GOP KoolAid Cooler

RS3M* at Full Throttle

*Repug, or in this case, Rove, Spin, Slime, & Smear Machine.

Think Progress, with comments.

On Fox News this afternoon, Karl Rove insisted that “this crew” in the White House has caused the collapse of the market, faulting the Obama administration for the economic crisis. He blamed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in particular, saying Geithner could not point fingers at the previous administration because he was one of the three people who made the decision to bail out the banks in the first place, with last fall’s TARP.

In fact, Rove declared that only three people made the decision about the bank bailout — and none of them were then-President Bush:

Look, Geithner was sitting in the room, last year. Three people made the decision about the bank rescue package: Geithner, Ben Bernanke, and Hank Paulson, the Treasury Secretary.

Rove added that those three “unanimously made those decisions about the bank rescue.” Apparently they simply informed then-President Bush of their decision to give $700 billion to banks after the fact. Watch it:

Puke first.

Ironically, during the same interview, Rove declared that the Obama administration has “got to start accepting responsibility for the outcome of their decisions” — seconds before suggesting that Bush didn’t even play a role in one of the most consequential decisions of his presidency.

Apparently Bush wasn’t really “the decider” after all.

Remember, everything before November 4, 2008 was Clinton's fault, and everything after is Obama's.

A coupla comments:

Lemme get this straight. Obama is responsible for everything that happens BEFORE he takes office, including the carnage left from disasters he inherited, but Bush is blameless for everything that happened on his watch, including disasters caused directly by his faulty policies?

Oh yeah — IOKIYAR.

Standard Operating Procedure for that White House. Others, especially DICK Cheney, told the “high functioning moron” what to do and he unquestioningly did it.

That's about the size of it.

Quote of the Day

Charles M. Blow, NYT op-ed on the Repugs:

And who has surfaced as their saviors? Bobby Jindal, Michael Steele and Rush Limbaugh — the axis of drivel. (my em)

Perfect!

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Obama Mulls Reaching Out to Taliban
Based on warm reception he received from Republicans.

Bush DOJ Secret Memos Cancelled Constitutional Rights
But only because our freedoms were threatened.

Still More Secret Bush Memos Released
In one, grants himself pardon in case anyone finds out about memos.

Supreme Court Sides With Consumers Against Drug Manufacturers
6 justices apparently off their meds.

Asteroid Just Misses Earth, Averting Catastrophe
Although financial mess would have cleared up pretty fast.

Good thing it missed. The Repugs would have blamed Obama.

One in Every 31 Adults in Prison
Rest still at large.

Sunday Crazy Redneck Music Blogging

U.S. 40, aka the 'Lincoln Highway', the first automobile road across America, is the main street of the town I live in. Parts of it are in original condition, but this song ain't about busted shock absorbers. Heh.

Buck Norris (of the BCB Band) ~ Highway 40 Blues

Thanks, Buck.

NuRPS

Termite58 gives a nice history of this group. Click on the video after it starts and it will take you to YouTube, then click 'more info'. Lead-in:

Formed in 1969, the New Riders of the Purple Sage was initially envisaged as a part-time spin-off from the Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia (pedal steel guitar), Phill Lesh (bass) and Mickey Hart (drums...

New Riders of the Purple Sage ~ Lonesome L.A. Cowboy

The First American Dictator

I got no idea who Bruce Mulkey is, but he tamps Bush's crap into a nice, neat brick:

What are the dictatorial powers bestowed on George W. Bush by the previously-undisclosed DOJ memos? He had the power to:

1. Deploy the U.S. military inside the U.S.
2. Order foreigners and citizens alike arrested and held indefinitely without charges
3. Command the military to search citizens’ homes
4. Instruct the NSA to spy on citizens, listen in on their phone calls and read their emails
5. Suspend freedom of speech and freedom of the press

Apparently he only got around to implementing #2 and #4, but god only knows what he’d done if there had been another terrorist attack on American soil.

Since the election of President Obama, I had decided to relegate Bush and his associates to history, preferring to participate in bringing about change in my community and in our nation. But these memos reveal duplicitous and treasonous behavior, and DOJ officials have indicated that there is more damning evidence yet to be released.

The men and women responsible for these illegal and immoral acts must be held accountable. They, and others who might emulate them, need to know that we, the citizens of this nation, will not stand for further desecration of our civil liberties. They need to be held up as examples so that others will be loath to go down this path again. Bush and his pals need to do be investigated, indicted, convicted and imprisoned, for these men and women were the true terrorists, and they came closer to eradicating American democracy than Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda ever will.

I have nothing to add to that.

I'm surprised the needle isn't wrapped around the pin...

Reminder!

I'm still working on the blogroll so if your blog ain't listed in the right hand sidebar already, drop me an email so I can include it (and thank you to those who've already done so). I should have everything up and running by tomorrow.

Hillary gives Russkies wrong Red Button!

The Swamp

What's a little humor between Doomsday players?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went for a little joke today about resetting relations with the Russians, but it turned out the joke was on her.

Clinton, presenting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a gift-wrapped "reset" button, called the "little gift" symbolic of what President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have been saying about the U.S. and Russia.

""We want to reset our relationship," she said.

Yet something may have been lost in translation in the gift before closed-door talks in Geneva. The word on the button was meant to say "reset" in Russian.

"We worked hard to get the right Russian word," Clinton told Lavrov. "Do you think we got it?"

"You got it wrong," Lavrov replied - the word actually means "overcharge.''

"We won't let you do that to us," Clinton said, with the two laughing.

Shit, anybody can confuse перезапуск* and перезаряд. I do it all the time. Those may not be the exact words they got confused, but given the literary license I have proclaimed for myself, sort of borrowing from Bush, the 'unitary smartass' theory, they're close enough.

I'm glad Hil and the Russian gent got such a good laugh over an object that has come to symbolize nuclear holocaust. Laughter is a good thing, and if the joke was on Hil, so what? She's a good sport and we need a little levity after Bush's Russian 'policy' of 'Let's have a new Cold War! Whee!'.

I think we should get many, many copies of the button with 'overcharge' on it and give them out to Bush and the Repugs' corporate and financial cronies, from Wall Street to Blackwater and beyond. I think we should also wire the buttons, so if they push them...Poof! Then we can 'reset'.

*Sounds like trying to get yer car started with the help of the gardener - "Hey, Perez, poooosh!"

Saturday Central Coast Redneck Music Blogging

Some nice scenery along California's Central Coast from about Santa Barbara to Salinas. I think the train is Amtrak's Coast Starlight.

Dan Tyminski also plays with Alison Krauss and Union Station and was George Clooney's singing voice in O Brother Where Art Thou which is one of the best movies ever, IMNSHO.

Dan Tyminski ~ Wheels

Thanks to nshields and Rounder Records, one of the better record companies.

Saturday Off The Hook Hip-Hop Metaphorical Music Blogging

I've liked Harry Belafonte and Calypso music for fifty years, and it's amazing how old things get seen in a new light with the passage of time. This song is a perfect metaphor, albeit a mite bright and cheery, for what the Repugs and their corporate and financial cohorts, 'Matilda', are doing to us, '...she take me money an' run Venezuela'. Long at 9:31 and worth every second!

Harry Belafonte ~ Matilda

Thanks to WelllExcuuuseMeee.

Republicans battle a truth commission

Well, yeaaahhhhh. So what's new? The Repugs have been waging a war on truth in all its forms since I can remember. Oh, I know what's new! This time, some of 'em might go to jail!

Joan Walsh. Links at site.

Republicans rolled out their arguments against a "Truth Commission" to investigate Bush-era interrogation and detention issues at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today. They're pretty predictable.

[...] Sen. John Cornyn insisted Congress has already investigated all these allegations and a commission would be "an indictment of congressional oversight responsibilities." Yes, Sen. Cornyn, it would be.

Rivkin is an interesting figure: He's never met a Bush power grab or anti-terror policy he couldn't defend. [...]

So according to Rivkin, other countries can't prosecute such abuses, only we can. But we shouldn't. Got it.

Two-thirds of the American people want to see some kind of investigation (a plurality prefer a criminal probe to a mere fact-finding commission). The Democrats can't get away with doing nothing after this lawless eight years. They can't let stand Bush officials' claims to be above the law. That conception of the absolute power of the presidency to violate human rights and break the law was rejected last November. I think Leahy is looking to start with what he can get. We'll see how far this crusade goes.

It'll go farther if we keep pushing it, like pushing a car that's stuck in a mudhole. The Repugs are the mudhole and it's gonna take a lot of shoulders against the trunk lid.

Neocons Wage War on a 'Realist'

Robert Parry with today's 'must read'.

In a normal world, people in Washington might welcome the hiring of a “realist” to oversee the production of U.S. intelligence analyses, with the hope that even if the truth doesn’t set you free, it at least might be the foundation for sound policies.

But that is not the world in which the United States finds itself. In today’s Washington, the city’s preeminent newspaper publishes a neoconservative attack on President Barack Obama’s choice to oversee intelligence analyses because the person is a “realist.”

Freeman’s chief offense, according to The New Republic’s Jon Chait in a Washington Post op-ed, is that the appointee is “an ideological fanatic” because Freeman believes excessively in “realism” and fails to apply a moral filter when looking at the world.

In Chait’s neocon critique, “realism” is not simply a hard assessment of what today's challenges are; it is an “ideology” – and thus open to dismissal as simply a competitive way of understanding the world.

Oh yeah, like the neocons 'understand the world' real well. Yeesh. Maybe Disney World. Fantasyland. Fine. Keep 'em out of politics and positions of power.

The neocons, who are essentially right-wing intellectuals wanting to bend U.S. government policy in directions that fit their ideological interests, recognized early on that seizing the main levers of information inside Washington was crucial. So, they took aim at two targets in particular: the CIA’s analytical division and national journalists.

But the neocons and the Right launched a fierce attack against Freeman because he threatens their influence over U.S. intelligence estimates and thus their ability to exaggerate dangers and to manage the perceptions of politicians and the public.

So, as Chait does in his Post op-ed, the neocons have transformed Freeman’s realism into evidence that “he’s an ideological fanatic.”

Go read how this applies to our Israel policy. Here's a tease:

But Chait’s real beef with Freeman appears to be that he thinks the “Israel Lobby” actually exists in Washington. It is a staple of neocon rhetoric that anyone who observes the political clout of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or other influential pro-Israel groups must be an enemy of Israel.

If you acknowledge it, or admit you see it, you're an enemy of Israel.

Folks, this is the crux of the biscuit when it comes to neocons and misguided Middle East policy. Go read the rest, please.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

I've posted this song before, but not this performance.

Royal Albert Hall 1995

Emmylou Harris ~ One Of These Days

Thanks to onebarton2

Adapt, Improvise, and Overcome

Young Marines today are a lot smarter than in my day. I never heard of this, and if anybody did, they weren't talkin'.

Ladies, we love you and respect you, but this is typical bratty guy stuff. Please don't go.

Bitch Slaps, Butt Boys, and Kiss My Ass

Pablo On Politics is a terrific site. Under that lovely picture of Rushbba the Hutt's heinie, Pablo links us to the following:

Margaret and Helen, which I posted a coupla days ago.

TPM:

You know what's great about all this Rush nonsense? It looks like the Democrats, from Robert Gibbs to Rahm to the DCCC, are finally using some of the techniques of bitch-slap politics against the Republicans. If GOPers are put on the spot and agree with Rush, they're taking an unpopular position about the direction of the country. If they disagree, they're immediately forced to grovel and look weak doing it. Only in this case it's sort of like the bitch-slap theory combined with jujitsu, because the Dems are actually getting Rush to administer the slaps. I'm about your age, and I'm not sure I've ever seen the Dems have the confidence to make Republicans look weak like this.

Actually, the Repugs don't need any help making themselves look weak. They knocked themselves down and the Dems jumped in. Rahm knows those good old street fighting techniques and he's teaching the rest of them. I wish he'd school Reid a little.

Digby, links at site:

Limbaugh is now calling people "butt boys." This is on top of his adorable comments that Republicans are being asked to "bend over and grab their ankles" because Obama is black. I realize that the term "butt boy" is fairly common in junior high locker rooms as a synonym for sycophant, but when did it become ok to say this on radio? Does the FCC know that it literally means submissive, teenage anal sex (with a strong implication of coercion?)

I've written many posts about Rush over the years so all this new interest in him as a leader of the Republican Party is old news to me. I think this one, from 2006, may the most pertinent:

Notice how Limbaugh and the preachers pander to the depraved imagination? It's not religious values these people are selling. They are selling a brutal, domineering, degenerate culture, making their listeners and viewers wallow in it, plumbing the depths of the subconscious, drawing forth Goyaesque images of bestiality and violence and death. That's a feature of some religions, to be sure, but it's not the nice upright Christian morality everybody's pretending it is.

When the troop handlers in the Marine Corps wanted us to go somewhere in a tightly bunched line, the command was 'Asshole to belly button, maggots! Close it up! Make the man in fronta ya smile!'. We kept our flys buttoned. The Repugs don't, and it brings visions of a prison conga line right after a fresh batch of pruno hit the yard. Heh.

Damn, but this is fun to watch! We've waited a long time and we deserve it!

Bush succeeded quite well at all the wrong things

Bush damn near was successful at destroying our country, The Constitution, the economy, and our reputation world wide. Other than that, not so much.

Winning Hearts and Minds

Sent to us by John Gall from Suburban Guerrilla (their masthead photo is terrifying!).

This is what Harry and several other lame-ass dems need to have given to them.

He's right. Being a former expert on receiving this sort of motivational speech, please enjoy this one delivered by an expert!

NSFW.

The Secret Republican Apology Machine

Ever wonder how Republicans are able to tuck their tails between their legs and apologize to Rush Limbaugh so quickly after they've offended their leader?

We've uncovered the secret Republican Apology Machine!

Give it a try!