulatory matters and dozens of employees at the Department of Commerce. Even though Walker says the state is broke and public employees are overpaid, Deschane already has earned a promotion and a 26% pay raise in just two months with the state.

Wisconsin is so broke Walker can only afford to give his political cronies 26% pay raises once a year.  Makes me wish I would have dropped out of college too and spent my time driving drunk.

Let Josh Have This Fight

Just sit back and watch because just like in 2005 when Josh Marshall nearly single handily destroyed the Republican plan to phase out Social Security, Marshall must be allowed to put the gloves back on again to prevent the same from happening to Medicare.  Follow his lead.

Bob Dylan at the White House

Last September I linked to a Rolling Stone interview of President Obama. In it he described the performance Dylan gave at the White House.

He didn't want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn't show up to that. He came in and played "The Times They Are A-Changin'." A beautiful rendition. The guy is so steeped in this stuff that he can just come up with some new arrangement, and the song sounds completely different. Finishes the song, steps off the stage — I'm sitting right in the front row — comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves. And that was it — then he left.

As not to be tainted by the rubbing of elbows with those who muck it up for the little guy, Bob Dylan did what he had to do.  He left.  That's who he is.  Somehow mixing it up with the people he's been writing songs about still doesn't fly for Dylan. Wouldn't you think, some 50 years after he literally changed America forever, Dylan could allow just a little bit of intermingling?  No.

The reason I bring this back up is because I have finally found video of Dylan's performance.  I had watched on PBS the concert at the White House but it did not show Dylan.  It showed everybody else but for some reason it ended without him.  I figured he didn't even want it recorded.  Nonetheless, what I find most amazing about Dylan at the White House is that this is his first performance ever at the executive mansion.  I would have thought Clinton would have brought him in but I guess not.



I must also give a full disclosure on this.  I am not really that much of a Dylan fan. What he did is nothing short of amazing.  But his music never swayed me one way or the other.  What he does draw attention to for me is the fact my generation does not have a Bob Dylan.  I went to high school in the 90s, a time when someone who was a product of Dylan occupied the White House.  There was no need then for a counterculture antiwar movement.

Even during the Bush years, when we had a hugely unpopular president and America drastically went from peace and prosperity to war without end and fiscal insanity, no Dylan emerged.  Even worse, the closest we have today to an American singer motivated by the political happenings of the day is Lady Gaga.  So, yeah, nostalgia for Dylan at the White House is intrinsically linked to the void of today's patheticalness.

It Just Tastes Like Baseball

Cardinals pick up their first win of the season today.  Spring has arrived.

Quickies

• Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee's call for all Americans to be held at gunpoint and told America should be governed by Biblical law was edited out of the version posted on the Republican United in Purpose website. Hummmm...it's just like it he never said it...

• Biden's announcement yesterday that a deal is in the works to cut $33 billion from the federal budget is going to have a hard sell to the GOP base because they want $60 billion, which is still well short of President Obama's budget plan that cuts $100 billion a year.

• When asked where a person can find family values in Newt Gingrich's thriced married life in which he's had multiple affairs, Newt answered people need to look at the "totality of my life" and realize he spoke to God about it.

• Rand Paul jokes Fox News can't decide what they love most: bombing the Middle East or bashing the president.

• Gallup has Hillary Clinton at a 66% approval rating.  A lot of this has to do with the fact Republicans and Fox News have shifted all their focus and venom onto the president and left Hillary alone for almost 3 years.

Huckabee: Americans Should be Told at Gunpoint That America Should be Governed by Biblical Law

Republican Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee told a crowd of Christian fundamentalists in Iowa that he believes Americans should be held at gunpoint to listen to the views of Republican right wing extremist David Barton of Texas.

I just wish that every single young person in America would be able to be under his tutelage and understand something about who we really are as a nation. I almost wish that there would be something like a simultaneous telecast and all Americans would be forced, forced — at gun point no less — to listen to every David Barton message. And I think our country would be better for it. I wish it’d happen.

David Barton is the religious right pretend historian who prides himself in trying to prove that the founding fathers envisioned a Christian theocracy, and who gave speeches to neo-Nazi groups in the 1990s. Barton believes America should be governed by Biblical law. And Mike Huckabee wants every American forced at gunpoint to heed his words. This is about as bad as it gets people.