Daily Archives: December 8, 2010

December 8, 2010 · 8:40 PM

Lieberman To Reid On DADT: Back Off, I Got This

Joe Liberman (I-CT) is definately not on my list of “favorite politicians”, but in this instance, when it comes to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell negotiations in the Senate, I think Lieberman will have more “bi-partisan” clout.  Therefore, I welcome his leadership on this issue.  DADT needs to be passed before the end of the “lame duck” session of Congress is over.

TPMDC

Senate Democrats are on the precipice of getting a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal past a key procedural hurdle tonight. But key negotiators have grown frustrated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his staff for upping the pressure at a fragile moment, potentially scuttling the deal.

“I’ve been pleading with Senator Reid, don’t hold a vote on the defense authorization bill, the repeal of DADT, until we have a good opportunity to work out a fair process for the consideration bill with Senator Collins and some of the other Republican,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) this afternoon after a Dem caucus meeting. “Senator Collins really wants to vote for the bill with the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and Senator Scott Brown is the same and I think there may be at least one other Republican Senator to make that clear today.”

That third Republican has since been revealed as Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

Lieberman has been the lead Dem negotiator for repeal, and has been in regular contact with all three Republican supporters. But earlier today his efforts were undermined, in his view, by Reid’s announcement of a test vote tonight, and by leaks from the leadership, accusing Collins of demanding too many procedural concessions, putting the success or failure of the vote tonight at her feet.

From Reid’s point of view the math is two-dimensional. By calling the vote, and leaking to the press, he ups the pressure on Collins to make a decision – and quickly. At the same time, he creates a focal point for liberal animus if the Senate fails to pass repeal before this Congress comes to an end and with it hope for a legislative solution to DADT. That’s not helpful to Lieberman, who wants to keep negotiations fluid, egos unbruised and the bill alive.

Continue reading here…

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· 8:18 PM

Author Of SB-1070 Russell Pearce: ‘Obama May Not Be Visiting Arizona Because We Require Papers’

Official presidential portrait of Barack Obama...

Image via Wikipedia

Yes, many progressives are having issues with the President now, especially when it comes to copitulating to the whims of the GOP.  However, he is STILL the President of The United States and comments like this from a weasel special interest Arizona politician is just plain out of line…

Think Progress

Today, a right-wing organization called Judicial Watch hosted a panel discussion on the “current and upcoming fights over immigration enforcement” featuring Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce (R). Pearce, the author of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, railed against the Obama administration for “siding with a foreign government” against the state of Arizona. However, looking on the bright side, Pearce joked that Obama may not want to come to Arizona as they will require him to show his papers:

A little levity is okay, I hope cause I like to [inaudible] at most things. But I can tell you that the best thing about [SB]-1070 is that Obama may not be visiting Arizona because we actually require papers now.

Continue reading here…

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· 7:43 PM

Christine O’Donnell: Pearl Harbor, Unemployment Benefits Extension Both ‘Tragedies’

She’s baaaaack…and making the same type of asinine statements she made during the midterm campaign.

Huffington Post

On a solemn December 7 marked with melancholy reminders of the 69th anniversary of the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the tragic passing of Elizabeth Edwards, failed Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell deemed the potential reauthorization of unemployment benefits — as reached in a deal between Obama and GOP leadership — the day’s third and final “tragedy.”

“Tragedy comes in threes,” O’Donnell said at a publicity event in Virginia. “Pearl Harbor, Elizabeth Edwards’s passing and Barack Obama’s announcement of extending the tax cuts, which is good, but also extending the unemployment benefits.”

O’Donnell continued, explaining why Obama’s most important prize from the negotiations could be likened to a Pearl Harbor-like catastrophe.

“The reason I say this is a tragedy is because his announcement of economic recovery was more of a potpourri of sound bytes. It’s like he took a little bit of what each party wanted and put it together. It’s not a solid plan constructed on sound economic principles.”

Unsurprisingly, the comments didn’t sit very well, and O’Donnell was shortly thereafter forced to walk them back.

The Hill reports on O’Donnell’s about-face:

“That’s not what I meant at all,” said O’Donnell, who went on to explain that her opposition to the extension of unemployment benefits emanates from how the extension is paid for.”If we’re going to extend the jobless benefits we have got to cut spending programs and that’s the flaw in his announcement,” she said. “That’s the tragedy.”

It appears then that O’Donnell is approaching the matter much like Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who have both declared their intentions to oppose the bargain because they believe the cost of reauthorizing unemployment benefits for 13 months is too expensive. Instead, they have argued tenaciously for the extension of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and ensuring a minimal estate tax, both which come with a higher price tag over the next two years.

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· 7:18 PM

Sarah Palin Cyber Attack: WikiLeaks Supporters Take On Ex-Governor

They’re out to get “poor” Caribou Barbie now…

Huffington Post

London-based hackers reportedly working in support of the website WikiLeaks as part of “Operation Payback” have turned their keyboards on Sarah Palin, launching a cyber-attack targeted at her fundraising arm SarahPAC, as well as the former Alaska Governor’s personal credit card information.

“No wonder others are keeping silent about Assange’s antics,” Palin emailed ABC News, which originally reported the hacking attempt. “This is what happens when you exercise the First Amendment and speak against his sick, un-American espionage efforts.”

Sarah Palin took aim at WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, last month in a Facebook post slamming the website’s disclosure of classified information. The former Alaska governor questioned why Assange had not been “pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?” Assange responded in an op-ed this week, writing that Palin had encouraged him to be “hunted down like Osama bin Laden.” Palin then took issue with this mischaracterization of her quote in a tweet Wednesday.

SarahPAC aide Rebecca Mansour told ABC News Wednesday that the tech team at SarahPAC had been able to shield the site from the hacking attempts and that Palin herself was prepared for the strike.

“[T]he governor voiced her opinion knowing full well that she was speaking out against a shady disreputable organization with no regard for laws or human life,” Mansour told ABC News. “This is how they operate. The world should not be intimidated by them.”

The people behind “Operation Payback” better hope that they leave a difficult trail to trace. The last person that tried to hack Sarah Palin’s information has been sentenced to a year in jail, though the new attackers’ disruption of Visa and Mastercard websites will probably make them much larger targets.

Someone making things up again? Keep seeing this quote attributed to me. Huh? Wikileaks Assange on Sarah Palin’s Criticism http://bit.ly/dXP9zaless than a minute ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®Sarah Palin
SarahPalinUSA

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· 3:48 PM

Political Cartoon of the Day

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· 8:52 AM

All You Need To Know

  

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
                        John Kenneth Galbraith

 

 

THE JACK CLARK COROLLARY

Everything the right-wing does is designed to accomplish one of two things, either:
(a) transfer wealth from everyone else to the rich, or,
(b) distract everyone else from the fact that (a) is occurring.

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· 5:29 AM

Aaron Sorkin: Sarah Palin, The Phony Pioneer Girl, Killing Animals For Fun

Aaron Sorkin, producer of really good TV shows including The West Wing, replies to Sarah Palin’s “snarky” comment to those who have questioned her judgment about killing animals on her television show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska.

Be forewarned that Sorkin’s response is rather “earthy”…

Aaron Sorkin – Huffington Post Op-Ed

“Unless you’ve never worn leather shoes, sat upon a leather chair or eaten meat, save your condemnation.”

You’re right, Sarah, we’ll all just go fuck ourselves now.

The snotty quote was posted by Sarah Palin on (like all the great frontier women who’ve come before her) her Facebook page to respond to the criticism she knew and hoped would be coming after she hunted, killed and carved up a Caribou during a segment of her truly awful reality show, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska”, broadcast on The-Now-Hilariously-Titled Living Channel.

I eat meat, chicken and fish, have shoes and furniture made of leather, and PETA is not ever going to put me on the cover of their brochure and for these reasons Palin thinks it’s hypocritical of me to find what she did heart-stoppingly disgusting. I don’t think it is, and here’s why.

Like 95% of the people I know, I don’t have a visceral (look it up) problem eating meat or wearing a belt. But like absolutely everybody I know, I don’t relish the idea of torturing animals. I don’t enjoy the fact that they’re dead and I certainly don’t want to volunteer to be the one to kill them and if I were picked to be the one to kill them in some kind of Lottery-from-Hell, I wouldn’t do a little dance of joy while I was slicing the animal apart.

I’m able to make a distinction between you and me without feeling the least bit hypocritical. I don’t watch snuff films and you make them. You weren’t killing that animal for food or shelter or even fashion, you were killing it for fun. You enjoy killing animals. I can make the distinction between the two of us but I’ve tried and tried and for the life of me, I can’t make a distinction between what you get paid to do and what Michael Vick went to prison for doing. I’m able to make the distinction with no pangs of hypocrisy even though I get happy every time one of you faux-macho shitheads accidentally shoots another one of you in the face.

Continue reading here…

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· 3:25 AM

Obama 2.0? – President To Progressives: I Won’t Be Held To ‘Some Abstract Ideal’

With all due respect Mr. President, you  said you were  being “held hostage” by the GOP.  Why couldn’t you tell THEM that “you won’t be held to some abstract ideal” like tax cuts for the rich? 

We sure would have appreciated that same fighting spirit you’re exhibiting toward us, your supporters, when you were negotiating with THEM!

Talking Points Memo

In the final question of today’s press conference, President Obama was asked by Jonathan Weisman of the Wall Street Journal how he would respond to Democrats who think he’s compromised too much in agreeing on a two-year extension of all the Bush-era tax cuts — even for the wealthiest Americans — and that they have a hard time figuring out his core principles on what issues he would go to the mat for. Obama then responded forcefully, saying that the positions of such people on the left would result in getting nothing done, except having a “sanctimonious” pride in the purity of their own positions.

The president compared current complaints from progressives to sparring over health care reform, saying that “this is the public option debate all over again.” Then, Obama said, while he was able to pass reform Democrats had fought for for a century, they instead viewed it as “weakness and compromise” that there was no public option. “Now, if that’s the standard by which we are measuring success or core principles, then let’s face it, we will never get anything done.

“This is a big, diverse country,” Obama also said. “Not everybody agrees with us. I know that shocks people.”

“This country was founded on compromise. I couldn’t go through the front door of this country’s founding,” he later added. “And you know, if we were really thinking about ideal positions, we wouldn’t have a Union.”

Towards the end, he declared: “I don’t think there’s a single Democrat out there, who if they looked at where we started when I came into office and look at where we are now, would say that somehow we have not moved in the direction that I promised. Take a tally, look at what I promised during the campaign. There’s not a single thing that I said that I would do that I have not either done or tried to do. And if I have not gotten it done yet, I’m still trying to do it.”

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· 3:21 AM

Olbermann SPECIAL COMMENT: Not Disloyal to Say Obama ‘Goddamned Wrong;’ Republicans ‘Treasonous’

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· 2:00 AM

5 Reasons Palin Will Run

Matt Lattimer, columnist for the Daily Beast lays out an interesting case for why Sarah Palin will run for the Presidency in 2012…

The Daily Beast

Her poll numbers are off, and some GOP bigwigs have come out against her. But Sarah Palin’s fan base could care less. Matt Latimer on what her followers see in her.

The polls don’t look good for Sarah Palin, at least for the moment. The GOP’s professional chatterers—Karl Rove, Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, and most recently Joe Scarborough—fret that she will do to the Republican Party what “Burlesque” has done to Cher. Even the GOP’s royal family—the Bushes of Texas-by-way-of-Greenwich, Connecticut—has taken the rather unusual step of publicly seeking her prompt exile from their club. Bar, in particular, is not amused.

And yet Sarah Palin remains a rank-and-file favorite. Her second book is yet another hit. She has nearly two million more Facebook fans than establishment favorite Mitt Romney, two million more than even former President George W. Bush, and incidentally nearly 300 times as many as Bush’s mother. Supporters have made the reform-minded unknown from the Deep North into an instant millionaire many times over—and they just might make her the GOP nominee. Do Palinistas believe they have a case to make? You betcha. Here are their five top reasons why her nomination might turn out to be a good thing for the Republican Party. 

Continue to read this very interesting article here…

 

Gallery: Sarah Palin’s Future Enemies

 

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