The Republi-CON Media CONplex, Cont.

UPDATE V:  "Stephen Colbert is not only funnier than any cable news show—although Fox News can be unintentionally hilarious—he’s also better at informing his audience about the issues than traditional news outlets. That’s not just my opinion; it’s the conclusion of a study released Monday by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center."

Read The Daily Beast, Colbert Is Ivy League TV Compared to Fox News, which quotes a few jokes from Colbert, including this one to illustrate religious/Christian hypocrisy:

"If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don’t want to do it."

UPDATE IV:  This time it is Bush's chief speechwriter from 2001 until 2006, who has realized the harm done when the lunatics are running the asylum, or in this case, the  Republi-CON political party:

 "Among the saddest aspects of a political culture premised on the exaggeration and organization of grievances is the way policy debates get pulled into a vortex of paranoia. . .

This is the way the modern ideological market often works. It is driven by entrepreneurs of outrage, marketers of resentment, innovators in the on-time delivery of anger. Their market share does not need to be large to be influential. Several thousand calls to Congress can seem like a populist wave."

Read the Washington Post, The entrepreneurs of outrage.

UPDATE III:  Ironically, even a long-time Republi-CON nut now realizes that 'the party needs to control its nuts.'

"'Republicans don’t want careers in government and give little thought to how to get there,' she writes. 'Often they run for president only because they hope it will lead to more speaking gigs and TV appearances. That may explain why Republicans seem to attract the sort of candidate who enjoys startling people at cocktail parties with outlandish remarks. There’s a great living to be made by appealing to rubes and hotheads. Even if you lose, you’ll get a talk show.'

Two pages later: 'About half of the Republican presidential candidates in the last two election cycles would have inspired every stupid woman in America to drive to the polls, sobbing, in order to vote against them.'"

Read the Washington Post, Ann Coulter back on airwaves, reenergized by shutdown and exemplifying unhappiness of GOP.

UPDATE II:  "Sarah is selling Sarah. The former vice presidential candidate and half-term governor of Alaska is a commodity of one and a marketing machine. She has created a new politics of profit.

Palin's reanimation on the tea party stage probably means no more than the other intentions she has floated but never executed. She spent almost a year of the last presidential election cycle teasing the far right that she was going to run for president. She never did, but lots of network TV interviews and speculative articles drove up her name recognition and brand identification.

And she's not running again.

Palin is re-running the same show in her home state of Alaska by hinting that she is going to be a candidate for the U.S. Senate. She will not run though. There is too much risk of failure. She's not the near-unknown who was elected governor of Alaska and then quit 2½ years into the job. She has a profile, and she intends to use it to make money, which is one commitment she knows how to keep. Running and losing is always bad for business.

Palin is a product. Not a candidate."

Read CNN, Sarah Palin follows the Donald Trump method. 

UPDATE:  "When Senator Ted Cruz of La Mancha jumped on his trusty steed and charged the windmills, he explained: 'Everyone in America knows Obamacare is destroying the economy.' He added that accepting the Affordable Care Act would be like appeasing the Nazis.

Cruz is a smart man, and maybe this is just disingenuous demagoguery. But there’s a scarier possibility: After spending too much time in the Republican echo chamber, he may believe what he says.

In the 1990s, as conservative talk radio spread across America, liberals felt victimized. But, in retrospect, the rise of talk radio, Fox News Channel and right-wing Web sites may have done greatest harm to conservatives themselves.

The right-wing echo chamber breeds extremism, intimidates Republican moderates and misleads people into thinking that their worldview is broadly shared.

That’s the information bubble that tugs the entire Republican Party to the right . .

Research suggests that the echo chamber effect is disproportionately a problem on the right, leading inhabitants to perceive a warped reality. Many Republicans were shocked that Mitt Romney was defeated last fall because they had been assured that he would win. And a Pew survey last year found that the proportion of conservative Republicans who believe Obama is a Muslim has doubled since 2008 to 34 percent.

Then there was the time Glenn Beck aired the theory that Obama is the anti-Christ (he later said he had been joking).

The right-wing bubble makes it harder to elect Republican presidents by enforcing an ideological purity in primaries that weakens candidates in general elections. Too much time in the bubble also leaves some Republican politicians saying things that just sound nutty to independents."

Read The New York Times, Suffocating Echo Chamber.

"Regular readers know I have a love/hate relationship with the Tea Party. What I love is all the good people participating in the civic process for the first time; the determination to challenge corruption in the GOP establishment; the effort to bring civil-liberties concerns and skepticism of foreign wars back under the Republican tent; the commitment to a republic where people are free to pursue happiness as they see fit; the healthy skepticism of central planning that subverts markets with cronyism and corporatism; and alarm at our national debt.

What I hate about the Tea Party is the epistemic closure that plagues it; the unthinking embrace of obviously unqualified politicians like Herman Cain; the notion that "real American" culture is something other than pluralistic; the unseriousness about governing; its frustrating inability to distinguish between mutually beneficial compromise on one hand and betrayal of principle on the other; the veneration of hucksters like Glenn Beck and blowhards like Rush Limbaugh; the double-think that characterizes its attitude toward the safety-net; and the subset of its rank and file that expresses personal disdain for all non-conservatives even while casting themselves as disrespected victims.

I've always been far more sympathetic to the Tea Party's rank and file than to its elites. In my experience, an American who shows up to a community protest rally tends to be earnest and well-intentioned, whereas the ideological entertainers they tune into on the way home tend to be cynical, opportunistic hucksters who constantly misinform while selling cheap anger and gold at obscene markups. 

I've argued in many posts that right-wing media regularly and egregiously misinforms its Tea Party audiences, whose trust in talk radio and Fox News is misplaced, and called on conservatives who know better to affirm as much. As I see it, Tea Partiers would be furious if they understood the degree to which they're misled, and would manage a better movement if better served by conservative media. . .

[T]he vast majority of Americans assume the media they consume isn't regularly filled with obvious untruths. While there is media bias across the ideological spectrum, talk radio and Fox News engage in a special kind of misinformation.

The Tea Party rank and file deserves better."

Read The Atlantic, A Soldier Criticizes His Army Comrades' Tea Party Ideology. 

And see The Republi-CON Media CONplex. 

Countdown to Fools Day, Bwahahahaha!!!!

UPDATE V:   After enumerating the 64 pages of the delusions and lies, Arduini asks [beginning on page 61, presented in a different order] Pastor Truthiness aka Huckster and Con Man and Sheriff Joe’s Scooby Doo gang ould be so "consistently, comprehensively and unapologetically wrong"?

Do they beleve what they say?  If so, it "would not reflect well on their intelligence, but then again neither of them has ever demonstrated any but the most ordinary of intellectual gifts. Zullo is demonstrably one of the worst investigators in the history of the profession. And without the technological help of the Internet, Gallups would still be just an obscure southern pastor of only the 2 nd largest SBC congregation in the little town of Milton "

Is it "an expression of fundamentally racist impulse[?] This is not to say that all Birthers are racists, or more specifically that either Gallups or Zullo are racist. Certainly, there has been next to nothing in their statements, writing or actions that betray an obviously racist motivation. But they embrace enthusiastically the contention that Obama is somehow 'other.'"

Or have:

"Gallups and Zullo together have simply been engaged in a scam[?] It is a suggestion certainly worthy of consideration. “Send money” had been one of the most consistent components of their message since the earliest moments of their collaboration, and recently Mike Shoesmith has been compelled to explicitly deny that accusation. But even before the first Cold Case Posse press conference, Zullo was cashing in via an eBook published for sale on Amazon. His excuse for immediately getting his hands caught in that particular cookie jar was that the media had refused to cover the press conference, and so an alternative way to get the story out was required. This is difficult to reconcile with the fact that the eBook was actually already on sale before the first press conference had even taken place.

Cormac Herley, a computer security expert at Microsoft Research, wrote a paper in 2012 explaining why the Nigerian Email Scams are so pathetically obvious to the average person.  Using an approach called “signal theory” he mathematically analyzed the con but with an important new insight. He decided to look at the con from the perspective of the scammers rather than that of the victims. He realized that it cost them next to nothing to spam the world. But to make real money, they needed to be able to efficiently tell the difference between the 'true positives' ( those who would get sucked in deeply enough to send a significant amount of money ) and the 'false positives' ( targets who might seem like suckers at first, but who later got suspicious and bailed out early before they paid off). 'False positives' were expensive. They wasted time and resources that could have been more profitably spent on the 'true positives.'

In short, the Nigerian Email Scams are deliberately stupid specifically to filter out even those with only the tiniest bit of common sense, and to insure that those responding were already identified as complete idiots.

It is difficult to listen to a Gallups broadcast without suspecting that this is also his intent. Seriously… 'universe shattering?' 'Deeper and deeper, darker and darker?' 'Tons of  evidence is piling up,' but 'I’m not at liberty to tell you' what it is?  Scores of 'VIPs are on board,' powerful people with 'unlimited financial resources' and 'standing' to 'move this forward to congressional investigations' or 'criminal prosecutions,' but I can’t tell you who any of them are?

What rational person could listen to months of such elaborate and melodramatic gibberish and not run for the door? The argument that this has been nothing more than an elaborate grift designed to separate the most credulous and vulnerable of Birthers from their retirement checks is not without merit."

Read also, Slate, The GOP’s Grifter Problem, Why the Republican Party attracts provocateurs, faux martyrs, and grifters in droves, which notes " the energy of the conservative movement—and thus the Republican Party—is geared toward these people. If you want money and attention, you could do worse than become a conservative provocateur. Right-wing resentment—stoked by impossible promises and harnessed through donations—built a fortune for Glenn Beck, a political career for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and a burgeoning media empire for the late Andrew Breitbart. . . it's hard not to see the whole operation as a perpetual swindle."

UPDATE IV: Since shortly after Birther's Fool Day, "Frank Arduini has posted a compiled, footnoted version of his series of articles on Carl Gallups at SCRIBD", which begins:

"At the most granular level [Gallups] embraces as true every absurd Birther ‘fact’ no matter how long ago it was utterly debunked. His more comprehensive theories are simultaneously erroneous on their own and mutually contradictory when considered together. His pronouncements on the issue have progressively escalated in urgency and absurdity over the months and years, and yet the outcomes have never once changed. Every deadline he sets is missed. Every prediction he ventures ends up being wrong. Every accusation he makes proves false. Every promise he makes crumbles to ash in the mouths of his rapt Birther flock.

But only long enough for him to rinse and repeat. "

The 64 page article is a complete timeline of the delusions and lies promoted by Sheriff Joe’s Scooby Doo gang and Pastor Truthiness aka Huckster and Con Man.

On page 26, the much claimed 'universe-shattering' evidence is revealed -- a Sherrif who attended the The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) in May 2013 and a closed session "limited to 'sworn law enforcement officials' and 'congressmen' . . . to provide a 'FULL criminal disclosure' of the 'new information' that Zullo claimed to have accumulated over the year since the Posse’s first press conference:

[P]osted to his FaceBook account (with what was for him a typically casual attitude towards grammar, spelling, capitalization and syntax) that:

here’s what I was told, VIA cold case possie , 1) bozo isn’t American nor was he born in Hawaii, 2) they believe he’s Saudi , 3) their not his real parents, 4) Russia is involved, 5) it wasn’t an accident he’s president, 6) bill ayers and the weather underground are involved, 7) Kenya played a roll, Hawaii state officials did the birth certificate, he has several other names , not just the ones the public knows about, 9) he don’t exsist in the usa until the age of 5.....10) WERE ALL F*CKED "

Enjoy a good laugh at our dear Pastor!  But anybody who believes this really is a fool!!

UPDATE III:  After another show "promising universe-shattering disclosures, but providing nothing but 'any day now,'" Pastor Truthiness aka Huckster and Con Man 'threw the birther web sites under the bus', complaining of "the amount whining, complaining and false information and flat-out fabricated information that continues to spill out of the birther movement." [A great example of the pot calling the kettle black.]

Read Obama Conspiracy Theories, Gallups turns on birthers: calls them "whiners".

Soon after, "a firestorm of commentary erupted" and was then erased, but not before it was copied.

Read Obama Conspiracy Theories, Triple-scrubbing the birthers.  

Then watch What Birthers Believe, to understand the warped racist Birther thinking that "Barack Obama was intentionally conceived to become president and destroy America."

And read Obama Conspiracy Theories, CCP Universe-shattering evidence revealed, which notes:

It is common for people who believe one conspiracy theory to believe others, and as far as I am concerned, it is no stretch whatever to connect the random dots weaving Obama birtherism into the well-established traditions of the John Birch Society, theories of the International Communist Conspiracy, black helicopters and UN Agenda 21. If the world woke up to a vision of being controlled by a secret elite, where wars, disasters, and calamity were all controlled by hidden hands, where even the President of the United States was a puppet fiction, wouldn’t that truly shatter the universe?

Conspiracy theorists have a hard time coming to grips with rejection. They feel that anyone with moderate intelligence, courage, and honesty will inevitably agree with them. Perhaps this is why Mike Zullo and Carl Gallups set goal after goal involving VIPs that are getting on board, only to be unable to deliver. Perhaps they expected that meeting with a VIP equaled convincing them—but that just didn’t happen.

I hope Zullo comes out with his universe-shattering information, because it would make him even more of laughing stock, and we could all go home."

And because revealing the so-called "universe-shattering information" would make Pastor Truthiness aka Huckster and Con Man a laughing stock even to 'Gallups' gullibles', it will always be "any day now". 

UPDATE III:  For all the Birther Fools, call Pastor Truthiness aka Huckster and Con Man, and ask him to reconcile the following Bible verses with his numerous lies:

Proverbs 12:22 (KJV): “Lying lips are abomination to the Lord: but they that deal truly are his delight.”

Proverbs 15:14 (KJV): “The heart of him that hath understanding seeketh knowledge: but the mouth of fools feedeth on foolishness.”

And when he attempts to bolster his credibility on legal issues by claiming to that he is "a former Florida law enforcement officer", ask him why his name is not in a  database of past and present Florida law enforcement officers.

UPDATE II:  Today is the last day, or not.  Tomorrow, Birther Fool's Day, we will know who the fools are.

Bwahahahaha!!!!

UPDATE:  A radio talk show host -- a "man who got rich making multiple false claims", "promis[ing] to reveal the things 'They Don’t Want You to Know About', a clever marketing strategy that makes it seem as if The Powers That Be are suppressing information you need" and that "the government constantly [was] trying to suppress the truth, with nefarious figures involved in a vast conspiracy" -- was held in contempt of court, fined $37 million, and sentenced to 10 year in prison.

"He also claims to be a victim of this conspiracy himself, with the government trying to keep him from telling people what’s really going on", which he knows because he gets “information from a secret group . . . Of course, since they’re a secret group, he cannot reveal the identities of the people in it or much else about it.”

No, it wasn't the Pastor Truthiness aka Huckster and Con Man, or anyone else from the "Sheriff Joe’s Scooby Doo gang", at least not yet.

Read Slate, Kevin Trudeau: Quackery Promoter Jailed for Contempt, which notes that "[s]kepticism and critical thinking are tiring. They’re exhausting. The battles against pseudoscience, against the attacks on reality, against the erosion of the ability to make rational decisions…they never end. There is always more nonsense out there, more outrageous claims that fly in the face of reality. And what’s worse is how often it’s the same thing again and again."

This is a continuation of the Birther Bwahahahaha!!!!, the growing laughter at the Birther delusions.




Birther Fool's Day is the first day after the month that the universe 'shattered', as promised by the "Sheriff Joe’s Scooby Doo gang"to 'Gallups' gullibles' on 'fellatio Friday' in mid-December (the 'universe-shattering' twist was being promoted elsewhere in late November).

It is no coincidence that Birther Fool's Day is April 1st.

Try to contain your laughter, if you can.

If a Protest Happens and No One Attends . . .

The flop that was American Operation Spring, maybe 100 people attended, a reliable count is hard to find.

Read Poilticus USA, Operation American Spring Rallies a Few Hundred Lunatics at Most.

Just about 10-30 million fewer people than the 10-30 million people predicted to attend.

I'm embarrassed for WEBY and one of my classmates who sounded quite ignorant promoting the event.

Name That Medical Device

Hint:  this odd tool is still heavily used at all levels of politics.

The Tea Party Suckers

"A Washington Post analysis found that some of the top national tea party groups engaged in this year’s midterm elections have put just a tiny fraction of their money directly into boosting the candidates they’ve endorsed. . .

Out of the $37.5 million spent so far by the PACs of six major tea party organizations, less than $7 million has been devoted to directly helping candidates, according to the analysis, which was based on campaign finance data provided by the Sunlight Foundation. . .

Roughly half of the money — nearly $18 million — has gone to pay for fundraising and direct mail, largely provided by Washington-area firms. Meanwhile, tea party leaders and their family members have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees, while their groups have doled out large sums for airfare, a retirement plan and even interior decorating.

The lavish spending underscores how the protest movement has gone professional, with national groups transforming themselves into multimillion-dollar organizations run by activists collecting six-figure salaries.

Three well-known groups — the Tea Party Patriots, the Tea Party Express and the Madison Project — have spent 5 percent or less of their money directly on election-related activity during this election cycle."

Read the Washington Post, Tea party PACs reap money for midterms, but spend little on candidates.

The so-called Tea Party is really just a subsidiary of the Republi-con party

Another Republi-CON CONspiracy

"A shoe-throwing incident during a speech by Hillary Clinton gives rise to conservative conspiracy theories."

Watch the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert's Bats**t Serious - Hillary Clinton Shoe-spiracy Theory:

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The Republi-CON Reagan Myth, Reagan Was a Fiscal Failure

Just ask the old Paul Rand.

"[W]hen he stumped for his father in 2008 and again when ran for Senate in 2010, Paul often referred to the grand old man of the GOP with a touch of disappointment and criticism. And he routinely made an assertion that might seem like blasphemy to many Republicans: President Jimmy Carter had a better record on fiscal discipline than Reagan."

Read Mother Jones, Rand Paul Says Jimmy Carter Was Better on the Budget Than Ronald Reagan. 

The story include numerous video excerpts.  

The Republi-CON Common Core Circus

UPDATE:  "Of course, the Republican about-face on Common Core is only one of many such moves during the Obama presidency. An array of issues enjoyed GOP support until the president agreed with them, including payroll tax breaks for individuals, clean debt-ceiling increases, and immigration reform policies like the DREAM Act.

This near-senseless reaction is just one part of a growing tribalism that’s consumed the whole of conservative politics. It doesn’t matter the issue: If liberals are for it, then—for a large portion of the right—that means it is time to be against it.

Take light bulbs. In 2007, Congress approved—and President Bush signed—strict efficiency standards for incandescent light bulbs. The practical impact was to make 100-watt bulbs obsolete: an inconvenience, but not a huge imposition. In any case, the rule wouldn’t take effect for a few years, giving homes and businesses a chance to adjust.

Industry groups grumbled, but there wasn’t any outrage. That changed in 2011, after a Tea Party–fueled Republican Party took the House of Representatives in a landslide victory over the Democratic Party. This coincided with the implementation of the efficiency standards, and the result was a caterwaul of right-wing rage."

Read Slate, Conservative Tribalism.

"We are pretty familiar with this story: A perfectly sensible if slightly boring idea is walking down the street. Suddenly, the ideological circus descends, burying the sensible idea in hysterical claims and fevered accusations. . .

About seven years ago, it was widely acknowledged that state education standards were a complete mess. Huge numbers of students were graduating from high school unprepared either for college work or modern employment. A student who was rated “proficient” in one state would be rated 'below basic' in another. About 14 states had pretty good standards, according to studies at the time, but the rest had standards that were verbose, lax or wildly confusing.

The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers set out to draft clearer, consistent and more rigorous standards. Remember, school standards are not curricula. They do not determine what students read or how teachers should teach. They are the goals for what students should know at the end of each grade.

This was a state-led effort, supported by employers and financed by private foundations. This was not a federal effort, though the Obama administration did encourage states to embrace the new standards. . .

But this makes no difference when the circus comes to town."

Read The New York Times, When the Circus Descends.

Obama the Thrifty

UPDATE III:  "The basics are straightforward and unambiguous: The Congressional Budget Office yesterday reported that the federal budget deficit will fall to 2.8 percent of GDP this year, almost one-third below what it was in 2013.

As a percent of GDP, not only will that be the lowest deficit since 2007, the drop from 9.8 percent in 2009 to 2.8 percent in 2014 is the largest five-year reduction in federal red ink since the end of World War 2, that is, in almost 70 years.

Read Forbes, Why No One Is Celebrating The Much-Lower Deficit.

UPDATE II:  Read the Washington Post, Think Obama’s a huge spender? Then you need to see these two charts.  The article includes this chart:

So tell me again, which party is the real big spender?

  

UPDATE:  "[I]f you want to see government responding to economic hard times with the “tax and spend” policies conservatives always denounce, you should look to the Reagan era — not the Obama years. . .

As many economists have pointed out, America is currently suffering from a classic case of debt deflation: all across the economy people are trying to pay down debt by slashing spending, but, in so doing, they are causing a depression that makes their debt problems even worse. This is exactly the situation in which government spending should temporarily rise to offset the slump in private spending and give the private sector time to repair its finances. Yet that’s not happening.

The point, then, is that we’d be in much better shape if we were following Reagan-style Keynesianism. Reagan may have preached small government, but in practice he presided over a lot of spending growth — and right now that’s exactly what America needs."

Read The New York Times, Reagan Was a Keynesian. 

"Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.

As would-be president Mitt Romney tells it: “I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno.”

Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true.

But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.

Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has. . .

Over Obama’s four budget years, federal spending is on track to rise from $3.52 trillion to $3.58 trillion, an annualized increase of just 0.4%."

Read Market Watch, Obama spending binge never happened, which includes these two graphs:

What Great Event Happened on April 8, 1815, 199 Years Ago?

No, not Napoleon's final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo (which was fought on June 18, 1815). 

Read Slate, The Volcano That Changed the Course of History. 

The Republi-CON 'Russia Invaded Ukraine Because Obama is Weak' Myth

UPDATE:  "Compare what the Obama administration has managed to organize in the wake of this latest Russian aggression to the Bush administration’s response to Putin’s actions in Georgia in 2008. That was a blatant invasion. Moscow sent in tanks and heavy artillery; hundreds were killed, nearly 200,000 displaced. Yet the response was essentially nothing. This time, it has been much more serious. Some of this difference is in the nature of the stakes, but it might also have to do with the fact that the Obama administration has taken pains to present Russia’s actions in a broader context and get other countries to see them as such.

You can see a similar pattern with Iran. The Bush administration largely pressured that country bilaterally. The Obama administration was able to get much more effective pressure because it presented Iran’s nuclear program as a threat to global norms of nonproliferation, persuaded the other major powers to support sanctions, enacted them through the United Nations and thus ensured that they were comprehensive and tight. This is what leadership looks like in the 21st century."

Read the Washington Post, Obama’s 21st-century power politics.  

"In August 2008, Vladimir Putin invaded the Republic of Georgia while George W. Bush was President of the United States. Where were the 'weakness' complaints from Republicans? Well, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer — who has said that in the Ukraine situation Obama's 'inaction created a vacuum' and who derided the President's statements on Ukraine as 'weak' — said of the Georgia invasion back in 2008, 'Well, obviously it's beyond our control. The Russians are advancing. There is nothing that will stop them.'

Conservative Heritage Foundation national security staffer Peter Brookes exuded a similar calm in 2008: 'There's no easy answer; there's only tough choices... Russia is a tough nut to crack.' Apparently when a Democrat is president the situation is much simpler. Last Friday, Brookes explained that the Russian invasion of Crimea is proof that 'this administration's policy toward Russia has been a failure.' Hmmm....

There's another aspect to this Republican hypocrisy. McCain recently called Obama 'the most naïve president in history' because of his foreign policy tactics. And yet it was George W. Bush who famously said, upon meeting Putin, 'I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy, and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul.' Did Republicans find him 'weak'? 'Naïve'?

Contrast this with Obama, who, against considerable odds, wrangled Russia into a constructive role on Iran sanctions, Syrian chemical weapons removal and a new START treaty. It is not merely laughable to call this President, who has unfortunately expanded the use of drone warfare and who also ordered the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, 'weak.' It is also self-destructive to our national interest, since absent any substantive disagreements, it reveals only national disunity in the face of a global crisis."

Read CNN, GOP's hypocrisy on Ukraine hurts America. 

Morning Joe for President?

UPDATE IV:  Another trial balloon:  "The MSNBC host has Beltway buzz for his flirtation with the 2016 presidential race. Republican primary voters may be a different story."

Read The Atlantic, Joe Scarborough for President? Sure, Why Not?

UPDATE III:  “The hot buzz from No Labels circles is the TV host is ‘mulling’ a bid. He can't win, but it'd be funny to watch.”

Read Salon, Run, Joe, run! Why a Scarborough presidential run would be doomed and amazing.   

UPDATE II:  Another divorce for Morning Joe.  

Read the Washington Post, TMZ, Quiet Divorce ... After 12-Year Marriage. 

One divorce might have been explainable, but now after two there will never be a President Joe.  But don't shed too many tears, his current gig pays $99,038/week.

UPDATE: The Draft Morning Joe movement appears to have started back in June with The Daily Beast, Joe Scarborough Can Save the GOP.

And the talk continues on Politico, David Petraeus, Joe Scarborough eyed for '12.

Sometimes a political hack, Scarborough can be independent, calling them like he see them, regardless of party politics.

Will it be Scarborough v. Obama in 2012? One "fresh, aggressive voice for Democrats and a watchdog of the Republican Party" New Yorker thinks it would be an interesting race.

Read The Ostroy Report, President Scarborough? "Morning Joe" Would Be a Viable Threat To Obama in 2012.

How about Scarborough/Palin or Palin/Scarborough?

BTW, what do Joe and Sarah have in common? (Hint, think Mel Marinez.)


P.S.

I predict that Morning Joe doesn't run because he's got a good gig and he doesn't want to explain why he resigned from Congress. Too bad because lord knows that the Republi-con party needs some help and he might be just the person to reform a party awash in grievance, self-pity, resentment, and anger.

All Joe has to say to resurrect his political career is that he didn't like the person that he became in Washington D.C., but that he has matured and is ready to try again.

The Republi-CON "America's Got the Greatest Health Care System in the World' Myth

The Daily Show visits "a place with shockingly poor health care conditions, they're still reeling from the loss of a civil war, a quarter of the young people are living in poverty, they have high rates of cancer, heart disease."  

Responds a regular Hedgehog News commentator: "This is how bad it could get, sure, if we keep going down the path of more government control, less innovation.  I don't know if we could be that place unless great catastrophe happens to this country."  

Unfortunately for him, it is that bad already.

Watch the Daily Show, Third World Health Care - Knoxville, Tennessee Edition:

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From Upworthy, Watch 15 Magically Awkward Seconds Roll By While A Man Panics After Accidentally Insulting America: "At 4:00 is the most awkward 15 seconds I've seen in quite some time."

Bwahahahaha!!!!

UPDATE X:  Thank to RC Radio Blog, there is a timeline of some of the many claims and promises made by the "Sheriff Joe’s Scooby Doo gang" to 'Gallups' gullibles' on 'fellatio Friday', read MCSO Cold Case Posse Timeline.  

And as Obama Conspiracy Theories summarizes: 

"One year ago today, Zullo and his posse said through Carl Gallups, 'We will be gaining an audience with some VIPs from around the nation… we have some attorney generals and some congressmen who have said that they would perhaps speak with us; and one congressman in particular WANTS to meet with us….'

And all through this time we’ve seen 'person of interest,' 'enormous,' 'block buster,' 'definite plan of action,' 'full steam ahead,' 'there will be new revelations,' ' this isn’t speculation any more,' 'breathtaking,' 'indisputable proof,' 'you won’t believe the bombshells,' 'explosive evidence,' 'shocker,' '[Arpaio] will do something after the election,' and 'surprises are coming.' In January 2013 we learned that due to unfortunate circumstances, the Cold Case Posse turned to the far-superior 'Plan B.' With plan B 'full steam ahead' we learn about 'absolute forensic verification' and that they are in 'total law enforcement perspective' mode again with a 'definitive plan of action now in the works,' 'gaining audience with some VIP’s,' 'powerful things could begin happening,' 'possible that something monumental will occur,' 'real progress over the next several months (this was a year ago),' 'undeniable evidence,' and last April, 'the investigation is over.' With the completion of the investigation, Zullo concluded, 'we’re in the driver’s seat.' Then, 'information breaking' about VIP’s, 'hopefully by mid-summer (last summer),' 'light at the end of the tunnel,' 'possibly mid–summer,' 'three to six month window is still very plausible,' 'the evidence is mounting up,' and 'it will be universe shattering.'

And here we are two years later with none of this having come to pass. The VIP’s never materialized, what arguments that were released were shot down, and the Reed Hayes report remains unreleased. For the past two years we have seen nothing but publicity and promises from the Cold Case Posse. It’s pretty pathetic."

The so-called Pastor is just another huckster and con man. 

UPDATE IX:  Tomorrow begins the month the universe will 'shatter', as promised by the "Sheriff Joe’s Scooby Doo gang"to 'Gallups' gullibles' on 'fellatio Friday' in mid-December (the 'universe-shattering' twist was being promoted elsewhere in late November).

From Obama Conspiracy Theories, Birther apocalypse:

In less than 24 hours it will be the month of March, when Mike Zullo and Carl Gallups will strap on their swords, Obot Cleaver and Fogbow Basher, hitch up their boots, and come for the Obots. Leading their birther army, they will slash and burn everything that crosses their path, and no supporter of Obama shall escape retribution as birthers shatter the universe in their righteous fury.

Any day now.

And Jared Daniel Dent is ready, saying on Februaury 27:  "Come on march. 3 more days, come on sheriff Joe, Mike Zullo, and CCP release the findings. Come on America Snap out of the trance, strap up your boots and get outside and kick some Obot . Stop letting Obama loving democrats trendy's walk all over you, um up, look me up on face book, Im in VA, and I dont give a about a morally bankrupt society of zombies threatening me or mine, because I walk the walk, There only one man in that mob destined to take you out and you are destined to take him out , You go through the mob to meet him and cut down all others like blades of grass until you cross and the take meet your fate, Im sure you men and women could take out at least 20 obots apiece.."

I wonder if he and others will ask for refunds on April 1.

UPDATE VIII:   The "Sheriff Joe’s Scooby Doo gang" denies writing the letter to the Delusional Dentist, but the comments are informative none the less.

Read Obama Conspiracy Theories, Gallups, Taitz talk: Glass half full, or half wrong?

Also check out Obama Conspiracy Theories, The debunker's guide to Obama conspiracy theories.

UPDATE VII: Now the "Sheriff Joe’s Scooby Doo gang" claim to have "the most incredible, universe-shattering thing you’ve ever heard!", which will finally be disclosed on March 19.  So the Delusional Dentist has been asked to "stand down with regard to your ongoing court cases, which appear to have already run their course, you must admit. I cannot overstate the importance that your cooperation will bring to the disclosure of this essential information."

In response the Delusional Dentist said:"there were multiple promises from Mr. Gallops and Mr. Zullo before, everyone expected a criminal case against Obama to be officially submitted by Sheriff Arpaio to the DA, AG, US Attorney and Judiciary Committee of Congress before the election, it did not happen, even though Sheriff Arpaio had according to his own admission a 100% evidence of Obama using fabricated IDs. I do not know what earth shattering announcement you are planning to make next month, on March 19. Even if you make some announcement, it is just that, an announcement."

Read http://www.orlytaitzesq.com/?p=446381. 

A big difference between the the huckster and his con man and the Delusional Dentist is that she allows and responds to comments, which include:

They want the "stand down because they’re not getting as many donations as they used to.  And nothing earth shattering is coming out in March or April or May or June or July…"

"They have had PLENTY of time and chances to reveal anything that they might have. They have nothing!!!"

If they indeed have something bigger than the BC and the SSN, why would it matter if you continued what you are doings?"

"Zullo and Arpaio have been saying this chit for months and have revealed nothing.If they had anything why are they with holding it until march 19. They are simply using it to to get all the money they can.I live in Alabama and about 3 months I began getting mails from Arpaio wanting money."

"[I]t makes no sense to do what they ask, no sense to voluntarily dismiss ongoing cases".

"I thought Obama was the world’s number one liar, but this guy Gallups is awfully close. What the hell is he raving and ranting about and if it’s so earth shattering why wait until March 19th? He sounds like some ancient seer reading an animal’s entrails and predicting a cosmic event on a certain day."

"I have been waiting to see how Zullo and co were going to weasel out of their promise to deliver universe shattering information in March.  They know full well that Dr. Taitz is not going to drop anything and when they do not release any information (because they have none), they will blame it on Orly Taitz and claim that Taitz is the hold up and that if it were not for her and her cases they would be able to release the Universe Shattering information that would have brought down the Obama Presidency. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP !!!!!"

"The sheriff, Zullo, and the minister are trying out for late nite TV comedy show of their own!!! Ha, Ha, Ha,"

"Zullo,Gallups and Sheriff Joe have their fans so caught up in their con for donations that they will believe anything that they say without explanation and they know it. Look we are talking about people who every three or four months say that they have devastating information that will bring down Obama but just can not reveal it at this time. They then chose an arbitrary date a few months from the announcement that they have information that they will reveal the information. When the date comes, they then make up an excuse why they can not release the information along with a request for more donations and a promise to release information even more devastating than the information that they promised but failed to release the last time and then when the new date comes they start the same con all over again. This has been going on ever since they became involved in the Birther issue and I see no end in sight to it."

Read also Wonkette, Here Is Your Birther Slap Fight, Starring Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Minions And Super-Heroine Orly Taitz, which stated: "Ohmygodohmygodohmygod WHAT COULD IT BE? We want to be shocked and awed and emasculated and universe-shattered by your news. Tell us, Reverend Carl!"

Comments for this article include:

"I am 1,000,000% certain that these jerks are 10,000,000% batshit insane."

"Trouble in paradise- looks like the circle jerk is running low on KY and everybody is getting rubbed a little raw".

"I'd be worried about this universe-shattering news, on account of I live in a universe, but it's painfully obvious it's nowhere near the universe these nincompoops inhabit, so I say rock on."

"This looks very bad for Obama's 2016 reelection chances."

"This Rev Gallups fellow writes in a way that we would, to mock him with satirical hyperbolic versions of wingnut communiqué. Is he... using our weapons against us?"

"I knew it! OBAMA IS AN ET, and a socialist/communist/nazi ET planted by the UN as part of Agenda 21. It all fits together."

"Proof that Obama is a lizard person!! I always knew it was true! All Hail our new overlords, the Lizard People!!!"

They had zero chance before, but the new evidence will change that by 10,000%"

You know you've got a problem when you've lost credibility with other birthers!

UPDATE VI:  Still waitin' for that 'universe-shattering twist' in the Obama birth certificate probe, first predicted and promised to 'Gallups' gullibles' on 'fellatio Friday' in mid-December (the 'universe-shattering' twist was being promoted elsewhere in late November) by the huckster and his con man.  

In the meantime:

"Seeing hidden connections and causes is a key element of conspiracy thinking. But that logic is a common fallacy with a Latin name: post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin for "after this, therefore because of it"). Because the human mind seeks connections, people often mis-attribute causes, thinking that "B happened after A did, so A must have caused B." It makes sense, and it’s often true, but not always. It’s like saying 'roosters crow before the sun rises, so the roosters must have made the sun rise.'

Taken in extreme, this type of thinking can result in clinical paranoia. The 'Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,' the so-called bible of psychiatry, notes that in paranoid disorders 'The persecutory delusions may be simple or elaborate and usually involve a single theme or series of connected themes, such as being conspired against, cheated, spied upon, followed, poisoned or drugged, maliciously maligned, harassed, or obstructed in the pursuit of long-term goals. Small slights may be exaggerated and become the focus of a delusional system…. Common associated features include resentment and anger, which may lead to violence.'"

Remind you of anyone?

Read Discovery News, Why Conspiracy Theories Provoke Violence.

UPDATE V:  Still waitin' for that 'universe-shattering twist' in the Obama birth certificate probe, first predicted and promised to 'Gallups' gullibles' on 'fellatio Friday' in mid-December by the huckster and his con man.  

Don't hold your breath.

In the meantime, "[a]nother multi-million-dollar bill comes due this year for Sheriff Joe Arpaio's reckless antics in Maricopa County, Arizona. And that's why more taxpayers may finally be asking: Who keeps voting for this guy, anyway?"

Read The Atlantic, As 2014 Begins, Toll Rises for "The Most Expensive Sheriff in America".

UPDATE IV:  It's been a while since I heard Zullo on "'fellatio Friday', [where] Zullo joins Gallups to fawn over each other and grift birther bucks from Gallups' gullible audience."

Quote from The Many Lies of Mike Zullo and Carl Gallups.

Grift means to make money "dishonestly, as in a swindle." I'll let you look up that other word if you don't know what it means.

Couldn't have said it better. 

UPDATE III:  More challenges: The Many Lies of Mike Zullo and Carl Gallups is now a Facebook page.

And "Gallups blusters that he challenges Obots, and then turns off the microphone when they call him. He’s afraid."

 

UPDATE II:  After years of empty promises, some birthers are catching on to the "I Know Something You Don't Know" con.

Comments during the last week of June 2013 include:

Gallups "told us nothing new today, except that he is in touch with Zullo every day, every single day, for God only knows what reason. . . No one questioned the evidence at the Sheriff's conference, according to Gallups - I'm questioning it, because Gallups and Zullo refuse to tell anyone any details. All they do is rail on and on - yet release no data to the public."

"How can the public and Congress give full and really enthusiastic support to Zullo and the CCP when they tease us by not releasing the 'juicy' details that they've uncovered. Why are they holding back on the 90% not released? . . My advice to Zullo and the CCP is this: Lay it on us now and let the cards fall where they may. This is not the time to be playing 'I've Got A Secret'. "
"Gallups has made this about him. . . stringing it out to an uncertain date in the future makes people infuriated. I'll still give Zullo the benefit of the doubt, but as far as I'm concerned Gallups is a clown."

"Listening to Gallups is like hearing a giddy teenager talking about their first date. He's so excited to have a real person like Zullo on his show that he's verbally orgasmic."

"Whoever Mike is, the guy who did the interview, did a nice job - he let Gallups talk. That's something Gallups never allows his guests as he prattles."

"Carl Gallups is so full of shit his eyes must be brown. . . Just about every video he puts out it is always 'BREAKING' 'STUNNING REVELATIONS' 'NEW REVELATIONS' . . . Get over yourself Gallups! "

" I hate to say it, but he reminds me a mix of a side-show barker and a used car salesman."

I warned you before of the cult that is Carl, AKA C Squared.

(Although he proclaims differently, was C Squared ever a law enforcement officer in Florida?  Not according to the Sarasota Harld-Tribune.)

As for the alleged interview with the CONgressman, aren't you "tired of being played for a fool." And don't "be surprised if Stockman never does the interview." (FYI, the station has a special line for VIPs to call, the CONgressman wouldn't be given the announced call-in number.)

Remember: "if you're in the con game and you don't know who the mark is … you're the mark."

UPDATE:  As Vincent Bugliosi explains in his book on the JFK assassination, "Reclaiming History":

"The conspiracy community regularly seizes on one slip of the tongue, misunderstanding, or slight discrepancy to defeat 20 pieces of solid evidence; accepts one witness of theirs, even if he or she is a provable nut, as being far more credible than 10 normal witnesses on the other side; treats rumours, even questions, as the equivalent of proof; leaps from the most minuscule of discoveries to the grandest of conclusions; and insists that the failure to explain everything perfectly negates all that is explained."

That's the reaction to Pastor Truthiness' (formerly known as Pastor Poppins') interview last week with "[f]ormer police investigator Don Jeffrey, who investigated reports of Obama having multiple security-security numbers for Mike Zullo, finds that none of the multiple numbers reported by other birther investigators, tie back to President Obama personally."

Read Obama Conspiracy Theories, Social-security number allegations undermined by Cold Case Posse investigator.

The so-called Pastor is just another huckster and con man.  He and the other birthers have "made promise after promise that they haven't kept, they presented some evidence that was faked, their 'experts' tell stories that contradict each other from press conference to press conference, they refuse to testify under oath and blow off subpoenas, and they never actually do anything but seek media attention."

And the angry old "closed-minded, racist, rigid, old-fashioned" white men continue their "offensive, polarizing rhetoric".  

On This Valentine's Day 2014 It Is Worth Noting That Love Conquers All, Finally Even Republi-CON Hatred

"'We made a commitment to each other in our love and lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match. Isn't that what marriage is? ... I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation's fears and prejudices have given way, and today's young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry. Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the ‘wrong kind of person’ for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others. ... I support the freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about.' — Mildred Loving, 'Loving for All'

Last night, only days after hearing oral arguments in the case, a Virginia federal judge struck down the state ban on same-sex marriage, writing unequivocally that “[t]radition is revered in the Commonwealth, and often rightly so. However, tradition alone cannot justify denying same-sex couples the right to marry any more than it could justify Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage.” The judge opened her opinion with the quote, above, from Mildred Loving, the plaintiff in the 1967 challenge to Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage. She thus joined a unanimous and ever-expanding collection of federal judges who have chosen to answer the question left up in the air by the Supreme Court last Spring: Did the Windsor decision—striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act—pretty much strike down gay-marriage bans as well?"

Read Slate, It’s Over: Gay Marriage Can’t Lose in the Courts. 

The Rational Valentine

"This Valentine’s Day, show your affection through economics. Signal how much your mate means to you through a carefully thought out and personalized gift. Then make your mate even happier by investing in yourself. Finally, stop and appreciate your partner – 'The One' may not exist, but that doesn’t mean your partner is not 'A Really Good One.'"

Read The New York Times, How to Be a Better Valentine, Through Economics. 

A Perfect Match, What Modern Dating and Financial Transactions Have in Common

Repost:

"Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make me a match, Find me a find, catch me a catch."

Hope this doesn't spoil your day of love.

Read the Washington Post, Why online dating services are like financial markets (and not just because you might get lucky).

And even if you haven't found your perfect match this Valentine's Day, take heart.  "Given some pretty strong metaphysical assumptions, you might [already] have a partner!"

Read the Washington Post, Everyone has a date this Valentine’s Day. Just maybe not in this world.

The Civil War Continues: Republi-CON Establishment v. Republi-CON Rage

UPDATE IX:  "In the three years they've been in power, Tea Partiers have gone through the stages of grief—from denial to acceptance of how Washington works."

Read The Atlantic, Why Republicans Are Surrendering on the Debt Ceiling. 

Read also, The New Republic, Why the Tea Party Is Folding on the Debt Limit, which noted that "[p]ior to the shutdown, it wasn’t clear whether Bachmann et al were irrational (that is, so zealously attached to their ideological goals that they ignored conventional political incentives, like widespread public disapproval), or delusional (meaning they were perfectly capable of responding to political incentives in theory; they just assumed the masses supported them).

The shutdown demonstrated that the Tea Partiers are, for the most part, delusional rather than irrational: They can be forced to reconsider a particular tactic if you persuade them it’s politically catastrophic. It just requires an epic level of public anger to break through their epistemically-stunted consciousness. The Tea Partiers had basically believed that the country backed their monomaniacal fixation on repealing Obamacare, and their jihadi plan for getting it done. The shutdown, or at least the endless shutdown-inspired hand-wringing on Fox News, managed to disabuse even them of this belief."

UPDATE VIII:  Does the Republi-con Party now regret its many Tea Party Frankensteins?

"Stockman, the would-be senator, must have thought he had gamed the system just right when he entered the primary battle against Cornyn on the last possible day. He seems to have calculated that his extreme views would automatically make him a contender, but it hasn’t turned out that way."

Read the Washington Post, Stockman steps forward as Republicans step back.

Read also about how Boehner has "reached his limit. In a meeting with his House colleagues to discuss Wednesday’s budget agreement, the House speaker finally let loose on the conservative groups that have been roiling Republican politics.  Read Slate, Boehner Lowers the Boom. 

 

UPDATE VII:  And the Republi-con civil war continues

"Texas Senator John Cornyn's challenge from Steve Stockman, a militia-loving birther congressman, could be the ultimate expression of Tea Party nihilism."

Read The Atlantic, The Republican Primary to End All Republican Primaries or Salon, Texas’ insane Tea Party caper: Nutjob challenges extreme conservative!

Go Ted and the Tea Party, Go!

UPDATE VI:  "With a budget conference forming and a new debt-ceiling hike coming early in 2014, there's more strife to come. Here is who to watch."

Read The Atlantic, Sanity Caucus vs. Kamikaze Caucus: A Cheat Sheet for the GOP Civil War.

UPDATE V:  "Shutdown polling looks apocalyptic for the Republican Party, but at the Values Voters Summit, activists weren't ready to back down."

The Atlantic, Inside the Conservative Bubble, It Looks Like Ted Cruz Is Winning Big. 

UPDATE IV:  "Skeptics warned from the start that it was a suicide mission for Republicans to shut down the federal government in a long-shot attempt to defund Obamacare. Now that such dire predictions have come to pass, the lawmakers who engineered the shutdown are getting the conflagration — and the martyrdom — they sought.

Call it the Cruzifiction of the GOP.

At least so far, the standoff has been a political bloodbath for Republicans. And maybe that’s exactly what was needed to right the political system: The effort to gut Obamacare had to crash like this so that Republican leaders and lawmakers would find the courage to stand up to tea party toughs, and so that business leaders would decide to stop funding a small band of right-wing activists whose interests are antithetical to their own.

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that Americans, by 53 percent to 31 percent, blame the Republican Party for the shutdown more than they do President Obama — worse even than Republicans fared during the 1995-96 shutdown that also proved ruinous to their party.

The poll, confirming earlier results, found the Republican Party and the tea party had both reached all-time lows. Americans now favor a Democratic Congress to a Republican Congress by eight percentage points. And the percentage of Americans who think Obamacare is a good idea is up seven points from last month. Seventy percent say Republicans are putting politics ahead of the good of the country.

The small-but-vocal tea party had been seeking just such a confrontation since the 2010 election, and they opposed compromises by Republican leaders that postponed the showdown until now. Conservative groups that advocated for a standoff spoke openly about their motives. At a breakfast with reporters Wednesday, Michael Needham, chief executive of the conservative group Heritage Action, freely admitted that he was 'pretty optimistic' that we will soon see a crackup of the old Republican order.

Read the Washington Post, Cruzifiction of the GOP. 

UPDATE III:  "In trying to understand the Republican Party’s internal battles, it helps to think of Michael and Sonny.

Corleone, that is.

On one side we have Sonny, the hotheaded, impulsive, shoot-now-take-names-later son of Don Corleone. On Capitol Hill, he personifies the tea party followers who would rather die on principle than live to win a later day.

On the other side, we have Michael, the cooler-headed son and intellectual strategist. On the Hill, Michael represents the so-called establishment legislators who understand the way forward but thus far have been reluctant to pull the trigger."

Read the Washington Post, The GOP divide: A battle of Corleones.

UPDATE II:  "We’re used to brinkmanship in Washington resulting from conflict between Democrats and Republicans. But this shutdown is different. It’s a fight between Republicans and Republicans -- or, more specifically, Republicans and the Tea Party. . .

Back in 2011, the Republican establishment was sufficiently in sync with the tea party to harness their recklessness against the Obama administration. Boehner argued that his new members were just wild enough to crash through the debt ceiling and harm the economy, which gave him crucial leverage in his negotiations with the White House.

But then Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election, and the Republican establishment began to alter its approach. The tea party, however, didn’t. Now Boehner and other mainstream Republicans dealing with tea party legislators face the same problem Democrats faced in 2011: It’s hard to negotiate with people who don’t care about, or even really believe in, the consequences of burning the place down. . .

The problem for Boehner and the rest of the Republican establishment is that the tea party ethos is now being turned against them. After all, mainstream conservatives will compromise with 'evil' (or, if you prefer, 'Democrats'). For tea partiers, that makes them suspect, too. In fact, one way tea party Republicans can prove they haven’t sold out to Washington’s ways is by opposing any compromise Boehner proposes."

Read the Washington Post, The shutdown is a Republican civil war.

BTW, the previous update was 07/29/2011, during earlier budget negotiations.  And as I said before, this civil war has been brewing since November 2008.

UPDATE: The title says it all.

Read the Washington Post, Debt ceiling debate shows GOP at war with itself.

The Republi-con civil war continues. "The Republican Party is undergoing a big change in how it chooses its leaders."

Read The New York Times, For G.O.P., End of the Preordained Candidate.

Republi-CON Political Opportunism and Hypocrisy

UPDATE IX:  The House Republi-cons met with Treasury inspector general J. Russell George, also a Republi-con, limited "the scope of his IRS review" to slant the finding of his investigation and "hide the fact that investigators found 'no indication that pulling these selected applications was politically motivated' or that progressive groups were also targeted.'"

Read the Washington Post, Two Democrats call for investigation of IRS watchdog who led targeting probe.

UPDATE VIII:  "Principal Deputy Commissioner Danny Werfel on Monday revealed that the IRS had used other "inappropriate" lists – and, according to documents released by (surprise!) congressional Democrats, the buzzwords included 'progressive,' 'Occupy' and 'Israel.' Part of the committee to defeat or impeach President Obama? Not so much, these sorts of groups. . .

This was not the IRS singling people out for audits or prosecution. This was a case of the agency tasked with determining tax status and compliance actually forcing groups to prove they are worthy of tax-free status as a 'social welfare' group."

Read U.S. News & World Report, The IRS-Tea Party Scandal Fizzles.

For more on the Republi-con problem with reality, re-read these prior posts:

More Partisan Zealotry Through Highly Selective Editing of Reality, and

Republi-CON Created Reality.

UPDATE VII:  From Ben Bernanke’s Baccalaureate Address at Princeton:

"[M]ost of our politicians and policymakers are trying to do the right thing, according to their own views and consciences, most of the time. If you think that the bad or indifferent results that too often come out of Washington are due to base motives and bad intentions, you are giving politicians and policymakers way too much credit for being effective. Honest error in the face of complex and possibly intractable problems is a far more important source of bad results than are bad motives."

UPDATE VI:  "When CVFC, a conservative veterans’ group in California, applied for tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service, its biggest expenditure that year was several thousand dollars in radio ads backing a Republican candidate for Congress.

The Wetumpka Tea Party, from Alabama, sponsored training for a get-out-the-vote initiative dedicated to the “defeat of President Barack Obama” while the I.R.S. was weighing its application.

And the head of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, whose application languished with the I.R.S. for more than two years, sent out e-mails to members about Mitt Romney campaign events and organized members to distribute Mr. Romney’s presidential campaign literature.

Representatives of these organizations have cried foul in recent weeks about their treatment by the I.R.S., saying they were among dozens of conservative groups unfairly targeted by the agency, harassed with inappropriate questionnaires and put off for months or years as the agency delayed decisions on their applications.

But a close examination of these groups and others reveals an array of election activities that tax experts and former I.R.S. officials said would provide a legitimate basis for flagging them for closer review.

“Money is not the only thing that matters,” said Donald B. Tobin, a former lawyer with the Justice Department’s tax division who is a law professor at Ohio State University. “While some of the I.R.S. questions may have been overbroad, you can look at some of these groups and understand why these questions were being asked.”

The stakes are high for both the I.R.S. and lawmakers in Congress, whose election fortunes next year will hinge in no small part on a flood of political spending by such advocacy groups. They are often favored by strategists and donors not for the tax benefits — they typically do not have significant income subject to tax — but because they do not have to reveal their donors, allowing them to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into elections without disclosing where the money came from"

Read The New York Times, Groups Targeted by I.R.S. Tested Rules on Politics.

UPDATE V:  Obama is damned if he doesn't, and damned if he does.

"Before the outcry over the Obama administration’s leak investigations, Republicans complained that the administration wasn’t pursuing national security leaks vigorously enough. Last June, Republican Sens. John McCain, Saxby Chambliss, John Cornyn and Roger Wicker demanded the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate leaks because, they said, Attorney General Eric Holder wasn’t aggressive enough. “Any other administration, in my memory, Democrat or Republican, would have been absolutely apoplectic looking for the culprits, trying to find out who were the people that actually committed these criminal leaks,” Wicker said.

Republicans have been consistent on this point. During the George W. Bush administration, congressional Democrats (and a handful of Republicans) proposed shield laws to protect journalists from leak investigations. The Bush administration fought back. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell wrote that such proposals were “both unwise and unnecessary.” The Bush Justice Department even produced a Web site (now defunct) to campaign against a shield. (A shield law died in the Senate, another victim of a Republican-led filibuster.)"

Read the Washington Post, Scandals usually lead to reform. Maybe not this time.

UPDATE IV:  Republi-con 'contortions are reaching comic proportions.' 

They can't decide "whether the scandals show Obama as a power-mad Nixonian figure manipulating the levers of overbearing, intrusive government to realize sinister ends, or a weak bystander unable to control a government run amok."

Read the Washington Post,  Republicans struggle to connect IRS scandal to Obama. 

UPDATE III:  Not only did Republi-cons vote twice in the last two years to cut the State Department's embassy security budget, but they have also failed to disclose that the Ambassador "twice turned down offers of security assistance made by the senior U.S. military official in the region in response to concerns that [he] had raised in a still secret memorandum . . .

[Why the Ambassador] would turn down the offers remains unclear. The deteriorating security situation in Benghazi had been the subject of a meeting that embassy officials held Aug. 15, where they concluded they could not defend the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi. The next day, the embassy drafted a cable outlining the dire circumstances and saying it would spell out what it needed in a separate cable."

The Republi-cons have been hiding that cable because it contradicts their 'con-scandal'. 

Read McClatchy, Ambassador Stevens twice said no to military offers of more security, U.S. officials say. 

UPDATE II:  "[S]tupid laws can create administrative chaos. The more I read about the scandal of the IRS and its scrutiny of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, the more convinced I am that the blame for this mess -- just like the blame for my having to put down my tripod -- lies almost entirely with Congress.

Plainly, if IRS officials were systematically discriminating against conservative groups with the aim of harassing or suppressing them, that’s outrageous, not to mention criminal. If this was going on at the direction or with the knowledge of the White House, then the scandal rises, of course, to Watergate proportions. But there’s no evidence of any such system or conspiracy, and the idea seems improbable. What we do have, though, are tax laws so complex, and so muddled with the regulation of political spending, that straightforward enforcement is almost impossible."

Read Bloomberg, Sympathy for the IRS.  

UPDATE:  "What’s the real lesson of Benghazi? It’s that the party-aligned press works so well for Republicans that they’ve become too lazy to bother explaining their ideas, or doing the hard work of actual oversight. . .

Part of what’s happening is, as Jamelle Bouie pointed out today, the strong demand within the conservative marketplace for scandal. But there’s more than that; it’s not just a demand for scandal, but how easily the customers accept anything presented to them. The result — and Alex Pareene is very good on this today — is that they don’t bother putting together a 'coherent or convincing narrative.'"

Read the Washington Post, The real lesson of Benghazi.

Read also, The American Prospect, Demand-Side Scandals, which explains "[w]hy Republicans continue to manufacture controversies:

"Right-wing media has stoked huge demand for scandal among conservative consumers, but there isn’t a supply. And so, Republicans have had to create them, latching onto mistakes and ambiguities, and magnifying them into epic examples of administration misconduct."

And remember:  "there was a lot of concern about the thing that nobody [can] talk about, which was the CIA's role in Benghazi. Of the 30 Americans who were evacuated after the attack, approximately only seven of them worked for the State Department. The rest of them were working for the CIA."

Also, the Republi-cons, "who voted to cut funding for State Department security should understand that their philosophy — small government is always better — has consequences. Bureaucrats have to make judgment calls. Sometimes they will be wrong."

"Which makes more sense to you, that the State Department ignored requests for more security because the Obama campaign was running on the message that the administration had crippled al-Qaida, and additional security at diplomatic posts in unstable areas would contradict the message? Or that the requests were denied because a culture of excessive thriftiness has taken hold in Washington since the 2010 Republican wave election and the subsequent endless debt showdowns?"

Talk about hypocrisy.

Talk about hypocrisy.

First, Republi-cons "voted [twice in the last two years] to cut the State Department's embassy security budget."  Now they accuse Obama of ignoring requests for more security before the deadly attack. Read the Christian Science Monitor, Libya attack: Congressmen casting blame voted to cut diplomatic security budget. 



Then during 'special' hearings scheduled before the elections to score some political points, the same Republi-cons disclosed that the Benghazi consulate was part of an undercover CIA operation. 

Read the Washington Post, Letting us in on a secret. 

Fat Lady Still Seeks Job (And Republi-CONs Couldn't Care Less)

UPDATE III:  The "president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, was once a leading opponent of the Federal Reserve’s efforts to stimulate the economy" finally admits that those invisible Republi-CON bond vigilantes were just his wild imagination, but "that persistent unemployment has created 'a time of testing' for the Fed comparable to the rise of inflation in the late 1970s and early 1980s."

So much for the Republi-con myth of expansionary austerity.

Read the New York Times, A Fed Policy Maker, Changing His Mind, Urges More Stimulus.

UPDATE II:  "[T]he labor market has experienced neither terrific gains nor terrific crashes in the last three years. Instead, we've suffered the Curse of Goldilocks: Just fine enough to keep pressure from building in Washington for another round of intervention. . .

It makes you wonder: What kind of recovery might we have today if Washington weren't so enthusiastically trying to kill it?"

Read The Atlantic, The Goldilocks Curse: How America's Job Creation Story Got So Boring.

The link is to The Atlantic, The Greatest Risk to the U.S. Economy Is Still the People in Charge of It, which notes that "[t[he recession gave us a lost decade. Congress added a lost year. The budget wars since 2010 have cost us 12 months in job creation." 

UPDATE:  "[I]nfluential people need to stop using the future as an excuse for inaction. The clear and present danger is mass unemployment, and we should deal with it, now."

Read The New York Times, Fight the Future.  

As I said in February 2009, tax cuts are not the answer, and again in October 2010, this downturn won't be over 'til the fat lady gets a job.  And in June 2011 and Jan-Feb 2012, as well as other times -- it's jobs stupid.

But since Obama first won election, Republi-cons have been using best efforts to tank the economy and keep unemployment high.

So "just a reminder that the U.S. labor market is still in rough shape — despite the considerable improvement in recent years."  Read the Washington Post, The U.S. job market is still worse than at any point during the last downturn.

The article includes this graph: