When Roger West first launched the progressive political blog "News From The Other Side" in May 2010, he could hardly have predicted the impact that his venture would have on the media and political debate. As the New Media emerged as a counterbalance to established media sources, Roger wrote his copious blogs about national politics, the tea party movement, mid-term elections, and the failings of the radical right to the vanguard of the New Media movement. Roger West's efforts as a leading blogger have tremendous reach. NFTOS has led the effort to bring accountability to mainstream media sources such as FOX NEWS, Breitbart's "Big Journalism.
Roger's breadth of experience, engaging style, and cultivation of loyal readership - over 92 million visitors - give him unique insight into the past, present, and future of the New Media and political rhetoric that exists in our society today.
What we are against:
Radical Right Wing Agendas
Incompetent Establishment
Donald J. Trump
Corporate Malfeasence
We are for:
Global and Econmoic Security
Social and Economic Justice
Media Accountability
THE RESISTANCE
TENN CONGRESSWOMAN MARSHA BLACKBURN, THE LIGHTS ARE ON BUT NO ONE IS HOME
Step aside Sarah Palin, move over Michelle Bachman, there is a not so new idiot in town - amongst the ranks of the Tin Foil Hat Society, that is seeking top billing of queen idiot of the Galactically Stupid!
Now enters Tennessee congresswoman Marsha Blackburn [(R),Tea Bagger] . Once you get passed the annoying chalk screeching southern drawl - once you get passed the minutia of this GOP talking head - once Blackburn is queried aggressively on military tactics, you find that while waving your hand in front of the window that is Marsha Blackburn - That Blackburn is a shill that perfectly personifies stupidity and a blind allegiance to the Koch whores.
Blackburn, in typical tea bagger fashion, when pressed hard on an issue, deflects and never gives you a straight answer.
BANFIELD VS BLACKBURN
It's hard to believe, that any American in today's world, would they actually go to the polls to cast a vote for someone who is so obviously uninformed and pre-programmed as this bullshit artist - but sadly it happens millions of times each election cycle.
It looks like we're truly screwed if this sort of thing can happen on such a regular basis.
Blackburn is a by product of the Koch whores [David and Charles]. Blackburn's response to CNN's Banfield's pressing query is typical Blackburn, Southern aristocrat with equal parts of condescension and incredulity with the intent to - "when you can't dazzle with brilliance, baffle with bullshit".
Marsha Blackburn has been emitting high quality stupid for some time. Blackburn is yet another elected congressperson who is totally incapable - inept of showing any leadership skill sets whatsoever - or having a cognizant thought process of her own.
Republicans are outraged that CNN and Banfield could attack their "Southern Belle" with such tough direct questions regarding such real matters as troops on the ground fighting their wars. To all the outraged tea baggers, CNN deeply regrets this sudden and unforeseen outbreak of journalism and assures the public that this shall never happen again. [Snark]
A tip for Ms. Blackburn, when you are clueless on such matters, that it is "better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt".
Marsha Blackburn, you are the worlds tool of the day. Congratulations!
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made his case to CBS News’s Charlie Rose in an interview that aired on Monday against an American-led military strike on his country in response to his government’s alleged chemical weapons use.
Assad charged that the United States and the international community have no evidence that forces linked to his government used chemical weapons. He later seemed to try to push Congress toward voting against a resolution to give President Obama authorization to attack Syria, arguing, as some like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) have, that any U.S.-led military action against the Syrian government would help al Qaeda:
Assad Asks Congress To Vote Against War
White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said on Sunday that the intelligence on whether Assad’s forces were responsible for the attack isn't in dispute. “Every member of Congress I’ve spoken to accepts the intelligence that they carried out this attack,” he said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “And so what we need now is to communicate very clearly what is expected of him. And what is expected of him is to live up to the prohibition now, almost a hundred years old, against using these dastardly weapons to gas women and children.”
Assad also said in the CBS interview that the Obama administration is no different from the Bush era. “They are operating the same doctrine with different accessories,” he claimed.
The Syrian president also said the U.S. and its allies should expect some kind of retaliation to an attack and suggested it might be carried out by non-state Syrian allies like Hezbollah. “You should expect everything. Not necessarily from the government. It’s not only the government are not the only player in this region. You have different parties, you have different factions, you have different ideology. You have everything in this region now. So you have to expect that,” Assad said.
Despite the fact that his forces started the civil war in Syria with its brutal and violent crackdown on peaceful protesters more than two years ago, Assad also later disputed that he’s the aggressor, likening himself to a doctor saving a patient. “A doctor who cut the leg to prevent the patient from the gangrene, if you have to, we don’t call him butcher, we call him doctor. And you– thank you for saving the lives. When you have terrorism, you have a war. When you have a war, you always– you always have innocent lives that could be the victim of any war.”
Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Sunday that the Saudis offered support for an American strike on Syria and during a press conference with Kerry, Qatar’s foreign minister called for foreign intervention “to protect the Syrian people.”
European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a statement on Saturday that the chemical weapons attack in Syria was “blatant violation of international law, a war crime and a crime against humanity” and that the evidence “seems to indicate strong evidence that the Syrian regime is responsible.” The E.U. statement called for action but did not endorse a military strike. Most European countries have said they want some kind of United Nations process to play out and want U.N. weapons experts to report on their findings in Syria, a process that could take weeks, before deciding whether to support an attack.
Meanwhile, Obama is set to make his case to the American people and Congress this week in a series of interviews and speeches. As it stands right now, it appears that the White House has an uphill climb to get Congress on board, or at least the House. According to a NFTOS's preliminary tally, more than 200 lawmakers in the House are against military action or lean toward not supporting it.
In America we have only two choices, and until such time [which I doubt ever happens in our time] that changes we have the Democrats and the society of mental patients [republicnas]. I choose the Democrats.
Fiscal Responsibility: Eddie Munster spoke on this very topic last night, Paul Ryan spoke on how fiscal inept this country is and how fiscal sound he is. Facts for the record:
According to Fox News columnist Sally Kohn, vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan's speech at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday "was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech."
"On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold," Kohn wrote.
In a surprising move, Fox News joinedCNN, The Huffington Post,the Washington Post's Wonkblog, and ThinkProgress in publishing a fact-check of the Republican vice presidential nominee's speech, finding that the speech was full of lies and misleading assertions.
Kohn, who describes herselfas a "progressive voice on Fox News," wrote in her Thursday column that though Ryan came off as likable during his speech, his misrepresentations and omissions "caused a much larger problem for himself and his running mate."
In her column, Kohn called out four lies in Ryan's speech. She critcized Ryan for blaming President Obama for the shutdown of a General Motors plant in Janesville, Wis., that actually was closed during the Bush administration. She also knocked Ryan for pinning the blame for S&P's downgrade of U.S. debt on Obama, when Republicans in Congress helped precipitate the downgrade by threatening to refuse to raise the debt ceiling.
"The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth," Kohn wrote.
At a basic level of humanity, what pisses me off about politicians who lie, especially at a national level, is that the deceptions are degrading. A candidate who knows the truth, but makes a deliberate decision to deceive, is working from the assumption that Americans are suckers.
And last night, Paul Ryan made painfully clear that he thinks we're all profound idiots who'll believe an endless string of lies, so long as they're packaged well and presented with conviction. Jonathan Cohn suggested last night's address may have been the "most dishonest convention speech" ever delivered.
It was a truly breathtaking display of brazen dishonesty. Paul Ryan looked America in the eye and without a hint a shame, lied to our face:
Ryan lied about President Obama's auto-industry rescue, blaming the administration for a plant closing orchestrated by President Bush. Ryan lied about Medicare, falselyaccusing Obama of undermining the system. Ryan lied about the debt downgrade, falsely blaming the president for a downgrade causedby Ryan and congressional Republicans.
Ryan lied about the Simpson-Bowles commission, falsely accusing Obama of walking away from debt reduction, and ignoring the fact that Ryan himself fought to ensure the Simpson-Bowles commission never even released a report. Ryan lied about his plans for the safety net, saying he intends to "protect the weak" when he budget plan intends to gutpublic investments that benefit the poor.
Ryan lied about the debt, saying Obama "has added more debt than any other president before him," when the truth is, that was George W. Bush -- who added over $5 trillion to the debt thanks in large part to congressional votes cast by Paul Ryan.
Ryan lied about the Recovery Act, calling the stimulus "a case of political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst," when reality shows the exact opposite. Ryan lied about small businesses, accusing Obama of raising their taxes, when he actually cut their taxes.
Paul Ryan, the man the media and 'the American Taliban" celebrate as a bold truth-teller, told one lie after another, demonstrating a near-pathological disdain for honesty. His speech presented no substantive ideas, no policy solutions, and no bold positions on any key issue, but it included enough falsehoods to choke a fact-checker -- all because he assumes you're a fool.
Most of the millions of people who watched the speech on television tonight do not read fact-checks or obsessively consume news 15 hours a day, and will never know how much Ryan's case against Obama relied on lies and deception. Ryan's pants are on fire, but all America saw was a barn-burner.
CNN's Wolf Blitzersaidhe counted "seven or eight" claims that "fact checkers will have some opportunities to dispute," but concluded the lies didn't matter because it was "a powerful speech" that gave Republicans what they "were hoping for."
Let that sentence roll around in your brain for a moment, and ponder what it means for our country.
Ryan lied uncontrollably, but that's not terribly important. It undermines our democracy and the basic norms of the American political system, but no one seems to care anymore. Ryan thinks we're idiots, but his cynicism matters less than the electoral implications.
The United States is better than Paul Ryan's dishonesty. It has to be. Our future depends on it.
Facts about Paul "Eddie Munster" Ryan and what he voted for:
Bush Tax Cuts
TARP
Auto bailout
Two unfunded wars
both stimulus 2008/2009
Rx drug program for the elderly
How 'fiscal responsible' is this for the pathological liar named Paul Ryan?
It is now clear that the Romney-Ryan ticket is dead set on running the most extreme, out of touch, outrageous, dishonest, hypocritical and mindless campaign in the history of modern American presidential politics. The campaign itself has said on numerous occasions that "facts" are meaningless and they will ignore them. This is not only absurd, but a dangerous trend for our nation and our democracy. We have Paul Ryan on stage throwing red meat lies to a crowd of the most radical elements of the American Taliban imaginable. Ryan is no budget genius; he is a phony. Ryan endorses tax cuts for the rich, subsidies for Big Oil, and record spending on military contractors with no way to pay for them. At the same time, he wants to end Medicare as we know it and leave tens of millions of Americans without way to pay their bills. This is how we grow the economy? Good luck America with Thurston Howell III and Eddie Munster running your country.
