McInnis' articles for foundation lift ideas, words from 20-year-old essay
By Karen E. Crummy
The Denver Post
Posted: 07/13/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT
Updated: 07/13/2010 02:57:26 PM MDT

Although GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis presented his "Musings on Water" for publication as original works, portions are identical and nearly identical to an essay on water written 20 years earlier by now-Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregory J. Hobbs.

A Clemson University expert who reviewed McInnis' work next to Hobbs' essay called it a clear case of plagiarism of both words and ideas.

McInnis' water articles were a required part of his two-year fellowship at the Hasan Family Foundation in 2005 and 2006. The former congressman, who left office in 2004, was paid $300,000 to do speaking engagements and "research and write a monthly article on water issues that can be distributed to media and organizations as well as be available on the Internet."

Totaling 150 pages over 23 installments, the articles discussing state water policy are devoid of footnotes, endnotes or other forms of attribution.

In at least four of those articles, McInnis' work mirrors Hobbs' 1984 essay published by the Colorado Water Congress, "Green Mountain Reservoir: Lock or Key?"

In one of his installments of the musings, titled "Pumpbacks and Roundtables," McInnis uses four full pages that are nearly reprinted verbatim from Hobbs' earlier work. ...

McInnis's Colo. gubernatorial bid derailed by plagiarism charges
By Aaron Blake
July 14, 2010; 3:06 PM ET

Former Rep. Scott McInnis's (R-Colo.) gubernatorial campaign is in a fight for its life as charges of plagiarism have led to questions of whether McInnis can stay in the race.

Republicans in Colorado say he's a dead man walking, and they are exploring the ins and outs of how to get another nominee.

The Denver Post this week uncovered two examples of alleged plagiarism by McInnis -- one in papers McInnis wrote for a fellowship a few years ago and another in a Washington Post column and speech he delivered in 1994.

Sources in Colorado Republican circles say it's likely a matter of when, not if, McInnis will exit the race.

"Almost without exception, they think he is done," said one senior Colorado Republican who spoke on the condition that his name not be used.

"He may be the last one to know it, but he's dead in the water," said another. "It's likely he will resist heavily, but at some point he's got to realize this is a fact of life." ...

McInnis should throw in the towel
After revelations of plagiarism and other cases of questionable judgment, it's clear the GOP candidate is not fit to be governor.
By The Denver Post
Posted: 07/14/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT

Revelations of extensive plagiarism in work that gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis claimed as his own call into question his fitness for public office.

The lifted work, examined in The Denver Post, constitutes inexcusable intellectual thievery. It is so damaging that we believe McInnis ought to drop out of the race.

Colorado's next governor should be a person of integrity, a trusted hand to lead the state through difficult times.

The Post revealed in Tuesday's paper that McInnis was paid to write essays on water in 2005 and 2006 yet turned in writings that had been plagiarized. Now we learn he did the same thing in a 1994 op-ed in the Rocky Mountain News.

We were astonished Tuesday to hear McInnis, in an interview with 9News, call the revelations over his water essays a "non-issue." Later, he did tell us he had made a mistake and that he should have checked the material. Yes, he should have.

The Hasan Family Foundation paid McInnis $300,000 over two years to give talks on water issues and write original, monthly articles on the topic. The plagiarism detailed by Post reporter Karen E. Crummy is extensive.

McInnis says he hired a consultant to serve as an expert for the writings. Yet the foundation hired McInnis as the expert, and McInnis' work never mentioned the help of anyone else. It was presented as his own.

The written work he submitted to the foundation included numerous instances of passages that were copied, with few changes, from scholarly work originated by Gregory J. Hobbs, who is now a Colorado Supreme Court justice.

The former congressman was paid handsomely for work that he said was "original and not reprinted from any other source." It was McInnis' obligation to ensure that was true.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time we've had questions about McInnis' judgment. ...

Researcher: CO gov. campaign trying to pass blame
By STEVEN K. PAULSON
The Associated Press
Thursday, July 15, 2010; 12:40 AM

DENVER -- A researcher who Colorado Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis blamed for plagiarism allegations says he won't sign a letter from the campaign owning up to what happened because he claims McInnis is lying.

Researcher Rolly Fischer told KMGH-TV in an interview Wednesday that McInnis' campaign sent him a letter to sign in which Fischer would say the alleged plagiarism was "solely my own." A McInnis spokesman didn't immediately return a call for comment. ...

6. teabagger

A misinformed, right-wing corporate media consumer who often fails to understand that BOTH major parties represent a corrupt plutocracy that steals from the middle class by taxing labor and profiting from corporate tax subsidies.

A teabagger also often fails to acknowledge that George W. Bush and his neo-conservative minions perpetrated one of the boldest and most egregious executive power grabs in the history of the United States. Furthermore, teabaggers mistakenly continue to blame a newly elected President Obama for all that ails the United States of America, based on a grossly flawed perception of reality (including latent racial prejudice) and despite the fact the U.S. economy collapsed on the previous administration's watch.

Teabaggers are also known to base their misguided, right-wing-media-inspired beliefs about President Obama on stupid conspiracy theories about totalitarian takeovers, FEMA camps, etc., despite the fact these very same theories have been circulating around on the Internet for years, and were originally ascribed to neo-conservative cabalists at a time when Barack Obama had not even entered national politics. Teabaggers also are known to be particularly paranoid, xenophobic and intolerant, especially with regard to immigrants and anyone who isn't white.

Additionally, teabaggers generally echo stupid myths about entitlement spending (it actually only accounts for about 1% of federal budget spending), have no idea that most poor people in America are not lazy, actually do work and don't want to be on welfare, and have no idea what socialism actually means or that socialist reform in this country is actually what allowed a middle class to flourish and ultimately make the U.S. one of the most prosperous nations in human history.

Furthermore, teabaggers incorrectly equate socialism with Stalinism, think a system that rewards greed (capitalism) is the divine preference (despite Gospel evidence to the contrary), and are shameless champions of a misguided belief in American exceptionalism. Teabaggers also fail to recognize the inherently unpatriotic nature of their failed every-man-for-himself ideology that ultimately vilifies anyone who supports public policy aimed at reaching out to fellow Americans in need. They celebrate an exploitative corporatocracy (holy creator of jobs, blah blah blah) while denigrating the little guy for being "weak."

Interestingly, teabaggers uphold an immoral, morbidly obese, twice divorced, draft-dodging, college dropout and known drug addict as their de facto leader, and are even known to advocate burning books. Of course, teabaggers fail to recognize the blatant hypocrisy within the GOP and tend to oversimplify all political debate and social issues, much like their pseudo-intellectual, fat-ass leader.

Finally, incredibly, teabaggers fail to recognize the hysterical double entendre associated with their proudly adopted teabag moniker.

Every village has its idiots, of course, but it's sad when citizens of any nation allow themselves to be whipped into a frenzy en masse by a state-run propaganda machine masquerading as a legitimate, fair, balanced and independent news organization. Teabaggers are right to believe the future of the U.S.A. is in jeopardy, but sadly they have not yet correctly identified the real enemy. Perhaps when teabaggers finally grow up and mature into thinking adults, they will see the right-leaning power establishment for the oppressive and cunning beast that it is.

Teabagger: We don't care that George Bush tripled the deficit and lied us into a war. The new administration only cut taxes for 90% of the population... fascists. Let's go throw some Lipton tea bags into a fountain!

tags: brainwashed misfit idiot fool foxlover
by deepshot Apr 20, 2009


Ta much, dear MSiegel

Mission Accomplished: The Reagan Occupation and the Destruction of the American Middle Class
by David Michael Green | June 25, 2010

... If Americans understood the real ambitions of Ronald Reagan and his puppeteers, and if they knew the degree to which the supposed patriotism of those folks extended beyond falsity and into the far darker waters of being an irritating irrelevance put on purely for show, then they would not only stop seeing Reagan as some sort of national hero, but would also understand that he instead launched a process far more equivalent to an invasion and occupation of this country.

The goal of the right - which cares about America about as much as it does about Burkina Faso - has been to restore the economic order last seen under Herbert Hoover, in which a tiny minority possess vast sums of wealth and there is (therefore) essentially no remaining middle class. It is nothing short of a breathtaking display of a world class greed, worthy of the ages.

It has also been a work of strategic genius (in much the same way one might appreciate the Germans' engineering prowess in figuring out the logistics of how to mass murder ten or twelve million civilians in a year or two), one which has drawn upon deep psychological insights, absolutely sociopathic amoralism, and clever tactics that have all simultaneously pushed in the same direction. In plain English, they hired some politicians of hit-man level moral integrity, who then marshaled fear, insecurity, hate and deceit into a witch's brew of self-destruction that would prove highly attractive to a large segment of the population already sinking from the effects of a global economic order rebalancing after decades of post-war American dominance.

Of course, you couldn't just come right out and say, "Vote for me and I'll give your money to people so rich they can't even imagine what they'll do with it (but they still demand to have it anyhow)", so slightly more subtle tactics had to be employed. It is telling that the most honest thing Barack Obama ever said was when he thought there were no microphones in the room. But he was right when, at a presidential fundraiser in San Francisco he told the wine and cheese set that the right uses guns, god and gays (I would add Gaddafis) to scare people out of their money. I'll believe that Republicans are serious about protecting heterosexual marriage on the day that you can't find half of them prowling the gay bars of DC every night (and you don't even want to know what the other half are into).

This bait-and-switch tactic worked perfectly well whenever it was applied. It didn't hurt that the regressive Billy-Bobs who vote for these folks are as dumb as a tree. With bags of hammers for leaves. But stupid is really only the facilitating quality, and often one that is neither present nor required. What really drives this stuff is fear. If you can turn that into a loathing of fur'ners, fags, bitches, blackies and brownies, you got their vote. Then you can do what you really set out to accomplish in the first place. George W. Bush's 2004 campaign was the paradigmatic example....

You surely weren't expecting tax rises for the rich - not with a conservative PM!

The backlash against the coalition's £85bn emergency budget will begin tomorrow as business leaders, children's charities and unions representing six million public employees come out against the planned tax rises, pay freezes and spending cuts, marking the end of the government's honeymoon period.

The moves come after the chancellor today warned that everyone would have to play their part to reduce the public deficit. He described announcements due on Tuesday as the "unavoidable budget", claiming he faced the toughest test of any chancellor in history to prevent the country embarking on a "road to ruin".

The Guardian understands that George Osborne is preparing to order a one-year freeze on council taxes for 2011/12 to reduce the strain on all liable households, but the freeze will be opposed by local government, which has so far suffered some of the worst budget cuts.

The government's attempts to spread the burden of the four-year plan to tackle the deficit across all sections of society and to counter-balance public sector cuts with tax rises is facing intense opposition from unions, charities and industrial figures.

In a BBC interview, Osborne promised a crackdown on the "out of control" welfare system, suggesting that public sector pay will be frozen beyond the expected one year and launching a review of public sector pensions, to be chaired by the former Labour minister John Hutton.

Osborne insisted the budget measures would be spread fairly across society, suggesting capital gains tax will rise and promising a new banking levy. But he refused to be drawn on the vexed issue of a potential rise in VAT, which the Conservatives had privately committed to raising from 17.5% to 19.5% before the election. ...

see more Political Pictures

Grow a Brian, Morans!

Ta much, dear Anneliese

INDIANAPOLIS — Republicans are scrambling to hold onto Rep. Mark Souder’s seat following the evangelical Christian’s decision to resign over an extramarital affair with a staffer with whom he made a video touting the benefits of abstinence education. ...

Never mind the Con-Dem coalition. We want bogeymen and we want them now
Why can't these 21st-century Tories just be massively unreasonable from the outset?
Charlie Brooker
Monday 17 May 2010

So: the weirdest election in history has produced the weirdest government imaginable. Well, almost. If Cameron had formed a coalition with the cast of Bergerac, that would be weirder – but only by about seven per cent.

The worst part is working out who to hate, and why. I was eight when Thatcher got in, and didn't really understand what was happening. Nonetheless, before long the Tories had replaced the Cybermen as my number one bogeymen. At first there was a simple, visceral reason for this: they seemed alarmingly gung-ho about nuclear war. They believed nuclear missiles were an effective deterrent, and furthermore, that a nuclear war might be winnable anyway.

I was opposed to all kinds of nuclear war – even little ones between neighbouring Welsh counties were simply not on, in my book. It was my understanding that these things tended to spiral out of control, and burning to death in a massive exploding fireball didn't rank very high on my list of hopes and dreams for the future.

(My paranoia wasn't that far off, as it happens. According to the book Rendez-Vous: The Psychoanalysis of François Mitterrand, at the height of the Falklands war, Thatcher threatened to nuke Argentina unless President Mitterrand handed over disabling codes for the French-built Exocet missiles which were pounding British ships. If that was true, and had actually happened, you wouldn't be reading the Guardian right now – you'd be fighting a giant scorpion to impress the village elders.)

As if plotting to destroy the world wasn't bad enough, the Conservatives went on to preside over the most wilfully obnoxious and polarising decade imaginable: braying yuppies at one extreme, penniless strikers at the other. The Tories weren't just nasty – they seemed to actively enjoy being nasty. And there was no getting rid of them, even when Thatcher got the boot. Consequently, an entire generation grew up regarding the Tory government as something like rain, or wasps, or stomach flu: an unavoidable, undying source of dismay. ...

Ta much, dear BrightKnight

Incident spurs call for school use review
A city School Committee member says she's 'appalled' at how GOP guests treated a classroom.

By Kelley Bouchard kbouchard@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

PORTLAND - One School Committee member, saying she's "appalled" by the behavior of some of the Republicans who used a room at King Middle School last weekend, wants to protect the city's public schools from future harm.

Sarah Thompson said she plans to raise the issue when the committee meets on May 19. She has asked Superintendent Jim Morse to contact City Manager Joe Gray so the committee will have a clear understanding of policies and legalities related to the rental and public use of school buildings.

"We allowed them to use the space and I'm appalled that they would go through a teacher's things, let alone remove something from a classroom," Thompson said Wednesday. "We want the public to use school spaces, but they need to respect that it's a school and understand that they should leave it the way they find it."

The Republican State Convention was held at the Portland Exposition Building, which is on Park Avenue, near the middle school. Party members from Knox County caucused in a classroom used by eighth-grade social studies teacher Paul Clifford.

When Clifford returned to school on Monday, he found that a favorite poster about the U.S. labor movement had been taken and replaced with a bumper sticker that read, "Working People Vote Republican."

Later, Clifford learned that his classroom had been searched. Republicans who had attended the convention called Principal Mike McCarthy to complain about "anti-American" things they saw there, including a closed box containing copies of the U.S. Constitution that were published by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Maine Republican Party leaders have issued a written apology to King students and teachers.

"King Middle School was kind enough to allow the (party) to use their facilities and we are deeply concerned about the lack of respect shown to the faculty," wrote Executive Director Christie-Lee McNally. ...


Ta much, dear Anneliese

Report: Tea Parties created as GOP political ploy
By David Edwards
Thursday, April 15th, 2010

The Tea Party has been billed as an organic grassroots operation, but a newly uncovered document obtained by Politico suggests the movement has been successfully co-opted as a Republican fundraising ploy.

GOP political consultant Joe Wierzbicki floated the proposal a year ago today to create the Tea Party Express, a nationwide bus tour to "give a boost to our PAC and position us as a growing force/leading force as the 2010 elections come into focus." His idea eventually became one of the best known brands in the Tea Party movement.

The document cautioned planners to be careful when discussing the ruse to use Tea Parties for political gain. "We have to be very, very careful about discussing amongst ourselves anyone we include 'outside of the family' because quite frankly, we are not only not part of the political establishment or conservative establishment, but we are also sadly not currently a part of the 'tea party' establishment," Wierzbicki wrote.

Wierzbicki, who works for the Sacramento firm Russo Marsh + Rogers, went on to outline how conservative media including Fox News could be leveraged to hype the Tea Party Express. He recommended using "mentions and possibly even promotion from conservative/pro-tea party bloggers, talk radio hosts, Fox News commentators, etc..."

Citing Michigan as an example, he noted that one of the plan's primary goals would be to elect Republican candidates. "It is also worth considering making a return run to Michigan. Former Republican Michigan governor, John Engler, has recently stated that he believes the Republican Party will do quite well in Michigan," he continued. ...

Ta much, dear Zaxy

GOP operatives crash the tea party
By KENNETH P. VOGEL | 4/14/10

Just days after the first widespread tea party demonstrators hit the streets a year ago Thursday, Joe Wierzbicki, a Republican political consultant with the Sacramento firm Russo Marsh + Rogers, made a proposal to his colleagues that he said could “give a boost to our PAC and position us as a growing force/leading force as the 2010 elections come into focus.”

The proposal, obtained by POLITICO, was for a nationwide tea party bus tour, to be called the Tea Party Express, which over the past seven months has become among the most identifiable brands of the tea party movement. Buses emblazoned with the Tea Party Express logo have brought speakers and entertainers to rallies in dozens of small towns and big cities, including one in Boston on Wednesday that will feature former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Aided by campaign-style advance work and event planning, slick ads cut by Russo Marsh, impressive crowds and a savvy media operation, the political action committee run by Wierzbicki, Russo Marsh founder Sal Russo and a handful of other Republican operatives has also emerged as among the prolific fundraising vehicles under the tea party banner. Known as Our Country Deserves Better when it was founded during the 2008 election as a vehicle to oppose Barack Obama’s campaign for president, the PAC saw its fundraising more than quadruple after it took the Tea Party Express public in July, raising nearly $2.7 million in roughly the following six months, compared with less than $600,000 in the preceding six months, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Its fundraising success has made the PAC — which formally filed with the FEC in October to change its name to “Our Country Deserves Better PAC–TeaPartyExpress.org” — a power player in the tea party and beyond, airing hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads supporting Republican campaigns such as Scott Brown’s successful special election for Senate in Massachusetts and blasting Democratic ones, such as Senate Majority Leader Reid’s reelection bid in Nevada.

And that fundraising success has also meant a brisk business for Russo March, which essentially runs the PAC. In that capacity, Russo Marsh and a sister firm called King Media Group have received $1.9 million of the $4.1 million in payments made by the committee — a financial relationship that is not uncommon between political action committees run by consultants and their consulting firms. ...

The Daily Mirror has today broken a copyright ban to use the notorious photograph of David Cameron, Boris Johnson and other members of the 1986 Bullingdon all-male dining club on its election day front page, in order to ask its readers whether Cameron is the right man to be the next Prime Minister

"PRIME MINISTER? REALLY?" asks the front page headline of the only mainstream newspaper to back the Labour party today.

The photo was last seen in 2008, when the Daily Telegraph published it on the front page. It showed the undergraduates "oozing Oxbridge privilege from every pore" as The First Post put it at the time.

Amid fears at Conservative party headquarters that it might be used in future Labour campaign posters, it was quickly withdrawn from circulation with a claim that the copyright belonged to the Oxford-based photography company, Gilbert and Soame.

Since the Telegraph last used it, some media outlets, including The First Post, have commissioned artists' representations of the photograph, but until today no one has risked republishing the photo itself.

Daily Mirror editor Richard Wallace decided to risk the ire of the copyright owner and of the Tories, claiming its use is in the public interest. "This picture was, and is, in the public domain and its publication is absolutely in the public interest and will help inform voters' decisions before they cast their vote," he said.

The photo has clearly been a source of embarrassment to Cameron, if not to London Mayor Boris Johnson who is far less embarrassed by his "toff" background.

Another man who has reason to look at the photo twice is Jonathan Ford, who is sitting at Cameron's feet. His presence in the photograph was not significant when it was published in 2008. But it is now – because in January this year Ford became the chief leader writer of the Financial Times. And for the first general election since 1987, the FT is urging its readers to vote Tory today, not Labour.

With the Guardian, the Times and the Sun also giving up on Labour – the former going for the Lib Dems while Murdoch's papers have switched allegiance to Cameron – and the Daily Mail, Telegraph and Daily Express going for the Tories as always, the Labour party needs all the help it can get on the news-stands. Hence the Mirror's brazen decision.

The best thing about people who hate gay people is that they secretly all love gay people. Or at least having sex with gay people. Look at the recent case of Family Research Council co-founder George Rekers. There's a rentboy! ...

This morning we posted the story below about Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum’s Facebook page being inundated with pointed questions about Dr. George Rekers, who the AG paid to testify on behalf of the state of Florida in defending it’s ban on gay adoption.

Since then, those messages have been taken down. However, as we write, there are a couple of new ones that have popped up. But they’ll probably be taken off soon. Listed below is our original post.

If you click on Florida Attorney General and GOP gubernatorial favorite Bill McCollum’s Facebook page today, you’ll see a veritable slew of messages demanding that he comment on Dr. George Rekers, the controversial “expert witness” (one of only two that McCollum brought forth) in a trial in which he was seeking to reverse Miami-Dade judge Cindy Lederman, who ruled that Florida’s [gay] adoption ban – the only one in the country – was unconstitutional.

The Miami New Times reported earlier this week that Rekers was seen returning from a trip at Miami International Airport with a male prostitute. Rekers has denied any involvement with the young man named “Geo” who he allegedly met on the website rentboy.com, and “Geo” is also denying any hanky-panky occurred.

Rekers is a leading Christian conservative who helped form the Family Research Council back in 1983, with the Reverend James Dobson. In 1989 In 1989, he and former Florida DCF Secretary Jerry Regier (remember him?) co-wrote an essay called The Christian World View of the Family, which criticized abortion and gay couples forming families.

This is what Judge Lederman said about Rekers' testimony after she called the ban against gay adoption unconstitutional, after the state paid Rekers tens of thousands of dollars for his “expert” testimony.

“Dr. Rekers’ testimony was far from a neutral and unbiased recitation of the relevant scientific evidence. Dr. Rekers’ beliefs are motivated by his strong ideological and theological convictions that are not consistent with the science. Based on his testimony and demeanor at trial, the court can not consider his testimony to be credible nor worthy of forming the basis of public policy.”

... So, let's get this straight: Palin is more than happy to utilise the contents of stolen emails to score political points when it suits her own cause – in this case, attacking the "radical environmental movement" – but finds it "repugnant" when her own privacy is invaded "for political gain"? Why was she not calling in her article for whoever stole (hacked, leaked, whatever) the UEA emails to face a "just" punishment instead of jumping up and down with glee at their politically convenient content?

Hypocrisy? You betcha.

David Cameron's close adviser, Andy Coulson, tonight came under fresh attack after the disclosure of new evidence of the News of the World's role in the illegal interception of the royal household's voicemail messages during his time as editor.

The evidence is in the outline for a book planned by the private investigator at the centre of the affair, Glenn Mulcaire. The outline was written before Mulcaire signed a deal with the paper which stopped the book's publication and gagged him from speaking about the scandal.

The outline directly contradicts the News of the World's claim that Mulcaire broke the law without the paper's knowledge or consent. It describes an unnamed editorial executive at the News of the World commissioning Mulcaire to intercept the royal messages and claims that the paper pressed him to continue with the interceptions when he tried to stop.

It also refers to an unnamed person approaching him to "change his story", although it does not say whether this was an employee of the News of the World. Coulson has insisted that he does not remember any of his journalists being involved in breaking the law.

Labour's business secretary, Peter Mandelson, said: "The idea that as editor of the News of the World Andy Coulson was not aware of this activity beggars belief. If the election in less than a week goes the Tories' way, we would see this man taking on a major role in the British government. People should think long and hard before considering voting Conservative."

The Lib Dems' home affairs spokesman, Chris Huhne, said: "Coulson is in this up to his neck and it is shocking that Cameron continues to employ someone with his history of presiding over skulduggery. It was always an astonishing lapse of judgment to hire someone who was either complicit in criminal activity or the most incompetent editor in Fleet Street's modern history." ...

The Tories' chief spin doctor, Andy Coulson, faces more awkward questions about a phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World during his time as editor. The Observer understands that a leading football agent has launched a legal action alleging that his phone was hacked by private investigators working with the newspaper's journalists while Coulson was in charge.

More than 10 MPs and at least one former football star, ex-England midfielder Paul Gascoigne, are also in discussions with lawyers looking to bring similar cases against the newspaper's owner, News Group Newspapers (NGN), part of Rupert Murdoch's empire. The pending legal action will severely embarrass Coulson who, as director of communications and planning for the Conservative party, will wield significant influence if it comes to power after the election.

Sky Andrew, who represents Arsenal defender Sol Campbell and has acted on behalf of former Liverpool player Jermaine Pennant and Tottenham striker Jermain Defoe, issued proceedings last week. Andrew's move comes just weeks after the newspaper agreed to pay more than £1m to PR agent Max Clifford, who dropped an action in which he alleged that his voicemail messages had been intercepted.

A similar case involving Gordon Taylor, the former chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, was settled out of court in 2008 with a £700,000 payout.

Labour has been quick to use Coulson's past to embarrass David Cameron. Last week Lord Mandelson, Labour's election strategist, blamed Coulson for a "dirty tricks" campaign waged in some newspapers against the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg.

"This is pure Andy Coulson-style News of the World territory turned into political form," Mandelson said. "It is cheap and rather squalid. If a Tory campaign is subcontracted to someone like Andy Coulson, it is no surprise that things like this are going to appear on the front pages of our newspapers." ...

“Doctors are reasonable people”
Senate hopeful Sue Lowden’s plan for Healthcare reform is to barter chickens for medical procedures. But you may be unsure how many chickens are required for your medical care. This handy calculator converts many common procedures into chickens so you won’t look like an idiot at your next Doctor’s Appointment. ...


Ta much, dear Anneliese

Barely 6 1/2 months before the midterm elections, an internal investigation by the Republican National Committee has revealed that the organization is beset with questionable financial management and oversight and is spending more money courting top-dollar donors than it raises.

The investigation found that the Republican Party's national governing body is losing money on its major-donors' fundraising program -- spending $1.09 for each $1.00 raised, according to RNC members privy to the investigation's findings. It typically costs about 40 cents for every dollar raised from donors who give more than $1,000.

The investigation also found that the RNC has allowed employees to forge Finance Director Rob Bickhart's initials on expense-reimbursement request approvals, according to an RNC member who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The RNC's top elected and appointed management have united in defense of the committee's practices. RNC Chairman Michael S. Steele can withhold or increase RNC contributions to a state party.

The Washington Times obtained a copy of a report on the investigation -- prepared by RNC Treasurer Randy Pullen -- that he sent to the 28-member RNC Executive Committee before a conference call hastily scheduled for Wednesday afternoon by Mr. Steele's office. It includes some of the findings.

RNC communications director Doug Heye disputed the fundraising figures when reached for comment about the report. He said year-to-date the RNC has received $2,649,586 from major donors at a cost of $1,832,642, netting the organization more than $800,000.

The report says several RNC Finance Department employees have been forging Mr. Bickhart's signature for reimbursement for the purchase of clothing, wine and entertainment expenses, including some that were labeled as office supplies.

One such expense was the nearly $2,000 that a Finance Department employee named Allison Myers -- since fired -- received for money spent by a friend and non-employee at an Los Angeles nightclub that featured a sexual-bondage theme. Many small and large RNC donors alike were not amused. ...


Ta much, dear Anneliese

Good aim; good lad.

Beneath the veneer of the Conservatives' people power

What these slick PR operators are really offering is deep cuts, lower taxes for the rich and sweeping Thatcherite privatisation

Spiked Tea
April 13, 2010 1:34 PM

"Our plan is not to shout them down, but to infiltrate them and push them farther from the mainstream." Inspired by San Francisco's counter-protest to the Westboro Baptist Church protest at Twitter headquarters, Jason Levin is organizing groups to dress like Tea Partiers, talk like Tea Partiers, and carry signs like Tea Partiers. In fact, according to Levin, his Tea Partiers will be completely indistinguishable from Tea Partiers, except for one thing--they won't be out-crazied by anyone. ...

Ta much, dear Ar0cketman

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.

Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.

General Powell, who left the Bush Administration in 2005, angry about the misinformation that he unwittingly gave the world when he made the case for the invasion of Iraq at the UN, is understood to have backed Colonel Wilkerson’s declaration. ...

Unemployment benefits and GOP principle
Michael Tomasky Monday 5 April 2010

... You may remember a few weeks ago that it was Republican Senator Jim Bunning who held up extension of these benefits because the Senate wasn't coming up to any way to pay for them and make the extension deficit neutral thereby. This time around it's Oklahoma's Tom Coburn:

"The legitimate debate is whether we borrow and steal from our kids or we get out of town and send the bill to our kids for something that we're going to consume today," Coburn said on the Senate floor.

The cost is $10 billion, so I can see that if you're concerned about the deficit it's a fair point. But here's the thing that gets me.

Somehow, Republicans don't manage to raise these objections about deficit neutrality when the question involves tax cuts heavily weighted toward the rich. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 increased the deficit. I don't remember many Republican protestations about that. As you can see from this roll-call vote from 2006, extending the tax cuts (well after their deficit-augmenting reality was known), all 51 (at the time) Republican senators voted for them, Coburn and Bunning among them.

Rich people are rich because they're good, so by definition the deficit isn't their fault. Working-class unemployed people, well, hard luck.

General election 2010: Tory adviser's firm stands to benefit from cuts
• Key expert chairs health company
• Labour to mount fightback on NI
• More business chiefs back Tories
Patrick Wintour, political editor
Wednesday 7 April 2010

One of David Cameron's independent efficiency experts who identified the £12bn spending savings an incoming Conservative government could make this year chairs a private healthcare firm that openly admits it will benefit from NHS spending cutbacks.

Sir Peter Gershon chairs General Healthcare Group, the largest private sector health firm in the UK. The Conservatives have relied on Gershon's analysis of efficiency savings to enable them to promise scrapping most of the government's planned national insurance increase – a move that has left Labour flatfooted at the outset of the election campaign.

The disclosure, which will open the Tories to the charge that they have not been transparent about the interests of a key adviser, came after the issue dominated the second day of formal campaigning. Cameron pummelled Gordon Brown over Labour's insistence that it had to raise NI contributions (NICs) – rather than cut spending immediately – in the last prime minister's questions before polling day, and the Tories announced that they had secured the support of another 30 business leaders, taking to 68 the number who have backed their plans to scrap the rise.

The Conservatives claim that the £12bn savings would enable them to cut spending this year by £6bn and channel a further £6bn into other areas. But at a potentially crucial press conference tomorrow – at which Brown and Alistair Darling, the chancellor, will attempt to stem the damage caused by the business assault on the NI rise – Labour will argue that it would be more damaging to take £6bn out of the economy this year than to increase Nics next year.

They will also seek to rebut the Tory claim that Labour is not willing to make efficiency savings of its own in the current financial year. ...

When rightwing hate goes mainstream
The Republican party is indulging extremists, hoping they'll put down their guns long enough to vote for them this November
Dan Kennedy
Wednesday 7 April 2010

... The first warning came a year ago, when the department of homeland security predicted a rise in rightwing extremism fuelled by economic calamity and the election of our first black president. News of the report, and especially about a warning contained therein that military veterans might be pulled into the movement, set off criticism among conservative bloggers. Yet it proved prescient.

The most recent and oddest manifestation was last week's arrest of nine people involved in what authorities have referred to as a "Christian militia" intent on sparking revolution. But there have been other examples, each treated by the media as isolated incidents. The murder of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller, whose killer was sentenced to life in prison last week. The pilot who crashed his plane into an Internal Revenue Service facility in Austin, Texas, in February. Protesters whipped into a frenzy during the healthcare debate who yelled racist and homophobic slurs at members of Congress, who spat upon one and who phoned in threats of violence.

According to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, the number of rightwing extremist groups has risen exponentially during the past 18 months. And in an interview with National Public Radio's On the Media last week, he was unstinting in placing at least some of the blame for that with their enablers in the Republican party and in the media....

New nuke policy and old political idiocy

Pentagon chief Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton just announced the new US nuclear policy, which is a middle-of-the-road kind of thing in which we say we won't use nukes against non-nuke countries unless they're Iran.

On top of this of course, Obama is going to Prague Thursday to sign a new treaty with Medvedev to reduce nuclear stockpiles.

Needless to say, in Republicanland, all this means Obama is the Disarmer-in-Chief who wants the terrorists to win or whatever nonsense they're cooking up. Here, for example, is Rudy Giuliani:

President Obama's revamping of American nuclear policy is the mark of an "inept" leader intent on living a "left-wing dream," says Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, in an interview with National Review Online. "A nuclear-free world has been a 60-year dream of the Left, just like socialized health-care. This new policy, like Obama's government-run health program, is a big step in that direction."

"President Obama thinks we can all hold hands, sing songs, and have peace symbols," Giuliani says. "North Korea and Iran are not singing along with the president. Knowing that, it just doesn't make sense why we would reduce our nuclear arms when we face these threats."

Every hallmark of irresponsible right-wing posturing exists in those words, and it's this kind of thing that has driven the polarization in this country to such awful extremes.

If Giuliani -- who you'll notice tried to be president but is in fact not -- can guess the US nuclear stockpile within 1,000, I'd be surprised (it's about 5,700 in the active stockpile). He also probably conveniently forgets, if he ever knew, that just 18 or so years ago, we had about 24,000 active warheads. ...

The Republican chairman, Michael Steele, promised on taking office that he would bring the party to corners of America it had not reached before. It is a fair bet that most Republicans did not expect these corners to include the Voyeur West Hollywood, a bondage and S&M club in Los Angeles.

It emerged today that the Republicans spent almost $2,000 last month on a visit to the club where topless women hang from nets on the ceiling and simulate sex in a glass case.

The lavish spending will anger grassroots Republicans who are bombarded almost every day with more requests for contributions to help the cash-strapped party. A Republican National Committee spokesman said that it was looking into the matter. It insisted Steele was not at the club, but did not identify who had spent the money.

Such extravagance, in a time of recession and by the party that bills itself as fiscally conservative and reflecting family and Christian values, will renew questions about Steele's leadership.

The spending is disclosed in a Republican filing, as required by US law, to the Federal Election Commission.

It says that $1,946.25 (£1,300) was spent on 4 February for meals at the Voyeur West Hollywood by the Republican National Committee. ...

Genius.

Conservative textbook proposal ‘disturbing’

Posted on Mar 24, 2010 by Lindsey Roberts in Opinion, World Issues

Ah, Texas. I don’t know much about the state other than everything is bigger there and it seems to have its own way of doing things. “The Lone Star” seems to be a perfectly fitting nickname for a state that thinks it is a country. So the fact that Texas’ conservative right wing wants to rewrite its textbooks with a Bible-Belt slant doesn’t really surprise me. And why should we care if Texas wants to remove biographies on George Washington and Abraham Lincoln from its textbooks? What if I told you 80 percent of America’s textbooks come from Texas?

Houston, we have a problem. ...

OTTAWA (Reuters) - A Canadian government minister apologized on Friday for getting into an argument with airport security staff after he was told he could not take a bottle of tequila on board the plane.

The incident was the second time in three weeks that a member of the Conservative government has apologized for misbehaving at an airport.

Veterans Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn said Ottawa airport officials had confiscated the bottle late last month because it was too big. He then got into a heated argument with staff, demanding it be destroyed.

"Granted, I was definitely upset at what happened, and I apologise to those I could have offended," Blackburn said in a statement. CTV television quoted sources as saying the argument was so heated that airport staff almost called police. ...




Ever notice how "conservatives" have liberal ideas only regarding their own behavio/ur?

bnp = british nazi party

... In the bullpen tonight Jim Pagliaroni was telling us how Ted Williams, when he was still playing, would psyche himself up for a game during batting practice, usually early practice before the fans or reporters got there.

He’d go into the cage, wave his bat at the pitcher and start screaming at the top of his voice, “My name is Ted fucking Williams and I’m the greatest hitter in baseball.”

He’d swing and hit a line drive.

“Jesus H. Christ Himself couldn’t get me out.”

And he’d hit another.

Then he’d say, “Here comes Jim Bunning. Jim fucking Bunning and that little shit slider of his.”

Wham!

“He doesn’t really think he’s gonna get me out with that shit.”

Blam!

“I’m Ted fucking Williams.”

Sock!




Mr Bouton also points out that Mr Williams was fond of calling himself Mr Baseball, Teddy Baseball, and Teddy fucking Baseball of the MFL (Major Fucking League).

The US Senate was stuck behind a roadblock in the person of Jim Bunning, the Republican senator from Kentucky who who used Senate procedural rules to shut down its business.

Aside from being a politician of eccentric views, and not highly popular among Republicans, Bunning is best known as a skilled major league baseball pitcher of the 1950s and 1960s. He may not have been one of the great pitchers – measured by the standards of Warren Spahn or Bob Gibson, say – but he has the distinction of being one of the few players to ever pitch a perfect game in the majors. (A perfect game being one where no opposing batter reaches first base.)

There are more details of Bunning's baseball career here – including Bunning's appearance in the best book about baseball ever written, Ball Four, by Jim Bouton ...

The US Senate is known as the body where legislation goes to die, and a Republican senator from Kentucky has spent several days illustrating that point at the expense of nearly 500,000 out-of-work Americans.

Since last week Senator Jim Bunning [an ex-baseball player] has used his privilege under the chamber's parliamentary rules to hold up a 30-day extension of unemployment benefits, health insurance assistance, funding for road and infrastructure projects across the country, and other aid.

In exchange for lifting his objections he demands the senate come up with a way to pay for the $10bn extension package by reducing spending elsewhere, eliciting scoffs from Democrats who note that he voted for President Bush's $1.7tn tax cuts for the wealthy.

Nearly every major item on President Barack Obama's agenda, from health insurance reform to cap-and-trade climate regulation, has stalled in the Senate after passing the House of Representatives. ...

David Cameron's communications director, Andy Coulson, will come under fresh pressure to defend his editorship of the News of the World and his knowledge about the illegal activities of his journalists amid new allegations about the paper's involvement with private detectives who broke the law.

The Guardian has learned that while Coulson was still editor of the tabloid, the newspaper employed a freelance private investigator even though he had been accused of corrupting police officers and had just been released from a seven-year prison sentence for blackmail.

The private eye was well known to the News of the World, having worked for the paper for several years before he was jailed, when Coulson was deputy editor. He was rehired when he was freed.

Evidence seen by the Guardian shows that Mr A, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was blagging bank accounts, bribing police officers, procuring confidential data from the DVLA and phone companies, and trading sensitive material from live police inquiries.

Coulson has always insisted he knew nothing about the illegal activity which took place in the News of the World newsroom, telling MPs last year: "I have never had any involvement in it at all."

Mr A cannot be named now because he is facing trial for a violent crime, but his details will emerge once he has been dealt with by the courts. Coulson tonight refused to say whether he was aware of Mr A's criminal background, or of his return to the paper following his prison term. He said: "I have nothing to add to the evidence I gave to the select committee." ...

Minnesota GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty joined the teleprompter wing of Republican Hypocrisy Caucus during his speech at CPAC on Friday when he used a teleprompter to promulgate the hoax that Pres. Obama uses teleprompters more than other politicians. Worse, however, Pawlenty’s attack against the president was quickly determined to be a lie:

“President Obama was in a grade school classroom speaking to elementary school children and he was using a teleprompter,” Pawlenty said Friday in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he added. “That’s not a joke. That’s a real story.”

Actually, it’s not. The tale spread by bloggers over the Internet and in some media, including the Comedy Channel’s Jon Stewart, blended together two Obama appearances Jan. 19 at the Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church, Virginia, to make it appear he used the teleprompter when speaking to a classroom of 30 pupils.

In reality, Obama sat on a chair and spoke with the pupils without the device.

In a different classroom, he used the teleprompter to give scripted remarks on education to television cameras.

At CPAC just one day earlier, Marco Rubio, Florida’s tea bagger candidate for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, read what was supposed to be a joke about Obama and teleprompters from a teleprompter.

But neither of these new members of the GOP Hypocrisy Caucus can hold a candle to the chairwoman, Sarah Palin, whose promotion of the Obama teleprompter hoax at the tea bagger ball in Nashville earlier this month prompted us to catalog 20 separate incidents in which she used teleprompters during her campaign for vice president in 2008.

... Labour too has accused the Tories of repeatedly misusing statistics in their "broken Britain" campaign. The latest error comes a week after Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, was strongly rebuked by the UK Statistics Authority over his claims on violent crime.

Tony Kerridge, a spokesman for Marie Stopes International, said: "We have a serious enough problem without making it look as though more than half of young girls become pregnant. That is not doing our teenagers any favours. It is quite discouraging, and teenagers get a hard enough time as it is.

"You should check your figures before you go bandying not just inaccurate but woefully inaccurate statistics, and end up demonising a whole group of young people."

Ann Furedi, chief executive of the charity British Pregnancy Advisory Service, which provides contraception and abortion services, said: "The very fact that people can repeatedly get the facts on teenage pregnancy so wrong — ten times wrong — shows that their stereotyped expectations of young people are totally out of sync with reality."

Simon Blake, the director of Brook, which provides sexual health advice and contraception to young people, said that the public also tended to overestimate the rates of teenage pregnancy, although not by as much as the Tories.

“This is confusing for young people who may well think that teenage pregnancy is the norm and also fuels the myth that teenage pregnancy is escalating and nothing can be done," he said.

"In fact teenage pregnancy rates have reduced by 10.7 per cent since 1998, live births have decreased by more than 23 per cent, and there is some excellent work taking place across the country. We must continue to keep teenage pregnancy as a national and local priority.” ...

Ta much, dear Edosan

Ta much, dear Anneliese

Ta much, dear Anneliese

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president

Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington
Saturday 25 September 2004

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty. ...

ACORN gotcha man among four arrested for attempting to tamper with Mary Landrieu's office phones
By David Hammer, The Times-Picayune
January 26, 2010

Alleging a plot to tamper with phones in Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in the Hale Boggs Federal Building in downtown New Orleans, the FBI arrested four people Monday, including James O'Keefe, 25, a conservative filmmaker whose undercover videos at ACORN field offices severely damaged the advocacy group's credibility.

Also arrested were Joseph Basel, Stan Dai and Robert Flanagan, all 24. Flanagan is the son of William Flanagan, who is the acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, the office confirmed. All four were charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony. ...


Ta much, dear Anneliese

The grand obstructionist party is at it again, girls and boys.

The rethuglicunt party should be ashamed, exploiting such obviously mentally handicapped folks - like palin!

Ta much, dear Glenn321

I wish sarah's rededicate itself to God by taking a vow or silence, or meeting its maker - and not at the Faire.

Ta much, dear Anneliese, by way of dear Ar0cketman

GOP Gone Wild: Unruly Republicans Silence Women Lawmakers With Screams, Shouts, And Delay Tactics

This morning, the House began consideration of the rule for debate of the House health care bill. As the Democratic Women’s Caucus took to the microphone on the House floor to offer their arguments for how the bill would benefit women, House Republicans — led by Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) — repeatedly talked over, screamed, and shouted objections. “I object, I object, I object, I object, I object,” Price interjected as Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) tried to hold the floor.

In an effort to delay and derail the proceedings, the Republicans continually talked over the Democratic women for half an hour. They sought to prevent the debate by calling for unnecessary “parliamentary inquiries” and requests for “expanding the debate” by an hour.

After being repeatedly interrupted by Republican shouts, Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH) observed:

Do I not have the right to be able to continue my sentence without objections that are trying to censor my remarks here on the floor that I have a right to make as a member of this House?

...

The goddam rethuglicunts musta been wearing these their entire repulsive lives.

Ta much, dear Anneliese

"Ideas are hard. Blocking them is easy."

Ta much, dear Anneliese

Rep. Buyer's scholarship fund hasn't helped a single student
Steve Buyer defends his scholarship foundation, which has yet to help a single student.
By Mary Beth Schneiderand Maureen Groppe
Posted: October 18, 2009

The biggest accomplishment so far of U.S. Rep. Steve Buyer's scholarship foundation has been to send the Indiana congressman to play golf with donors at luxury locales such as the Bahamas and Disney World.

The fundraising golf outings have raised more than $880,000 for the Frontier Foundation that Buyer founded in 2003. Almost all the contributions are from 20 companies and trade organizations that have interests before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on which Buyer serves.
Advertisement

The foundation has yet to award its first scholarship, and it has handed out only $10,500 in charitable grants.

Of those grants, $4,500 went to a cancer fund run by the chief Washington lobbyist for Eli Lilly and Co. That lobbyist, Joe Kelley, said he is refunding the money because Lilly is among the groups that have supported Buyer's foundation.

In addition, the foundation gave $1,450 in 2008 to the National Rifle Association Foundation.

The lack of scholarships, plus the fact that the foundation's money is coming from groups that might want to curry favor with the congressman, has come under fire by Democrats.

Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker...said...."No good deed goes unpunished? Where's the good deed, if they haven't given out any scholarships?" he said. "It looks like this organization is a shadow campaign organization that's utilized to fly him around the country raising money from corporations that he can't legally raise (contributions from) to his campaign committee." ...



Ta much, dear Anneliese

News Flash!

Fat Evil Racist Fuck Tries Buying nfl Team - Players Shockingly Protest

Film @ Eleven

Women MPs fight back as Berlusconi lashes out
You are increasingly more beautiful than intelligent, PM tells furious Bindi
By Jack Bremer
FIRST POSTED OCTOBER 9, 2009

Amid warnings that Italy is on the edge of a constitutional crisis after Silvio Berlusconi was stripped of his immunity from prosecution, the man himself has been flailing around like a bear with a thorn in its foot. Taking part by phone in a late-night television discussion, he struck out at President Giorgio Napolitano saying he should have used "his influence" to get a different ruling from the Constitutional Court.

When a studio guest, Rosy Bindi, a former family minister in Romano Prodi's centre-left government, expressed shock at this suggestion, Berlusconi replied: "I recognise you are increasingly more beautiful than intelligent".

Even coming from Berlusconi, this was over the top and Bindi answered that she was "not a woman at your disposal", alluding to the call-girls and television showgirls at the centre of the long-running Berlusconi sex scandal.

Among the first to leap to Bindi's defence was another former minister under Prodi, the American-born Italian MP Giovanna Melandri. She said the remark summed up "the Berlusconi philosophy towards women". The diminutive prime minister, she went on, had shown himself to be "taller than he is well-mannered". ...



He has also shown himself to have more height than integrity - and wisdom.

Her collaborator isn’t just a creationist. There’s the white supremacy issue, too ...

... The Palin book, moreover, is clearly being styled as a work of polemic, appealing to the Christianist base, thereby fanning homophobia, and empowering those who would like nothing more than to push gay people back into the closet, out of marriage, out of the military, and out of the workplace. Burnham is now directly party to this effort.

It's not possible to accuse Jonathan Burnham of hypocrisy because that would imply he has any convictions or principles at all. Here, for example, is his quote about a 400-page book written in two months:

“Governor Palin has been unbelievably conscientious and hands-on at every stage, investing herself deeply and passionately in this project…. It’s her words...”

Hey, if it makes a buck, and advances his career, Burnham will do it. As gay people prepare to march for their civil rights, Burnham, one of the more powerful gay men in New York, is preparing to capitalize on their avowed enemies. It's just money, after all. And buzz. Always buzz.

Taxpayers' Alliance admits director doesn't pay British tax
Robert Booth
Friday 9 October 2009

The Taxpayers' Alliance, a campaign group that calls for tax and spending cuts and claims to represent the interests of taxpayers, has admitted one of its directors does not pay British tax.

The Guardian has learned that Alexander Heath, a director of the increasingly influential free market, rightwing lobby group, lives in a farmhouse in the Loire and has not paid British tax for years.

The admission, made by Matthew Elliott, the TPA's chief executive and founder, is potentially embarrassing for the Conservative party, which has close links to the group that claims to be "the guardian of taxpayers' money, the voice of taxpayers in the media and their representative at Westminster".

At the Conservative party conference in Manchester this week, the TPA's influence was underlined when David Cameron and George Osborne followed its recommendations for freezing public sector pay and capping civil servants' salaries at the level of the prime minister, unless approved by the chancellor. ...

The slogan on the jaunty shopping bag swinging from Conservative arms at the party's Manchester conference this week said it all: I Love Low Taxes.

It was a freebie from the Taxpayers' Alliance, the campaign group whose message of cuts – in tax and spending – coursed through the Tories once more this week, and will help set the agenda for the general election.

Since it was launched six years ago the alliance has become arguably the most influential pressure group in the country, yet neither the people who run it, or the backers who pay for it, have come under a great deal of scrutiny.

Its critics ask whether it really is an alliance of ordinary taxpayers, as the name is clearly intended to suggest, and how close it is to the Tory party hierarchy which seems to have adopted some of its radical ideas.

Certainly not all is as it seems. The same group that speaks out against government waste on Newsnight and in the pages of newspapers also runs a campaign against radicalising schoolbooks published by the Palestinian Authority and has formed an alliance with a Slovakian rightwing group

The group's leadership is no less esoteric. Alongside a fund manager, a petroleum geologist and a former chief economist at Lehman Brothers on the board, the directors include a retired teacher who lives in France and does not pay British tax.

But none of that has stopped frontbench Conservatives and business leaders flocking to the TPA, and at the Tory conference policy after policy seemed to bear the TPA's stamp.

"The idea of tearing down the walls of big government as Cameron did in his speech on Thursday is something we have been talking about for years," said its chief executive, Matthew Elliott, yesterday. "The Tory party has moved onto our agenda." ...

Hmmm. Looks like someone failed maths.

... For one thing, we learned that the modern conservative movement, which dominates the modern Republican Party, has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.

But more important, the episode illustrated an essential truth about the state of American politics: at this point, the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple. If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America.

To be sure, while celebrating America’s rebuff by the Olympic Committee was puerile, it didn’t do any real harm. But the same principle of spite has determined Republican positions on more serious matters, with potentially serious consequences — in particular, in the debate over health care reform.

Now, it’s understandable that many Republicans oppose Democratic plans to extend insurance coverage — just as most Democrats opposed President Bush’s attempt to convert Social Security into a sort of giant 401(k). The two parties do, after all, have different philosophies about the appropriate role of government.

But the tactics of the two parties have been different. In 2005, when Democrats campaigned against Social Security privatization, their arguments were consistent with their underlying ideology: they argued that replacing guaranteed benefits with private accounts would expose retirees to too much risk.

The Republican campaign against health care reform, by contrast, has shown no such consistency. For the main G.O.P. line of attack is the claim — based mainly on lies about death panels and so on — that reform will undermine Medicare. And this line of attack is utterly at odds both with the party’s traditions and with what conservatives claim to believe.

Think about just how bizarre it is for Republicans to position themselves as the defenders of unrestricted Medicare spending. First of all, the modern G.O.P. considers itself the party of Ronald Reagan — and Reagan was a fierce opponent of Medicare’s creation, warning that it would destroy American freedom. (Honest.) In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich tried to force drastic cuts in Medicare financing. And in recent years, Republicans have repeatedly decried the growth in entitlement spending — growth that is largely driven by rising health care costs. ...



Ta much, dear Anneliese

Well done, Waitrose, et al...but why hasn't sky network dumped faux news?

MyConservatives website collapses at launch
Web 2.0 not for the faint-hearted
By Kelly Fiveash
2nd October 2009

A website launched today by the UK’s Conservative Party is titsup, at time of writing.

The MyConservatives.com site, which claims to be “the most ambitious party political campaigning network of its kind outside of the US” is currently redirecting to the Tories’ main website while the party tries to fix the problem. ...

Honours for Hogwarts? Not in the Bush White House.

Sasha Obama may have been given a birthday tour of the Harry Potter set but the former occupant of the White House was not such a fan of the boy wizard.

In news that you really couldn't make up, it has emerged that J.K. Rowling's name came up in discussions regarding recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor. And she was rejected.

Not because of her nationality or Bush's aversion to Professor Snape's hair. But because various members of the White House staff were worried about associating with witchcraft. ...

...When you ignore the idiots completely, you are not calling them anything at all. You are not trying to advance any sort of argument, because there is no debate taking place. You are simply bypassing the giant pothole of ignorance entirely. ...

If Obama can't defeat the Republican headbangers, our planet is doomed

One year on, the world still looks to the US and holds its breath. The fate of a global climate treaty rests in American hands

Thank God/dess someone has the balls to speak truthfully here in Yankistan!

Ahem Fuck you, alabama.

Getcher karma, rethuglicunts.

... "She says she goes hunting and lives off animal meat - I've never seen it," said Mr Johnston, 19. "I've never seen her touch a fishing pole.

"She had a gun in her bedroom and one day she asked me to show her how to shoot it. I asked her what kind of gun it was, and she said she didn't know, because it was in a box under her bed."

The former governor, who stepped down in early July, citing the "insane" amount of time she had been forced to spend addressing "frivolous" ethics complaints filed against her, also built her reputation on traditional Republican family values - but Mr Johnston has claimed that she is an absentee mother.

"The Palins didn't have dinner together and they didn't talk much as a family," he told Vanity Fair, adding that the mother of five never came home later than five and would often disappear for an hour-long bath.

"She always wanted things and she wanted other people to get them for her. If she wanted a movie, Bristol and I would go to the video store.

If she wanted food, we'd get her something to eat, like a Crunchwrap Supreme from Taco Bell."

Despite describing herself as a "hockey mom with lipstick" - a line which delighted Republicans at her forceful national convention debut last year - Mrs Palin rarely attended her son Track's hockey games, claimed Mr Johnston.

The young man fell out with the family after the birth of his child with Bristol, the eldest daughter. He even claimed that Mrs Palin often spoke of adopting the baby and passing it off as her own. "I think Sarah wanted to make Bristol look good, and she didn't want people to know that her 17-year-old daughter was going to have a kid," he said. ...

Ta much, dear Shell42970

Arseholes.

There's nothing higher or more important than truth - unless you're a conservative.

Ta much, dear Anneliese

One of the allegations made repeatedly by climate change deniers is that they are being censored. There's just one problem with this claim: they have yet to produce a single valid example. On the other hand, there are hundreds of examples of direct attempts to censor climate scientists.

Most were the work of the Bush administration. In 2007 the Union of Concerned Scientists collated 435 instances of political interference in the work of climate researchers in the US.

Scientists working for the government were pressured by officials to remove the words "climate change" and "global warming" from their publications; their reports were edited to change the meaning of their findings, others never saw the light of day. Scientists at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and the US Fish and Wildlife Service were forbidden to speak to the media; James Hansen at Nasa was told by public relations officials that there would be "dire consequences" if he continued to call for big cuts in greenhouse gases.

Philip Cooney, a senior White House aide who previously worked at the American Petroleum Institute, admitted to Congress that he had made hundreds of changes to government reports about climate change on behalf of the Bush government.

Among other changes, he had struck out evidence that glaciers were retreating and inserted phrases suggesting that there was serious scientific doubt about global warming. ...




I've never heard of a witchdoctor being angry about not being accepted by medical associations, why should these liars keep spreading lies and pseudo-science?

... In most countries, you have two major political parties or broad factions. They disagree on many things. But both begin by accepting certain suppositions. I would imagine that in Britain, for instance, both Labour and the Tories think healthcare for all or at least most people is a good idea. They have different notions about how to do it, but the goal is agreed upon. I gather also that the Tories accept the basic idea that global warming exists and that man's actions have contributed to it.

But American conservatism does not believe healthcare for all or most is a desired outcome at all. Conservatives believe people are responsible for their own healthcare, and that people who don't have it just aren't showing enough pluck and initiative. Last Thursday, one Republican congressman announced that the party wouldn't even offer its own version of healthcare legislation – and this man runs the party's so-called Solutions Group! And on climate change, of course, most deny its existence, and all deny that human activity has played any role in it whatsoever. ...



gop = grand obstructionist party

... Six months after pledging to get tough on anti-social gangs, the Tories have come up with their master plan - seize their mobile phones and bikes. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling has said that taking away a hoodie's mobile for a month would not only "disrupt" gang activity in the area but serve as a stiff lesson to the culprit.

"This would go to the heart of what matters to a Nokia generation of young people," he declared. And if they don't learn their lesson, he wants to go a step further and confiscate their bicycles as well. "In areas where there is a genuine gang culture, such a step could also give police an additional tool to disrupt gang activity," said Grayling.

Labour MPs could hardly stifle their laughter at the proposals, pointing out that the plan has a fatal flaw at its heart.

"Where do the Tories think these hoodie gangs get their mobile phones and bicycles from in the first place? They are stolen!" one Labour backbencher told the Mole. "There's even a test for some gang members, to steal a phone.

"Far from making things better, this proposal could make it worse as anti-social youths have to steal more phones and bikes to replace the ones that have been confiscated. It's bonkers." ...

Stupid; don't wanna insult cows; etc

Stupid...well, I can't very well call her a cow - that's insulting a noble beast.

Ta much, dear Gladsdotter

Yay!

I wonder with what she was threatened that made her resign.

Does this mean we'll never have to hear her goddam voice or see her goddam clueless face ever again? /me crosses fingers, toes, eyes.....

Hmmmmmmmm? We shall see what we shall see.

Racist rants of elected BNP man, Andrew Brons, revealed
Yorkshire MEP Andrew Brons drew up some of the National Front's most inflammatory policies
Jamie Doward, home affairs editor
The Observer, Sunday 14 June 2009

One of the British National party's first MEPs' attempts to play down his past links to the extreme right as "silly" teenage posturing are today exposed as a sham after it emerged that for many years he played a crucial role in shaping the National Front's most overtly racist policies.

In 1983, when he was in his late twenties, Andrew Brons edited the National Front's general election manifesto that called for a global apartheid to prevent the "extinction" of whites everywhere.

The Let Britain Live! manifesto was prepared by the party's policy department, chaired by Brons. It outlined a series of hugely controversial positions, crystallised in one of its opening statements: "The National Front rejects the whole concept of multiracialism. We recognise inherent racial differences in Man. The races of Man are profoundly unequal in their characteristics, potential and abilities."

The manifesto claimed the UK had been "swamped" by "racially incompatible Afro-Asians" and that "Black muggings of White people, especially elderly ladies, occurs regularly".

It continued: "The eruptions in Bristol in 1980 and Brixton in 1981 were just two examples of the 'cultural enrichment' promised to us by the multiracialists." And it claimed: "We believe the gradual dismantlement of the Apartheid system over the last 17 years to be retrograde ... The alternative to Apartheid, multiracialism, envisages an extinction of the White man."

Brons was also an enthusiastic contributor in the 1970s and 1980s to Spearhead, a far-right magazine considered so extreme even the BNP tried to distance itself from it. In two lengthy polemics for the magazine, Brons outlined the supposed importance of nationalism and interpreted genetic studies to suggest Europeans had a "greater cognitive ability" than non-whites. He attacked the influence of "people of Jewish ethnic origin" and peddled the myth that a number of predominantly Zionist organisations were controlling the world. ...



The little green donuts are callin' ya, andy boy!

Oh, spare me! The rethuglicunts have had no future since ronnie rayguns! Anyone who doesn't know that doesn't know history. The last time a rethuglicunt who wasn't old enough to be the pope got any face time, it was that witling dan quayle.

No, I don't count shrub jr. He destroyed their future as surely as he destroyed the economy, and besides - he makes quayle look like a fricken genius.

In the four newly released memos from the Bush Administration’s Office of Legal Counsel, the argument for using psychological torture tactics against al-Qaeda detainees is made in scientific terms

But the science underlying the decision was dubious at best.

In the memos, Justice Department lawyers Jay S. Bybee and Steven Bradbury conclude that tactics such as slamming detainees against walls, confining them in coffin-like boxes, denying them sleep for up to 11 days, and even inducing a drowning sensation through waterboarding do not legally qualify as torture, because the tactics don’t create severe pain and suffering or lasting medical or mental harm.

That conclusion relied heavily on the advice of two psychologists, James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.My July 2007 article, “Rorschach and Awe,” gave the first detailed account of the two psychologists’ role as the architects and teachers of the coercive interrogation methods used by the C.I.A. and, later, the Department of Defense. “Based on your research into the use of these methods at the SERE school and consultation with others with expertise in the field of psychology and interrogation, you do not anticipate that any prolonged harm would result from the use of the waterboard,” Bybee writes in a memo dated August 1, 2002

But what, if anything, did Mitchell and Jessen—both devout Mormons—know about real-world interrogations and the art of eliciting accurate, actionable intelligence from hostile foreign fighters? Absolutely nothing, according to Steve Kleinman, an Air Force Reserve Colonel and expert in human-intelligence operations. In 2007, Kleinman told Vanity Fair he found it astonishing that the C.I.A. “chose two clinical psychologists who had no intelligence background whatsoever, who had never conducted an interrogation … to do something that had never been proven in the real world.”

Others called their methods a “voodoo science.”In fact, their techniques were simply reverse-engineered versions of those believed to be used by the Soviet Union, North Korea, and China. ...

... I don't want to start any libellous rumours here, but it's hard not to wonder if someone (Rush Limbaugh? Rahm Emanuel? It could work either way) has been putting cocaine in Cheney's morning coffee. The man just will not shut the hell up. Cheney was once the Republican party's mysterious Thomas Pynchon, but in the past two weeks he has become a media slut of Ulrika Jonsson-type proportions, with an accompanying sense of cringing embarrassment, and I would not be surprised if he turned up in the Big Brother house this summer, railing about the benefits of Abu Ghraib to fellow housemates Vanessa Feltz and Marcus Brigstocke.

On Thursday the all new Chatty Cheney gave a talk at the American Enterprise Institute on his favourite subject – Torture: it's Super! – while, as chance would have it, Obama happened to be giving a talk at almost exactly the same time on the proposed closure of Guantánamo Bay.

The American media billed this, bizarrely, as a "Clash of the Titans", which says a lot more about the lack of any viable figureheads in the ­Republican party than it does about this alleged "clash". The idea that an out-of-office former vice-president is a "titan" on a level with the current in-office president is about as plausible as pitching Halifax Town as a threat to Manchester United. ...

BNP London assembly member could be banned from Buckingham Palace party
Deputy chief executive of Greater London Authority tells Richard Barnbrook he will be barred from garden party unless he agrees to take guest other than BNP leader Nick Griffin
Hélène Mulholland and Rachel Williams
Friday 22 May 2009

A BNP assembly member who planned to take the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, to a Buckingham Palace garden party hosted by the Queen was today told he would be barred from attending unless he agreed to take another guest.

In a letter to Richard Barnbrook, Jeff Jacobs, the deputy chief executive of the Greater London Authority, also warned him to "desist" from creating any further adverse publicity.

Barnbrook, a BNP member of the London assembly, yesterday said he had no intention of changing his choice of companion for the garden party, which takes place in June and is being held to recognise community service.

Boris Johnson, the London mayor, intervened after learning of Barnbrook's intention to take the BNP leader with him.

Six London assembly members have been nominated to receive some of the 25 pairs of tickets offered to the GLA by Buckingham Palace.

Johnson accused Barnbrook of turning a "happy event" into a political stunt. The mayor wrote to the chairman of the London assembly, Darren Johnson, to see whether the invitation could be rescinded. ...

republicans 3 for $1 - No guarantees against kicking, biting, fighting, bullshitting, t'iefin' or kinkeh sex.

Old reagan-in-a-dress has always been an evil cow.

This cow's cluelessness well and truly has no bounds. It's fair astonishing.

Steal This Phrase

Category:
Posted on: March 4, 2009 9:30 AM, by Ed Brayton

Someone who comments here under the name grasshopper has invented a brilliant phrase for the Rush Limbaughs of the world: ignorexia verbosa. Pass it on.

[Cluade Rains in Casblanca]I am shocked, shocked![/Claude Rains in Casablanca]

The rethuglicunts are so clueless and evil. Let's send them to Afghanistan, shall we?

Conyers Subpoenas Rove: ‘It’s Time to Talk’
By Kate Klonick 1/26/09 6:28 PM

Karl Rove, who previously refused to testify to his involvement in the politicization of the Justice Department and the U.S. attorney firing scandal as former President George W. Bush’s deputy chief of staff, was subpoenaed today by House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.).

From the Committee’s press release, which is posted on The Huffington Post:

“I have said many times that I will carry this investigation forward to its conclusion, whether in Congress or in court, and today’s action is an important step along the way,” said Mr. Conyers. Noting that the change in administration may impact the legal arguments available to Mr. Rove in this long-running dispute, Mr. Conyers added “Change has come to Washington, and I hope Karl Rove is ready for it. After two years of stonewalling, it’s time for him to talk.”

Rove’s prior refusals to testify were based on claims of “absolute immunity” through executive privilege — the idea that even former presidential advisers cannot be compelled to testify before Congress. But the legality of that claim was rejected by U.S. District Judge John Bates as part of the ongoing suit over executive privilege, House Judiciary Committee v. Harriet Miers.

The onset of the new administration creates a lot of new questions as to how Rove will answer this subpoena. Rove is relying on an interpretation of executive privilege that is no longer backed by the administration, so it’s unclear how, or if, he will still be protected. While it looks likely that this new Congress’ subpoena will finally wrest “privileged” documents from the White House, its still unclear as to whether Rove will testify before the committee. ...

On Monday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) issued a subpoena to Karl Rove, requiring him to testify regarding his role in the Bush Administration's politicization of the Department of Justice, including the US Attorney firings and the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. The subpoena calls for Rove to appear at deposition on Monday, February 2, 2009. ...

I couldn't even finish the damn book. It made me as nauseous as Nausea.

I'd hope lush windbag has heart failure, but it hasn't got a heart.

Just shut yr mouth, palin.

Fascinating, frightening, and occasionally very amusing.

LEONARD PITTS JR.
May Bush live to see history's judgment
BY LEONARD PITTS JR.
McCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
January 17, 2009

"History. We don't know. We'll all be dead."
-- George W. Bush

Dear President Bush,

I am glad you are, at 62, still a relatively young man. I am glad you are in robust health. This means there is a good likelihood of your being with us for decades yet to come, and I dearly want that. You see, history's verdict is on the way, and I want you to see it for yourself.

We've been hearing the "h" word a lot from your surrogates, your supporters, and you as you make your final rounds before handing over the keys to the new team. History, we are told, will render the truest verdict on your time in office. History, it is implied, will say you were a far better president than we ever gave you credit for.

You said it again Monday in your farewell news conference. History will have the final say.

It is a curious position for someone who has been, as the quot[ation] above suggests, rather dismissive of history's judgment. It occurs to me that, as patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, so history is the last refuge of the failed president. ...


Once that git is out of office I want to hear nothing more about it, except its obituary.