Bad Deeds for 3/15/2010

 

Karl Rove: I can’t stop lying – NBC was the latest stop on Karl Rove’s book tour for ‘Courage and Consequence.’ Revising history has been his main focus recently, and this morning’s interview with Tom Brokaw focused on Iraqi oil revenues.

Addressing a Congressional panel, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz claimed that Iraqi oil revenues would help pay for reconstruction of the country. Sunday, Karl Rove denied the Bush administration ever made that claim.

“[T]he suggestion that somehow or another the administration had as its policy, ‘We’re going to go in to Iraq and take their resources and pay for the war’ is not accurate,” Rove told NBC’s Tom Brokaw.

Wolfowitz’s statement at the time, according to Think Progress was, “The oil revenue of that country could bring between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the course of the next two or three years. We’re dealing with a country that could really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”

 

Sarah Palin: I can’t stop lying – Sarah Palin infected the health care debate with damaging misinformation last year when she claimed the package includes “death panels.” And as Democrats make their final push to enact the bill, she has reiterated it again. Palin coined the term in a Facebook entry last August, leading to heated controversies about the reform effort.

But the notion that the concept exists in any form in the legislation has been debunked by The Associated Press and FactCheck.org, among other organizations. The nonpartisan PolitiFact awarded it “Lie of the Year” in 2009, a testament to its inaccuracy and far-reaching impact.

On Sunday, Palin took to Facebook to revive the claim as it purportedly pertains to the “rationing” of health care. “Government health care will not reduce the cost of medical care; it will simply refuse to pay it,” the former vice presidential candidate wrote. “And who will get left behind when they have to ration care to save money? “Please ask yourself: who will be left behind?” she continued. “And who will decide — what kind of panel will decide — who receives the health care that government will obviously have to ration?”

 

A Sick Conservative Mind – As you may know, Senator Harry Reid’s 69 year old wife and 48 year old daughter were involved in a bad car accident Friday. Normal, decent Americans would ignore what political party they were in and hope the best for them. But this is what Conservative commentator Dan Riehl, who has appeared on CNN), put on his web site:

“Isn’t It Time To Euthanize Reid’s Wife?

I’m not sure I quite understand this, given that cost is so important as a burden to taxpayers when it comes to health care. If Democrats want so badly to abort babies because of it, why are we bothering with someone who has a broken neck and back at 69? It sounds to me like she’s pretty well used up and has probably been living off the taxpayers for plenty of years to begin with. Aren’t we at least going to get a vote on it? …

I realize her crook of a husband and his pals in Congress have excluded themselves from the mess they’re going to compel everyone else to join, but we’re still paying the bills, are we not? I don’t see that she’s worth it at this point, frankly. I can’t recall her ever doing anything for me. Come on, Harry – do your civic duty. The nation’s broke and counting on you guy. Pull the plug and get back to work. And don’t bill us for a full day today, either. This is no time to be sloughing off. Air freight her home, you can bury her during recess on your own time and dime. Or are you going to bill us for that, too?”

 

Corporate Entity Becomes ‘Candidate’, Kicks Off Bid for Congress – When the Supreme Court decided the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, henceforth allowing corporate soft money to influence U.S. elections, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) cynically opined that it would lead to the election of the “congressman from Wal-Mart.”
Turns out, he may be right.

Meet Murray Hill, Inc., the first corporation to run for Congress in the United States. The corporate candidate already has its own Web site, a Facebook page with 2,600 fans and an online ad on YouTube.

“Until now, corporations only influenced politics with high-paid lobbyists and backroom deals,” the company’s YouTube account declares. “But today, thanks to an enlightened supreme court, corporations now have all the rights the founding fathers meant for us. That’s why Murray Hill Incorporated is taking democracy’s next step– running for Congress.”

Hill said in a statement that its campaign would put people “second, or even third.”

 

Texas Approves Radical Right-Wing History Books – For the next ten years, millions of students in Texas and across the country will read history textbooks suggesting that the actions of witch-hunt instigator Joseph McCarthy were justified. They will read about religious icon John Calvin instead of Thomas Jefferson (Hint: Jefferson wasn’t an orthodox Christian and considered himself a man of enlightenment and reason). They will read a description of the US government that includes the words “constitutional republic” but not the word “democratic.”

These are just a few of the changes an ultra right-wing Texas Education Board has tentatively approved for the state’s history curriculum. There is one more stage for approval, but the board voted yes to the changes in a 10-5 vote. That’s 10 Republicans voting yes and 5 Democrats voting no, making the chances for reevaluation almost negligible.

Once fully approved, it will be a decade before the board reviews the curriculum again.
Most of the board’s members make no secret of their intent to instill their own religious and political ideologies into public schools, and the consequences of their activism have far-reaching consequences.

Texas buys so many of the country’s textbooks that publishers tailor their books to match its standards as closely as possible. In other words, students in Rhode Island and Texas could be reading about the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation’s Founding Fathers at the same time. But they won’t be reading about the rationale for a separation of church and state. That’s gone, too.

But, there’s always Fox News to offer the counterbalance. In an article titled “Expert: Reagan gets the shaft in textbooks,” Professor Larry Schweikart says the quality of a textbook can be ascertained with the “Reagan test”. If it has President Ronald Reagan, it’s a winner.
( See how simple everything is when you’re a Conservative. Eliminate all that worry about accuracy, just do the Reagan test. – JLV)

 

Why Does Glenn Beck Hate Jesus? – Christian Conservatives have this internal conflict between their Christian teachings and their Conservative everyday lives, but they usually ignore it. But Glenn Beck has stirred things up with his statements saying, that they should “run as fast as you can” from any church that preached “social or economic justice” because those were code words for Communism and Nazism.

He also managed to bring the National Council of Churches–once a powerful umbrella organization for Christian churches–out from hibernation, in the form of a withering response from leader Peg Chemberlin. Progressive evangelical leader Jim Wallis, taking a page from his conservative counterparts, is calling for Christians to boycott Beck’s shows. And Beck has given the folks who come up with slogans every week for church signs plenty of material to work with.

More on this subject at: The Ultimate Contradiction-in-Terms: Right-wing Christianity

 

The Vile Plutocrat: a Website That Exposes the Bad Deeds of the Rich – Despite the high-minded ideals of our founding forefathers and the basic liberties they sought to protect for the common man, we are a culture built on a foundation of greed and corruption.

We pretend to be disgusted with foreign cultures employing social systems that arrange status by class, yet we are blind to the way capitalism has created the same stratifications within our own society.

As a people, we revere wealth and privilege to the point of absurdity … to the point of making excuses for the indiscretions and abominations of those individuals lucky enough to hit life’s financial lottery. We envy wealth so enthusiastically that we delude ourselves into believing that “hard work” will make us all rich beyond our wildest dreams without taking the time to notice how our wealthy came to their lot in life. Extreme wealth is canonized and hero-sized to the point that we allow entitlement to usurp common sense consensus issues like universal health care, educational opportunities, retirement, living wages, legal issues, taxes, fair treatment under the law, and the political process.

History has shown that the only societies that stand the test of time are those societies capable of recognizing that a strong, healthy, happy, educated, and financially secure middle-class is the only way to guarantee a stable future for all.

 

Spineless Democrats: But This Guy is Not One of Them – Speaking in Orlando on Friday, Palin said she “got to meet quite a few candidates who are lining up in a contested primary who want to take out Alan Grayson.” She added: “What can you say about Alan Grayson? Piper is with me tonight, so I won’t say anything about Alan Grayson that can’t be said around children.” This is where Palin should have remembered, don’t mess with Alan Grayson.

Grayson’s email reply was straight to the point. He began by referring to Palin as “the former half-term Governor, current-nothing and future-even-less,” and snapped, “Atypically, Palin was wearing clothes that she had paid for herself.”

In response to Palin’s attack on Rep Grayson, Grayson actually complimented Palin. Grayson praised Palin for having a hand large enough to write Grayson’s entire name on it. He thanked Palin for alleviating the growing shortage of platitudes in Central Florida. Grayson added that Palin deserved credit for getting through the entire hour-long program without quitting. Grayson also said that Palin really had mastered Palin’s imitation of Tina Fey imitating Palin. Grayson observed that Palin is the most-intelligent leader that the Republican Party has produced since George W. Bush.

Grayson said that the “Alaskan chillbilly” was welcome to return to Central Florida anytime, as long as she brings lots of money with her, and spends it. “I look forward to an honest debate with Governor Palin on the issues, in the unlikely event that she ever learns anything about them,” Grayson added, alluding to Politifact’s “liar, liar, pants on fire” evaluation of much of what Palin has said. “Scientists are studying Sarah Palin’s travel between Alaska and Florida carefully. They hope to learn more about the flight patterns of that elusive migratory species, the wild Alaskan dingbat.”

 

How to Bribe a Supreme Court Justice – The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has organized a political non-profit linked to Tea Party activists whose activities can be supported to an unlimited extent by corporations whose donations need not be disclosed to the public. Similarly, Mrs. Thomas is under no obligation to disclose her compensation to anybody.

Mrs. Thomas’ own biography reveals that she has been employed by a series of right wing organizations — an entity controlled by former Congressman Dick Armey, whose FreedomWorks is much of the money behind the Tea Party gatherings, Hillsdale College (well known as a favorite of hard right students), the Heritage Foundation, and the Chamber of Commerce, the preeminent purveyor of laundered corporate money. None of these organizations need reveal their corporate backers.

Regards,

Jim