The Republican Hopefuls?

The list of potential Republican candidates is shrinking in light of the recent announcements by political pundit Mike Huckabee and talk show host Donald Trump that they will not run for the office of the President in 2012. Rachel Maddow commented that many of the possible Republican candidates aren't viable other than Gov.Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) and Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN). Although Gov. Daniels has not even announced that he is a contender for the position, Maddow focused on Daniels and his social conservative policies.

To emphasis her point, especially to the men in the audience, Rachel equated preventative medicine with preventative maintenance. This was Rachel's way of bringing out the fact that Daniels has prevented all money in the state of Indiana to fund Planned Parenthood. This is Daniels' way to appeal to social conservatives. His actions have absolutely nothing to do with abortion, because abortions cannot be paid for with federal funds, The lack of funding realistically prevents any woman on medicaid from going to Planned Parenthood for any medical reason. It has to do with maintenance.

Rachel took to the man cave last night in an effort to explain to guys the real-world effects of Mr. Daniels' decision to pull all funding from Planned Parenthood:

"Every 3,000 miles, you know what I'm talking about, right? Every 3,000 miles, oil change. Every 6,000 miles, rotate your tires. At a certain number of miles, you check the brakes, you check the differential maybe the spark plugs you can check at home depending on your skill level.

"But when it comes to getting an alignment, rebalancing your wheels and all that stuff, basically speaking, you take it in. Not because there's anything wrong with your vehicle, fellows. It's just preventive maintenance. Preventive maintenance, Planned Parenthood Oil change, breast exam. Rotate your tires -- can I say pap smears on TV?

"Imagine that Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana is the fleet manager of, say, 9,000 cars in the state of Indiana. And he's just decided that those cars -- no more oil changes, no more checking the spark plugs, no more tire rotations, no more preventive maintenance.

"There are more than 9,000 people in Indiana whose health insurance is Medicaid, and who get their preventive care, who get their 3,000-mile check ups at Planned Parenthood.

"Because Mitch Daniels can mess with that as a governor and because he wants social conservatives to like him for president, those 9,000 Indiana patients have just been cut off from their preventive care. Breast exams, STD screenings, pap smears, birth control, all of it. This is not about abortion. There's not any public funding for abortion. It's not about cutting off abortion services in Indiana.

"This is about cutting off the proverbial oil changes, preventive care. If you want to be irresponsible with your vehicle, if you want to be penny wise and pound foolish, you stop going to Jiffy Lube, stop doing any preventive maintenance on your car. When your car inevitably breaks down, you will know why it happened."

Watch the entire episode. The first part deals with the field of potential Republican contenders. The information about Gov Daniels begins at about 7:30. The man cave moment begins at about 10:30. WATCH:

Beware of the "Fiscal Crisis Pretext"

VIA The Nation: The Rachel Maddow Show recently spoke to Naomi Klein regarding Wisconsin's Shock Doctrine. Klein believes that the issue in Wisconsin is really about "who is going to pay for the crisis created by the wealthiest elite in this country.”

At a time when Citizen’s United has made it possible for corporations to dominate the political arena, unions serve as the last line of defense against the privatization of the public sector and as one of the few remaining voices for the working class. That's why the right is trying to take labor down. The Nation’s Naomi Klein joined MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show last night to talk about how the GOP has manipulated the current financial situation to push through unpopular policies that would have never gotten them elected.

Wisconsin isn't alone in their fight against the GOP's attempt to end collective bargaining for public workers: sixteen states currently face similar assaults. A particularly egregious bill that recently got an OK from Michigan’s House of Representatives would allow the governor to declare a state of emergency on any city, town or school district, in which the governor could then appoint an emergency power that could dismantle contracts and dismiss elected officials. The most frightening thing about this proposal: it could be used to put a corporation in charge of a whole city. According to Klein, conservatives are trying to consolidate power so that they can begin auctioning off public services, and in Michigan's case, entire municipalities.

“What this fight is really about is not unions vs. taxpayers, as we’ve been told. It’s a fight about who is going to pay for the crisis created by the wealthiest elite in this country,” Klein says. “Is it going to be regular working people? Or is it going to be the people who created this crisis? That’s the debate we need to have.”

The state of the States can be compared with several nursery rhymes. The fable, Chicken Little, Sky is Falling is about chicken who was walking, when something fell on his head. He immediately assumes it was the sky that fell and therefore the world is coming to an end. Throughout the fable, Chicken Little continually repeats the phrase, "The sky is falling!" The phrase has come to represent an hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent.

In Aesop's fable, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, a Shepard boy continually cries "Wolf! Wolf!" and when the villagers come to his help they find the boy laughing at them. Of course, when a wolf actually attacks the boy's flock, the villagers don't believe his cries for help and the sheep are destroyed. In the Aesop's fable, the moral of the story is that, 'Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed'. Therefore, 'to cry wolf', has come to mean, a false alarm.

These two fables represent the behaviors that the party is exhibiting across the nation. First, the Republicans are crying that "The sky is falling" by claiming a fiscal crisis is not only imminent but will cause the collapse of our economy. Then after screaming "Wolf! Wolf!" we now know that their cries of danger have no basis in fact.

Rachel Tells It Like It Is

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Falling for False News

Once again, the story making the rounds on cable news and in the main-steam media is a fabricated story about racism. Shouldn't the emphasis of this story be focused on the person who manipulated the information? Shouldn't the anger be focused on the lies that were touted as truth. Shouldn't the outrage be directed at the pervasive fake news that dominates right-wing media, blogs and pundits. Shouldn't the focus be on the scumbag who doctored the video tape? Instead, the emphasis has been on the allegation that the administration's actions stemmed from their fear of Fox News.

Jonathan Alter has a different take on this story. He believes the Obama Administration mishandled this fabricated scandal in order to create a "no distraction" zone.

How could the White House have screwed up so badly in the case of Shirley Sherrod, the Georgia USDA official who Wednesday received an apology from the Obama administration (through Robert Gibbs and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack)?

Sherrod was the victim of a smear by the right-wing agent provocateur Andrew Breitbart and his fellow travelers at Fox News. (Yes, that side has adopted some Leninist tactics, as conservative antitax activist Grover Norquist has admitted over the years.) They took a two-and-a-half-minute clip from Sherrod's address to the NAACP and used it to depict her as a black racist who discriminated years ago against a white farmer. It turns out the farmer thought Sherrod had been a terrific help, and a full review of Sherrod's speech suggests that, far from being a racist, she had honestly (and successfully) worked through the complex racial preconceptions we all carry around in our heads.

The NAACP, which says it was "snookered" by Breitbart, acted first and asked questions later. This gave Vilsack and the White House cover to do the same. Only when Sherrod was allowed to defend herself on legitimate news programs (i.e., not on Fox) was the administration's rash and unjust firing fully exposed. So-called journalists didn't do the most elemental checking before running with the story.

The question is, why? Are the president and his team cowed by right-wingers? Doubtful. It seems more likely that the White House's astonishingly ham-handed response to this matter was the result of overreacting to criticism that Obama has suffered recently for his slow political reflexes. Combine that with a firm policy of "no distractions" and you have a recipe for a political hash and serious embarrassment.

To understand this story, you have to go back to the sacking of Van Jones, a midlevel White House aide of little importance (he worked on weatherizing inner-city homes) who was pilloried for days last year for signing a 2002 we-had-it-coming-on-9/11 petition. Fox made it seem as though this was the most critical issue facing America. The White House rightly concluded that Jones had to go and regretted having let the topic dominate Fox News and leach into the rest of the press. Better to have cut their losses earlier, aides concluded in retrospect. Then on Christmas Day with the case of the "underpants bomber" and again in May with the BP oil spill, Obama was legitimately criticized for not moving quickly enough to reassure the country and get on top of the story.

So now we come to the week of July 19, which was supposed to be all about the signing Wednesday of the financial-regulation bill, the largest piece of legislation regulating markets in 75 years. A secondary theme for the White House was the difference between the parties on extending unemployment benefits. In other words, real issues that affect real people, not cable flaps of little or no lasting consequence. So the White House had hoped to cut its losses on the Sherrod story.

"No distractions" has been Obama's mantra from the beginning. For most of 2009 and early 2010, this meant nothing was to distract from health care. It's not that Obama doesn't think race issues are significant—he has no trouble identifying himself as a proud African-American president—but he gets very irritated at having a racial conversation forced on him, especially by right-wingers. He wants to decide for himself when and where to discuss sensitive issues. But that's where Obama the control freak runs up against the realities of Washington. He can't always control the timing of public discussion, and when his administration neglects basic staff research (not to mention basic fairness to Sherrod), he looks lame. The policy of "no distractions" led to a big distraction—and another example of how the supposedly slick Chicago political operators are often all thumbs.

The news has been dominated by the Obama Administration's faux pas that accepted this negative false information as fact and did not sufficiently check for truth. That aspect should be highlighted but it should not be the only story told.

Now, there's a story! Rachel Maddox explains.

WATCH:

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Time To Chill

Inflammatory language has become the norm for the Republican Party. Whether the leaders of Congress actually mean what they say is not the point. The lack of civility is turning into negative actions by their followers.

It began with racial epithets and homophobic slurs. Democrats in Congress have received threatening letters. They have had bricks thrown through their office windows. Is this vandalism or terrorism?

Rachel Maddow dedicated her show to the issue of 'Intimidation.' WATCH:

The Republicans tried to explain the reasons for the anger before they acknowledged the inappropriateness of the actions.

Rachel Maddow has an excellent analogy of the situation. "If you set a brush fire you are responsible for where it goes and where it burns." The politicians and conservative talking heads need to be responsible and accountable for the violence that is erupting.

Via Crooks and Liars: "We get to vote every couple of years or so. Violence is for dictatorships, not democracies. Like it or not, they're not going to turn the US into Teabagistan, no matter how hard they wish it, or how nasty they get."

LIES: GOP Style

Rachel Maddow on blatant hypocrisy and falsehoods...

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The Olympics of Congress

Rep. Anthony Weiner takes it to the GOP, by calling them a ‘wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry.” on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
—it was a thing of beauty.

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Rachel Maddow to Democrats: Do It Alone!!!!

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow: Hope for GOP good faith?

Charging Republicans with hypocrisy...is like trying to teach your dog to drive.  It doesn't work!

Protesting with a Song

American's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) is the powerful insurance lobby that spends 5 million dollars a week trying to kill health care reform. Billionaires for Wealthcare is a grassroots network looking to stop them - with song. •...



Rachel Maddow has info on Billionaires for Wealthcare and suggests that they are the antidote for the 9/12'ers. WATCH:

"Thank you for supporting the billionaires, woooo!" "We want the status quo!" "The status quo IS wealthcare!" they shouted.

Allowing a Vote on Health Reform

From Rachel Maddow:

"Two major powerbrokers on the left…are encouraging a Senate strategy in which the leadership would revoke chairmanships and other leadership positions from any Democrat who sides with a Republican filibuster to block a vote on health reform.

PETITION TO SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID:

"Any Democratic senators who support a Republican attempt to block a vote on health care reform should be stripped of their leadership titles. Americans deserve a clean up-or-down vote on health care."

Over 12,000 people have signed -- can we break 20,000?

Click HERE to sign a petition to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in support of this idea.

Rachel Maddow Corrects the Record on Race

Rachel corrects misstatements of Pat Buchanan:

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Prolonged Detention: Stunning!

'Prolonged Detention' is more than a catch phrase from the Obama Administration.

Glenn Greenwald has an in depth and interesting overview of the, Facts and myths about Obama's preventive detention proposal.

White House Counsel Greg Craig told The New Yorker's Jane Mayer in February:

"It’s possible but hard to imagine Barack Obama as the first President of the United States to introduce a preventive-detention law," Craig said. "Our presumption is that there is no need to create a whole new system. Our system is very capable."

The New Yorker's Amy Davidson compares Obama's detention proposal to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Hilzoy, of The Washington Monthly, writes:

"If we don't have enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, we don't have enough evidence to hold them. Period" and "the power to detain people without filing criminal charges against them is a dictatorial power."

Salon's Joan Walsh quotes the Center for Constitutional Rights' Vincent Warren as saying:

"They’re creating, essentially, an American Gulag."

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch says of Obama's proposal:

"What he's proposing is against one of this country's core principles" and "this is why people need to keep the pressure on Obama -- even those inclined to view his presidency favorably."

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder -- who is as close to the Obama White House as any journalist around -- makes an important point about Obama that I really wish more of his supporters would appreciate:

[Obama] was blunt [in his meeting with civil libertiarians]; the [military commissions] are a fait accompli, so the civil libertarians can either help Congress and the White House figure out the best way to protect the rights of the accused within the framework of that decision, or they can remain on the outside, as agitators. That's not meant to be pejorative; whereas the White House does not give a scintilla of attention to its right-wing critics, it does read, and will read, everything Glenn Greenwald writes. Obama, according to an administration official, finds this outside pressure healthy and useful.

Rachel Maddow finds this proposal from Obama not only contradictory but stunning. WATCH:

During the Bush/Cheney Administration, on many occasions I used the following phrase.

"If you aren't completely appalled then you haven't been paying attention."

I am now saddened to use it during the Obama Administration. But I do believe that Glenn Greenwald is correct when he states:

It's not just the right, but the duty, of citizens to pressure and criticize political leaders when they adopt policies that one finds objectionable or destructive. Criticism of this sort is a vital check on political leaders -- a key way to impose accountability -- and Obama himself has said as much many times before.

It has nothing to do with personalities or allegiances. It doesn't matter if one "likes" or "trusts" Obama or thinks he's a good or bad person. That's all irrelevant. The only thing that matters is whether one thinks that the actions he's undertaking are helpful or harmful. If they're harmful, one should criticize them. Where, as here, they're very harmful and dangerous, one should criticize them loudly. Obama himself, according to Ambinder, "finds this outside pressure healthy and useful." And it is. It's not only healthy and useful but absolutely vital.

The Cheney 'Alternative Reality' Plan

Former VP Dick Cheney has been "everywhere" in the media. He has been speaking of enhanced interrogation, otherwise known as 'torture'. WATCH:

As Rachel Maddow points out, Cheney is on his "torture works" tour. There is much speculation as to the effect or reason for Cheney's public re-emergence.

Steve Benen thinks that Cheney might have an eye on the 2012 Presidency.

Maureen Dowd who calls the VP the "Rogue Diva of Doom" says that Cheney's antics will pull the GOP down a "black hole of zealotry."

A “dismayed” Republican remarked: “We’re trying to turn the page and he’s climbing out of the grave to haunt us.”

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) declared that nothing in those memos suggests that torture was the most effective way to gain information:

Nothing I have seen — including the two documents to which former Vice President Cheney has repeatedly referred — indicates that the torture techniques authorized by the last administration were necessary, or that they were the best way to get information out of detainees. The former vice president is misleading the American people when he says otherwise.

A former FBI man who interrogated an al-Qaida leader said Wednesday extreme techniques used by the Bush administration were "ineffective, slow and unreliable" and caused the prisoner to stop talking.

So why is Cheney doing this?

A Time article speculates:

Cheney is clearly troubled both by Obama's rollback of the policies he championed and the buzz on the left that a sitting President might prosecute a predecessor who took those policies too far. [...]

Cheney is "trying to rewrite history," says a Republican consultant who has experience in intelligence matters. [...]

What's quite clear about Cheney's sudden chatty spree is that he wants to refocus the question about waterboarding and other interrogation techniques from whether they were legal to whether they worked. [...]

A far darker explanation for the spring offensive isn't about the past but the future. Obama officials have spied something like a set-up in Cheney's latest gambit. One of the Bush team's biggest talking points in its final days in office was an insistence that its greatest accomplishment was preventing a second attack in the years after Sept. 11. By laying down the charge now that Obama has made the country less safe, the Bush team may be able to point fingers of blame if a second attack ever comes.

Cheney speaks of the Bush Administration successfully defending the nation "for 7 1/2 years" after 9/11. But he forgets that 9/11 happened on the Bush/Cheney watch.

Another explanation ties in with the theory that Cheney is "trying to rewrite history." Cheney, Bush and Rove have been masters of presenting an alternative reality. It doesn't matter that a former FBI interrogator states that the Bush interrogation techniques were 'ineffective or unreliable.' It doesn't matter if memos or an investigation shows that Cheney is wrong about torture. Cheney knows that by flooding the airwaves week after week, he has already created his own reality on the issue of enhanced interrogation or torture and there are people who believe him.

By being so insistent that these interrogation techniques work he has created uncertainty.

Tea Parties are for Kids

Rachel Maddow weighs in on the Republican planned tea parties later this week, in opposition to the Obama Administration's economic policies. WATCH:

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The kids should grow-up!

The Necessity of Accountability: UPDATE

Both of these videos should be watched:

The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh claims the Bush administration had a secret operations unit with authority to take out targets across the globe. Source: CNN

Rachel Maddow: Obama Strikes Back

Jonathan Turley "Obama Should Appoint a Special Prosecutor"

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UPDATE: Former Cheney Aide Suggests That Hersh’s Account Of ‘Executive Assassination Ring’ Is ‘Certainly True’

The Kings of Deregulation

Did anyone see it coming? The economic crisis that we all face. Remember, one day money was freely flowing and then the next day we were told that the sky was falling.

It seems that Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) saw it coming back in 1999. That's when he voted against the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, named after Sen Phil Gramm. Back then, not only did Republicans support deregulation but Democrats did too. This bill had the full support of President Clinton, Bob Rubin and Larry Summers.

Let's not forget about the Glass-Steagall Act. It was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act and many of the protections put in place after the Great Depression. This was all under the watch of Republican Democratic President Bill Clinton.

Many believe that the major cause of the current banking meltdown was the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.

The Glass-Steagall Act, passed in 1933, mandated the separation of commercial and investment banking in order to protect depositors from the hazards of risky investment and speculation. It worked fine for fifty years until the banking industry began lobbying for its repeal during the 1980s, the go-go years of Reaganesque market fundamentalism, an outlook embraced wholeheartedly by mainstream Democrats under the rubric "neoliberalism."

This disgraceful bow to the banking industry, eagerly signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1999, bears a major share of responsibility for the current banking crisis.

Sen. Byron Dorgan was recently on The "Rachel Maddow Show" and spoke about those who got deregulation terribly wrong -- and the small handful who saw the disastrous consequences coming a decade ago. Dorgan also spoke of the need for regulation. Watch:

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The New Anti-Progressive Caucus

It started when Sen Evan Bayh (D-IN) was on Morning Joe and admitted the formation of the senate version of the bluedog democrats.

Rachel Maddow picked up on this and dubbed the group "Conservadems." Led by Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana the purpose, as Maddow puts it, is "torpedoing their party's own agenda." Rachel mused, "Who needs Republicans when you have Domcrats like these?" WATCH:

According to Democratic Underground:

Fifteen people calling themselves Democrats who are actively supporting the Republican agenda. Fifteen people who are blocking any movement in a progressive direction by the new administration, by teaming up with obstructionist Republicans.

That's 15.

Evan Bayh (IN)
Tom Carper (DE)
Blanche Lincoln (AR)
Ben Nelson (NE)
Bill Nelson (FL)
Mark Udall (CO)
Claire McCaskill (MO)
Mary Landrieu (LA)
Kay Hagan (NC)
Mark Begich (AK)
Joe Lieberman (CT)
Michael Bennet (CO)
Herb Kohl (WI)
Jeanne Shaheen (NH)
Mark Warner (VA)

Matthew Yglesias weighed in on the topic:

It’s been known for a while now that Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) has been planning to form a caucus of “moderate” Senate Democrats hoping to soak up special interest cash in exchange for blocking the progressive agenda. I’m told he more formally announced the formation of this group this morning, on Morning Joe, to acclaim from Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan.

It’s nice to see that Bayh isn’t even pretending that what he’s advancing is some alternative vision of progressive change—it’s something he expects, rightly, die-hard rightwingers to find pleasant.

The hilarious catch, however, is that when Bayh was asked to name the members of his new Obstruction Caucus he couldn’t name them all. Apparently “three or four” members of the group are part of a Chickenshit Subcaucus who want to block the change America needs but don’t want to be publicly identified as belonging to the group! After all, Barack Obama is popular! And his agenda is popular! So if you choose to oppose it, you might face political problems. So better to keep the sabotage secret. WATCH:

Stunning!!!

Rachel Maddow goes Ga-Ga over Ba-Ba Bobby Jindal

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Rachel Maddow calls Bull Puckey!!

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Rachel Maddow: Republicans may not like it but the way to create jobs fast is through spending. It matters when you're wrong. A whopping proportion of the Republican rhetoric about stimulus is wrong - total economic bull puckey. It's time to take the radical step of privileging correct information over incorrect information.

Here is the key portion of the transcript via Washington Monthly:

"Cutting food-stamp funding to attract Republican support is proof positive that the Republicans are not trying to come up with an effective stimulus here. If your house is on fire, and you call your fire department, and your fire department tells you to pour gasoline on the flames, they're not actually making a good-faith effort to help you put out the fire. They're not a good fire department.

"If you're working up policy to fix an economic crisis, which is characterized by there being no spending in the economy, and someone in that debate says, 'OK, but cut the spending out of the rescue plan,' they're bad at making policy.

"And you know what? It matters when you're wrong. A whopping proportion of the Republican rhetoric about stimulus is wrong.... It's just wrong. The time is now to take the radical step, as Americans -- as civic-minded Americans concerned about our future -- it's time to take the radical step of privileging correct information over incorrect information....

"If you are wrong, from here on out, you should lose the argument and you should lose your political potency. Form a flat-earthers club or something, where you talk enthusiastically to each other about your made-up economic ideas that aren't based in reality. But get out of the way of the people who are actually trying to save the country."

Rachel's got it Right! The President's got it Right!

So what do you say to all of the politians, Republicans, Democrats, bipartisan or not, who want to cut more money from the stimulus plan....Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha...Bull Puckey!!!