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:
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THE RESISTANCE
Gov. Brewer Signs Law Giving Tea Party Flag Same Status As American Flag
If you look back at our blog history you will see a plethora of blogs on the Gadsden Flag. So not to go into great detail here – a short synopsis:
The Gadsden flag is a historical Americanflag with a yellow field depicting a rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike. Positioned below the snake is the legend "DONT TREAD ON ME." The flag was designed by and is named after American general and statesman Christopher Gadsden. It was also used by theUnited States Marine Corpsas an early motto flag. The Gadsden flag was considered one of the first flags of the United States, the flag was later replaced by the current Stars and Stripes (or Old Glory) flag. Since the Revolution, the flag has seen times of reintroduction as a symbol of American patriotism, a symbol of disagreement with government, or a symbol of support for civil liberties - Hence where the tea baggers come in.
Beginning in 2009, the Gadsden Flag has become an adopted symbol of the American Tea bag movement. Nationwide it serves as an alternative to the stars and stripe, for Tea bag protesters who feel patriotism for their country and are upset at the government. It was also seen being displayed by members of Congress at Tea bag rallies. Some lawmakers have dubbed it a political symbol due to the Tea bag connection, and the political nature of Tea bag supporters.
While Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) is rightlybeing praised for vetoing a so-called “birther bill” yesterday, she also quietly signed into law legislation that gives the Tea bag-associated Gadsen Flag the same protection as the American flag when it comes to home owners associations (HOA), the Arizona Daily Star reports:
Brewer also signed separate legislation Monday to expand the list of flags that HOA residents could fly despite regulations to the contrary.
Current law overrides any rules when it comes to the U.S. flag, the flags of any branch of the military, the state flag, the POW-MIA flag and the flag of any Indian nation. The new law will add the Gadsden flag to that protected list, that yellow flag with the drawing of a coiled rattlesnake and the phrase “Don’t Tread on Me.”
While the yellow banner dates back to the American Revolution, the flag and its “don’t tread on me” slogan have beenappropriated by the modern day tea party movement and are now closely associated with the right-wing activists (it’s even on the tea party race car). The legislation came into being in the wake of anational controversy last summer sparked by an Arizona man who refused to comply with his homeowners association’s request that he remove a Gadsen flag from his house.
We at NFTOS feel this a huge slap in the face into what the Gadsden flag is all about, but hey, it’s what tea baggers do best – which is annoy the hell out of everyone not republican.
Donald Trump: “Reagan Was A Con Man Who Couldn’t ‘Deliver The Goods”
Yesterday, real estate mogul Donald Trump proudly declares that Ronald Reagan is the President he admires most. Here’s Trump on theApril 14 edition of Hannity:
HANNITY: Who are our past presidents that you admire most?
TRUMP: Well, I really like and knew a little bit Ronald Reagan, and I really liked him. You know, not only his policies, smart guy and so much smarter, you know, I always sort of have to laugh to myself when people try and criticize that level of intelligence. And I loved his style. I loved what he represented. … I thought he represented something very special for this county.
Watch it here at NFTOS:
But in his bestselling book, Art of the Deal, published at the conclusion of the Reagan presidency, Trump cited Reagan as an example of someone who could “con people” but couldn’t “deliver the goods.” Trump said Reagan was “so smooth” that he “won over the American people.” But at the conclusion of his presidency, “people are beginning to question whether there is anything beneath that smile,” Trump writes. Here is page 60 from Art of the Deal:
Currently, Trump is the one who is creating “excitement,” doing “wonderful promoting,” generating “all kinds of press,” and testing the theory of how long you can “con people.” After promoting “birther” conspiracy theories about President Obama, recent polls show him leading the Republican field.
One of the most important ideological commitments of the modern conservative movement is an opposition to tax increases. It is with this ideology that then-Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker signed Americans For Tax Reforms’ “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” a vow not to raise taxes on the people of his state.
Yet in his newly proposed budget, now-governor Walker appears to have already broken this pledge. While the budget would lower taxes overall — it includes $83.3 million in tax cuts “primarily for businesses and investors” — it would make up for lost revenue by eliminating tax credits and exemptions that primarily benefit the poor and even some in the middle class.
Wisconsin’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau — the state’s equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office — finds that this would amount to a $49.9 million tax increase on people who receive these credits over the next two years:
Low and middle income people would lose tax credits worth about $49.4 million over two years, the new Legislative Fiscal Bureau report said.
Those affected most by Walker’s proposal would include low-income families who qualify for the earned income tax credit program, and low-income homeowners who receive tax rebates under the homestead tax credit.
In addition to eliminating these tax credits, Walker also has proposed a spate of new fee increases. The “bulk of the fee increases are for tuition at University of Wisconsin campuses, totaling more than$105 million over two years.”
It appears that Walker is less committed to keeping taxes down on everyone than he is to cutting taxes for some of society’s most fortunate members, while raising them on some of its most vulnerable. He joins many other conservative state legislators across the country who are cutting taxes on the richest while slashing services and raising taxes for Main Street America.
Scott Walker Admits Union-Busting Provision ‘Doesn’t Save Any’ Money For The State Of Wisconsin.
Wis Gov. Scott Walker busted for busted unions
Yestrerday the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform called Govs. Scott Walker (R-WI) and Peter Shumlin (D-VT) to testify in a hearing titled “State and Municipal Debt: Tough Choices Ahead.” Much of the hearing was spent probing Wisconsin’s spate of anti-union restrictions it recently passed.
At one point, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) confronted Walker about his crackdown on public employee unions. The congressman referenced a provision Walker signed into law that would require union members to vote every year to continue their membership. Kucinich asked the governor how much money the state would save from the provision. Walker repeatedly dodged the question and eventually admitted that it actually wouldn’t save anything at all.
Kucinich then asked Walker how much money would be saved by barring union dues from being drawn from employee paychecks, another provision of Walker’s legislation. Walker claimed that it would save workers money, but was unable to explain how it would save the state any money. Kucinich then produced a document from the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the state’s equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office, that concluded that Walker’s measures were “nonfiscal” — meaning they had no impact on the state’s finances. Kucinich asked that the letter be included in the public record, but Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) refused:
KUCINICH: Let me ask you about some of the specific provisions in your proposals to strip collective bargaining rights. First, your proposal would require unions to hold annual votes to continue representing their own members. Can you please explain to me and members of this committee how much money this provision saves for your state budget?
WALKER: That and a number of other provisions we put in because if you’re going to ask, if you’re going to put in place a change like that, we wanted to make sure we protected the workers of our state, so they got value out of that. [...]
KUCINICH: Would you answer the question? How much money does it save, Governor?
WALKER: It doesn’t save any. [...]
KUCINICH: I want to ask about another one of your proposals. Under your plan you would prohibit paying union member dues from their paychecks. How much money would this provision save your state budget?
WALKER: It would save employees a thousand dollars a year they could use to pay for their pensions and health care contributions.
KUCINICH: Governor, it wouldn’t save anything. [Goes on to present letter from LRF and is denied unanimous request for it to be placed in the public record by Issa]
Watch it here at NFTOS:
Walker’s admission is crucial because he had long claimed that his anti-union “budget repair bill” was designed to save the state money, not bust unions. But his words yesterday echo those of Wisconsin state senate leader Scott Fitzgerald (R), who last month effectively admitted that the union fights are not about budgetary issues, but rather about winning the next election by depleting the ranks of organized labor.
NFTOS
With so many Republicans claiming that the Constitution can mean whatever they want it to mean, it should be no surprise that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) wants a piece of this action. Recently, Bachmann told a gathering of social conservatives in Iowa that if the courts insist on applying the Constitution’s requirement that no state may “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” to gay people, then Congress should strip federal judges of their power to hear marriage equality cases:
Something else that we can do to reinforce our pro-marriage, pro-life, pro-family agenda is to limit the subject-matter jurisdiction of the courts. At the federal level with what are called Article III courts, Article III of the United States Constitution, we can limit the subject matter that justices can rule on. We have it within our authority to decide what judges can rule on and what they can’t. Any time the people speak, they say with one voice that marriage is one man, one woman.
Watch it here at NFTOS:
Bachmann is, of course, wrong about the public’s view of marriage equality — 53 percent of Americans believe that gay couples shouldnot be denied their constitutional right to marry. It is also not entirely clear that Congress actually has the power to prevent the Supreme Court from hearing a marriage equality case, although Congress couldprevent lower federal courts from hearing these lawsuits.
At the end of the day, however, Bachmann’s court-stripping plan is nothing less than an assault on the Constitution itself. Bachmann does not like the fact that the Constitution requires gay people to be afforded the same legal protections as everyone else, so she wants to hamstring the courts from according equal protection to all Americans.
NFTOS Editor-in-Chief Roger West has always said that tea partiers and civil war confederate ideology go hand in hand - and the below blog supports his theory.
Yesterday was the 150th anniversary of the Civil War’s beginning, when secessionists fired on Union troops at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. According to a new poll from CNN, the Civil War’s legacy remains unresolved. The poll finds that Republicans and Tea Party supporters are more likely to support the Confederacy and confederate leaders than Democrats or Independents.
According to the poll, nearly one in four Americans sympathize with the Confederacy more than with the Union. That number grows to nearly four-in-ten among white Southerners. Among Tea Bag members, 26 percent sympathize with the Confederacy more than the Union, and that number grows to 28 percent among Republicans.
Meanwhile, while respondents overall viewed slavery as the main reason for the war by a 54-42 margin, Tea Bags and Republicans held different views. Fifty-two percent of Republicans believed slavery was not the main reason, and that number rose to 54 percent among Tea Partiers.
The poll comes at a time when Republicans and Tea Partiers are rehashing the battles that both led to and came out of the Civil War. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and others have come out in support of nullification laws. In both Texas and Tennessee, lawmakers have floated the possibility of secession. And across the country, Republicans have attempted to revoke the 14th Amendment guarantee ofbirthright citizenship. And, of course, there was Rep. Paul Broun’s (R-GA) reference to the “Great War of Yankee Aggression” on the House floor.
Even though these battles are radical and out of the mainstream, it isn’t that shocking that these Republicans are attempting to refight them. According to these poll numbers, that’s exactly what large segments of their base want them to do.
YEEHAW Maw, get out the bib overalls, take out our false teeth and dawn our Gadsden Flag -cause then we can do some real radical republcian tea partying!
In Virginia, dissatisfaction on the right with former Sen. George Allen (R-VA) is causing many GOP activists to consider alternatives in the 2012 Republican Senate primary. The likely beneficiary of this discontent is Tea Party leader Jamie Radtke, who is positioning herself as the über-conservative alternative to Allen.
ThinkProgress sat down with Radtke this past weekend at The Awakening 2011, a gathering of social conservatives held at Liberty University. During the conversation, we discussed the role of the minimum wage in America. Radtke argued that “government setting price controls rather than letting the free market set it I think is a bad policy.” Radtke went on to contend that the “time has come and gone” when women were underpaid, employers were “taking advantage of employees,” and concern about factory conditions was justified. As a result, Radtke agreed that the minimum wage has outlived its usefulness:
RADTKE: I think there’s all sorts of challenges with minimum wage. You are creating a market, you are eliminating an entire market of people that would potentially—who need work. Price controls are never good. And government’s never been good at price controls.
KEYES: Do you think it’s something we can just maybe get rid of?
RADTKE: Well “can we” or “should we”? I mean, you know—
KEYES: Well, either one.
RADTKE: Yeah, I mean—I remember my first job, I was fourteen years old, and I had to get a worker’s permit to go get a job, and I believe that the wage, the minimum wage, was $4.20. Now, there are times when the market will demand more than what minimum wage should be, and then people are being underpaid. And there are times when the market just cannot pay the minimum wage, because you’re in a great recession, but you could employ people, if you could pay them a little less. And those ideas of the government setting price controls rather than letting the free market set it I think is a bad policy.
KEYES: So it might be better to scrap it in favor of just letting the market set whatever the minimum wage should be?
RADTKE: Yeah, I mean, you haven’t seen… There was a time when this effort to set minimum wages was set in, and people didn’t feel that women were getting paid justly, and you had the concern of what was going on in the factories, and employers taking advantage of employees. And we’re not there anymore. That time has come and gone.
KEYES: So, it might have outlived its usefulness?
RADTKE: Yeah.
Watch it here at NFTOS:
Radtke’s points are misguided on a number of levels. First, the notion that women’s income doesn’t still lag behind men’s is laughable. Second, Radtke’s argument that we no longer need to concern ourselves with the inner-workings of factories is simply not true, as a recent Los Angeles Times article detailing the conditions for Ikea workers in the United States shows. Finally, Radtke’s point that a minimum wage is counterproductive because “there are times when the market will demand more than what minimum wage should be, and then people are being underpaid” ignores the fact that employers are free to pay higher wages in prosperous times. Nothing in minimum wage laws prevents employees from earning more than the minimum wage.
The federal minimum wage currently sits at $7.25 per hour. Over the course of a year, a minimum wage worker will earn approximately $14,500, well below thepoverty line for a family of four ($22,350) and even below the poverty level for a two-person family ($14,710).
Add Doanld Trump to the radical republican "bither asshat" club. Since his "I can't say I'm running for preisdent until apprentice is over" - he has been seen daily ranting about president Obama's birth status.
Haven't we already cleared this up? Apparently not!
In July 2008, a researcher “looking to dig up dirt on Obama” instead came across a birth announcement from 1961 in the Honolulu Advertiser documenting the birth of then presidential candidate Barack Obama in the state. For many, the announcement, together with Obama’s birth certificate, conclusively proved that Obama was born in the United States and is eligible to run for president.
Rumored presidential hopeful Donald Trump isn’t convinced. On CNN’s State of the Union today, Trump claimed that Obama’s grandparents planted the announcement to obtain welfare benefits:
TRUMP: The grandparents put that [birth announcement] in [the newspaper] because obviously they want him to be a United States citizen because in those days, people were much more proud than they are today unfortunately for being a United States citizen.
So they wanted him to be a citizen of the United States, for that purpose, and also for hospitalization, for welfare, for this, for that, for all the other assets you get from being a United States citizen. So there are a lot of very smart people who say that is routinely done and that was done by his grandparents. [...]
CROWLEY: I will tell you we’ve checked with both these papers early on — not to the latest when you brought it back in the headlines — but the fact is that the hospitals reported this information to the papers, and the papers printed it.
TRUMP: Who knows? You’re talking fifty years ago.
Watch it here at NFTOS:
On several occasions, Trump has implied that Obama’s grandparents essentially lied about his citizenship “for social reasons.” The other “smart people” who agree with him include conservative blogger Tom Maguire who claims the birth announcement was planted to win a potential custody battle involving “a black Kenyan baby sought by the black Kenyan father and his African family.”
Yet, as Crowley pointed out, the birth information printed in the Honolulu Advertiser always came directly from the state health department (via the local hospital), not Obama’s grandparents or relatives. It’s also worth noting that since Obama’s mother was a U.S. citizen, he was automatically conferred citizenship and all of its “assets” no matter where he was born, thus making him eligible anyway for the benefits Trump claims his family committed fraud to obtain. Unless his grandparents somehow knew that baby Obama would one day want to run for president, there wouldn’t really be a reason for his family to fabricate a convoluted lie regarding his birthplace.
White House senior adviser David Plouffe dismissed Donald Trump’s birther beliefs today, noting that “there may be a small part of the country that believes these things, but mainstream Americans think it’s a side show.” In fact, more than half of GOP primary voters believe Obama was not born in the U.S., compared to 11 percent of the general public.
Deal To Avert Government Shutdown Saves $38 Billion — Bush Tax Cut Deal Spent $150 Billion
Late last night, just minutes from an impending government shutdown, congressional negotiators and President Obama reached a deal to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year, cutting $38.5 billion under current funding levels, per Republican demands. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and other Republicans hailed the deal as an important step to reining in the deficit. In a speech addressing the deal, Obama compared the compromise to the one he helped broker late last year on extending the Bush tax cuts for two years.
But a look at those two deals suggests Republicans are not as interested in cutting the deficit as they claim. In both cases, Democrats made big concessions on key Republican agenda items — tax and spending cuts — in the face of intransigent opposition from the GOP. But while the appropriations deal from last night cuts $38.5 billion in spending over the next six months (through the end of the fiscal year in September), the tax cut deal deprives the government of roughly $150 billion in revenue over a similar period of time.
Extending the Bush tax cuts “would result in a $200 billion to $300 billion cost to the US Treasury compared to what had been expected” in one year — or $100 to $150 billion in six months. So while they very nearly shut down the government to extract painful spending cuts, Republicans had already wiped out those spending cuts many times over with the revenue lost from extending the Bush tax cuts.
Last night, Republican Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus rocked Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election by claiming that she had suddenly found 14,315 lost votes in the most conservative county in the state. If these newly discovered votes are legitimate, they give incumbent conservative Justice David Prosser a more than 7,500 vote lead — a number that almost exactly matches the margin he needs to avoid a recount at the state’s expense.
Critics are saying there’s only two possible explanations for this bizarre development. One is foul play, the other is incompetence. In an awkward press conference last night, Nickolaus went with option B:
The purpose of the canvass is to catch these types of errors. It is important to stress that this is not a case of extra votes, or extra ballots being found. This is human error. [pause] Which I apologize for. [pause] Which is common in this process. [pause] Which is why the state requires us to conduct a canvass.
Watch it here at NFTOS:
The evidence shows that Nickolaus is a partisan GOP operative, but the evidence also reveals a long history of incompetence on her part. Here is what we know about Kathy Nickolaus:
Prosser is Nickolaus’ Former Boss: Throughout the 1990s, Nickolaus worked for the Wisconsin State Assembly’s Republican Caucus. For much of that time, Justice Prosser was the GOP Minority Leader and then the Speaker of the Assembly. So Prosser was Nickolaus’ boss.
Nickolaus Received Immunity For Testimony On A Campaign Scandal: In 2001, the partisan caucuses in the state legislature were investigated for alleged illegal use of state resources to secretly run campaigns. Nickolaus received immunity in return for her testimony about her role in this scandal.
Nickolaus Has Blown Vote Counts In The Past: Nickolaus once posted the wrong outcome in a local school board race, before her error was caught and the correct outcome was posted.
Nickolaus Was Audited After She Moved Official Data To Her Personal Computers: Her county’s Executive Committee ordered an audit of her office after they discovered that she “removed the election results collection and tallying system from the county computer network . . . and installed it on standalone personal computers in her office.
All of this evidence raises a cloud of uncertainty over any vote counts, and it raises disturbing questions about the legitimacy of this election. If Nickolaus’ newly found votes are upheld, Prosser will serve another ten year term on the state’s highest court. That means that for the next decade, Prosser will cast often-decisive votes in important litigation — even though many of the parties appearing before him will question whether he belongs there in the first place.
No matter who emerges as the winner from this vote counting fiasco, however, the mere fact that this election proved so close is still an important blow to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) anti-union agenda. Last February, Prosser’s challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg placed 27 points behind Prosser in a primary to determine which two candidates would face off in the general election. So even in Kloppenburg ultimately loses, progressives will likely claim a partial victory in her overcoming a massive 25 plus point deficit to give Prosser near-loss.
Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall (R) is resisting a proposal that would allow same-sex couples in the Commonwealth of Virginia to adopt children, telling a local Fox affiliate last night that homosexuality is a “disordered behavior” that is “inconsistent with a 6,000-year-old moral code”:
MARSHALL: There’s no real justification for imposing this on private agencies who believe this is a disordered behavior.
The behavior of the persons adopting is an example to children, it should be a good behavior, consistent with a 6,000-year-old moral code. …
[Former Governor Tim Kaine] wants [Catholic adoption agencies] to be compelled to reject 6,000 years of moral teaching… they should not be required to choose between religious freedom and this.
Morals don’t change. The moral law’s the same 1,000 years ago, 6,000 years ago—civil law can change.
Yesterday, Virginia state delegate Adam Ebbin (D), the first ever openly gay member of the Virginia General Assembly, blasted Marshall’s accusation that gays are “disordered”:
How dare a member of the this body call me intrinsically disordered.
Is it intrinsically disordered to love a child?
Is it intrinsically disordered to ensure that a child has an education?
Gov. Bob McDonnell has also spoken out against the adoption provision, saying he thinks that the current nondiscrimination regulations are “proper,” but should not be expanded to “inhibit the very fine work some faith-based organizations are doing.”
Of course, by not discriminating against same-sex couples or couples of certain religions, the provision would actually expand the work organizations do, assuming they are willing to comply with the policy. Opponents of the policy have referred to it as “mandatory gay adoption.”
This is not Marshall’s first attack on the LGBT community. He recently also attempted to ban gays and lesbians from serving in the Virginia National Guard and spoke out against the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
The governor has until the end of next week to act on the bill.
What a glorious day it is! The apocalypse is hear! Break out the champagne, the clown is going down! No it's not April fools day and our national IQ just got 20 points higher!
FOX Stock ALERT...
Dump your chalk and chalkboard stocks..............
FAUX NEWS PRESS RELEASE:
FOX NEWS AND MERCURY RADIO ARTS ANNOUNCE NEW AGREEMENT(New York, NY) Fox News and Mercury Radio Arts, Glenn Beck's production company, are proud to announce that they will work together to develop and produce a variety of television projects for air on the Fox News Channel as well as content for other platforms including Fox News' digital properties. Glenn intends to transition off of his daily program, the third highest rated in all of cable news, later this year.
Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO of Fox News said, "Glenn Beck is a powerful communicator, a creative entrepreneur and a true success by anybody's standards. I look forward to continuing to work with him. Glenn Beck said: "I truly believe that America owes a lot to Roger Ailes and Fox News. I cannot repay Roger for the lessons I've learned and will continue to learn from him and I look forward to starting this new phase of our partnership."
Joel Cheatwood, SVP/Development at Fox News, will be joining Mercury Radio Arts effective April 24, 2011. Part of his role as EVP will be to manage the partnership and serve as a liaison with the Fox News Channel. Roger Ailes said: "Joel is a good friend and one of the most talented and creative executives in the business. Over the past four years I have consistently valued his input and advice and that will not stop as we work with him in his new role." "Glenn Beck" is consistently the third highest rated program on cable news.
For the 27 months that "Glenn Beck" has aired on Fox News, the program has averaged more than 2.2 million total viewers and 563,000 viewers 25-54 years old, numbers normally associated with shows airing in primetime, not at 5pm. "Glenn Beck" has dominated all of its cable news competitors since launch.
After weeks of rumors about poor ratings and increasing concern at Fox News headquarters over Beck’s apocalyptic ranting, it’s finally official — Glenn Beck is ending his daily show on Fox. The statement did not indicate an end date for the show.
Last month, Fox News officials told the New York Times anonymously that they were “contemplating life without Mr. Beck.” The Times also reported that “[m]any on the news side of Fox have wondered whether his chronic outrageousness — he suggested that the president has ‘a deep-seated hatred for white people’— have made it difficult for Fox to hang onto its credibility as a news network.”
That seems like a reasonable concern. Just yesterday, here’s what Beck used his show to assert:
Union leaders are communists, socialists, or revolutionaries who want destruction of “western way of life” [04/05/11]
Maybe Obama decided to try suspects at Guantanamo to inflame the Islamic world [04/05/11]
Obama is “merely a player” in a globalist, Islamist show [04/05/11]
Showing images of Obama, SEIU, and others, Beck says he “would put a lot of these people in jail.” [04/05/11]
Beck somehow linked 9/11 to Wisconsin election, budget cuts [04/05/11]
Beck’s rants earlier this year, in which he tried to connect uprisings in the Middle East to a rising Islamic takeover, abetted by liberal groups in the United States, even provoked the ire of fellow conservatives and Fox personalities like Bill Kristol, who characterized Beck’s rants as “fearfulness unworthy of Americans.”
Yesterday on his radio show, Beck foreshadowed this announcement by telling his listeners that if he left Fox News, “don’t you ever believe” that the liberal watchdog Media Matters “caused a victory.” Perhaps that’s true — only Glenn himself is to blame for creating a show so radically divorced from reality that even Fox News couldn’t handle it.
Top nine statements or phrases NFTOS will miss when Beckistan leaves via stage left:
Buy Gold
George Soros is evil
Unions are evil
Wilson was the worst president ever
Coolidge was the best president ever
Cloward and Piven are evil
Cass Sunstein is evil
Van Jones is evil
and the most famous one
Progressives are out to get him.
At any rate, we can all say "Soros" and raise a glass or two when he departs from his fraud-fest on the regularly scheduled Faux Apocalyptic Now Show.
Relax tea bags and chill before you have a stroke. Beck will be fine. He's richer than Croesus and he's been laughing at folks like you for a very long time....... all the way to the bank.
You think republicans care about our troops? As we told you yesterday, republicans behind closed doors where said to be "encouraging a governement shutdown". See how this ideology fits in with the boots on the ground and troops in the theater of war:
The White House, Senate Democrats, and congressional Republicans are currently locked in intense negotiations, trying to find agreement on a plan to fund the government and avoid a shutdown. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said this week that the Pentagon would still be able “to continue to protect our vital interests around the world, to continue to safeguard the nation’s security, to wage the wars we’re fighting and the operations that we are conducting right now.” However, while U.S. troops will remain engaged in those overseas operations, they won’t get paid for it, the AP reports:
U.S. military troops at war in Iraq and Afghanistan would receive one-week’s pay instead of two in their next paycheck if the government shuts down this weekend due to the federal budget impasse, according to a senior defense official.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues, said the military can’t be paid during a funding lapse until a new appropriations bill or continuing resolution is passed by Congress.
If the funding bill expires on April 8, it will be in the middle of the military’s two-week pay period, so Pentagon would send out paychecks for just the first week of the pay period, said the official.
As the Cable’s Josh Rogin reports, after that initial one-week’s worth paycheck, “all uniformed military personnel would continue to work but would stop receiving paychecks.”
If the federal government shuts down, “you could have forces deployed in the field, with their families back home, and no one’s getting paid.And that could be an issue,” the defense official said.
Last week, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) introduced a bill that would allow troops to continue to receive pay if the government shuts down. “When we heard that the military was concerned about whether or not they would get paid on time, then we rushed through and we got this bill done,” Gohmert said.
Those that sit far right of center should consider these facts before arriving at the tea bag pep rally on shutting down our government!
Today, President Obama meet with congressional leaders from both parties in an attempt to hammer out a budget deal and prevent the government from shutting down at the end of this week. After initially refusing to commit to attend, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) will show up casually late to the White House meeting.
Republican leaders have repeatedly said they don’t want the government to close its doors. “Our goal is to avoid a shutdown,” a spokesman for Boehner said this week. Rep. Hal Rodgers (R-KY) — a powerful House budget negotiator who will attend the meeting –told ABC News yesterday that Republicans in Congress are “serious about trying to prevent a government shutdown.”
Behind closed doors, however, it doesn’t appear they are all that serious:
House Republicans huddled late Monday and, according to a GOP aide, gave the speaker an ovation when he informed them that he was advising the House Administration Committee to begin preparing for a possible shutdown. That process includes alerting lawmakers and senior staff about which employees would not report to work if no agreement is reached.
Republicans have been rallying their Tea Party base with calls for a shutdown for weeks, despite public pronouncements to the contrary. For example, influential Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) has repeatedly said that “nobody wants a government shutdown” — but then spoke at a Tea Party rally last week and cried out: “Shut ‘er down!”
Typical republican mentality, screw everyone but thy-self!
If you think cutting the government's budget is as easy as taking the ax to some unpopular federal programs, a new national poll suggests that you should think again.
According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday, most Americans think that the government spends a lot more money than it actually does on such unpopular programs as foreign aid and public broadcasting.
The poll's release comes one week before current funding for the government runs out.
If there is no budget agreement between congressional lawmakers by next Friday, some government programs and offices may shut down.
"The public has a better idea of how much the government spends on programs like Social Security and Medicare, but there is a related problem -- cutting them has little public support," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "The result: cutting unpopular programs would probably not cut the deficit very much, and cutting the deficit would probably require cuts in programs that Americans like."
Let's start with international assistance. Sixty percent of people we questioned say they'd like to put foreign aid on the chopping block. So would that make a dent in the deficit?
No -- but try telling that to the American public. According to the poll, on average, Americans estimate that foreign aid takes up 10 percent of the federal budget, and one in five think it represents about 30 percent of the money the government spends.
But the actual figure is closer to 1 percent, according to data from the Office of Management and Budget from the 2010 fiscal year's $3.5 trillion budget.
OK. Let's try more low-hanging fruit -- funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The survey indicates nearly half of all Americans would like to see major cuts.
According to the poll the public estimates that the government spent 5 percent of its budget last year on public television and radio.
Not even close. The real answer is about one-tenth of 1 percent.
Want more examples?
Cutting pensions and benefits for government workers is popular, but once again most Americans overestimate how much that costs the government.
On average, Americans think the federal government spent 10 percent of its 2010 budget on pensions and retiree benefits; the OMB figures indicate the real number is about 3.5 percent.
A sizeable minority would like to see food and housing assistance for the poor on the chopping block, but Americans' estimates of how much the government spends on those programs are three to four times higher than the actual price tag.
Cuts in military spending also have some support -- more than a third of all Americans favor cuts in that area. But the public, once again, overestimates the amount of military spending. They told us 30 percent in the poll. In reality only 19 percent of the 2010 budget went towards military spending, according to 2010 OMB figures.
What Americans got right are the programs they don't want to cut.
When we ask Americans to guess how much Social Security cost the government in 2010, the median estimate was 20 percent. Not bad, given that OMB figures indicate that Social Security represented 20.4 percent of the federal budget in 2010.
"Budget experts agree that cutting a target that big would be a good start toward getting the deficit under control. Problem is, 87 percent of people we surveyed don't want to decrease the amount of money spent on Social Security -- and four in 10 would like to see that figure grow. The same is generally true for Medicare and Medicaid, which combined made up 19 percent of last year's budget," adds Holland.
Note: The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey was conducted March 11-13, with 1,023 people questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Radical Republicans Regulate Requirement For Adequate Rest For Pilots:
In February 2009, Continental flight 3407, operated by Colgan Air, plunged into a suburb of Buffalo, NY, killing all 49 people on board and one person on the ground. Pilot error was named as the chief cause of the crash, and investigators focused on pilot fatigue as one of the primary problems. The co-pilot had taken a cross-country, overnight flight the day before the crash, and only slept briefly in an airline lounge before she was required to pilot the flight.
When the plane encountered an ice storm as it attempted to land in Buffalo, the pilots struggled to respond appropriately, and The National Transportation Safety Board found that their “performance was likely impaired because of fatigue.” Both pilots were heard yawning on the cockpit voice recorder.
Families of the victims channeled their grief into action in the following months, launching a 15-month campaign to convince Congress to enact a variety of pilot performance safeguards. The bill passed last summer and, among other things, required the FAA to create tougher rules aimed at controlling pilot fatigue.
But today, the Republican House of Representatives passed an amendment sponsored by Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) to a Republican-drafted aviation bill that would essentially gut the planned pilot fatigue rules by requiring extensive tailoring to many different segments of the aviation industry, and exempting several others.
Hero pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger blasted the amendment yesterday before it passed, saying “it creates a huge obstacle to new regulations,” and that, “at some point in the future, we don’t know when, it’s likely people will die unnecessarily.” Last night on the Ed Show, Sullenberger said the bill is a “slap in the face” to the Flight 3407 families. He also decried “special interests only interested in the bottom line.”
Watch it here at NFTOS:
Family members of those killed on Flight 3407 are already speaking out against the Republican vote. “You can try to dress this up however you like, but we all know which special interests that [the amendment] is attempting to help and what it’s attempting to do for them, which is make it more difficult for the FAA to do its job and regulate them,” said Susan Bourque, who’s sister, Beverly Eckert, was killed in the crash.
Eckert’s husband, Sean Rooney, was killed in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and in the years following his death, Eckert became a leading 9/11 activist and helped lead the push for the 9/11 Commission. She was flying to Buffalo that evening to attend the unveiling of a scholarship in her late husband’s name.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) has vowed to prevent the Shuster Amendment from becoming a part of the final aviation bill, after the House and Senate versions are reconciled.
GOP Rep. Woodall’s Response To Exxon Paying Nothing In Taxes:
Last week, Rep. Rob Woodall held a tele-town hall meeting with his constituents, allowing them to call in and ask questions. At one point, a constituent called in and challenged Woodall’s belief that all we need is spending cuts to move towards a more balanced budget. The caller pointed out that closing corporate tax loopholes on big companies like Exxon Mobil — which paid zero federal corporate income taxes in 2009 — and Google, which only paid a 4.2 percent rate in taxes, would do a lot to help balance the budget as well.
Woodall replied by saying he’s “not a fan of class warfare” and that the only people who’ve ever employed him are rich people. He then went on to say that corporate taxes are really taxes on the customers of these companies and that we need to get “corporate taxes as low as we can in this country”:
CALLER: I have a quick comment and then a question. I certainly agree with moving towards a balanced budget, and containing costs, and cutting where we can, including the Defense Department, which I think is terribly bloated, but I just don’t think it’s feasible to balance the budget with cuts alone. I think you’ve got to also include income and place a fair tax on the wealthiest two percent and closing corporate loopholes that allow huge corporations like Exxon to pay no taxes. For example, Google earned eleven billion dollars last year overseas and paid 4.2 percent in taxes. So I think a fair tax on the wealthy and those who can chip in a little more has to be part of the bigger picture.
WOODALL: Bill, I absolutely agree with you that we can’t do it on spending cuts alone. [...] Now you talk about raising taxes. Now I’m not a fan of class warfare. Now the only people who’ve given me a job in my life is rich people. I’ve never had a poor man offer me a job. [...] At the end of the day, it’s going to be one of us, individuals, that pays every nickel in corporate taxes. I want use to get corporate taxes as low as we can in this country. Which means businesses don’t want to be here, they don’t want to provide jobs here. [...] We have to attract new businesses to our shores, the way to do that is with the lowest corporate tax rate we can get, to make sure folks want to come here.
Listen too it here @ NFTOS:
One has to wonder how we can possibly get taxes any lower when massive corporations like Exxon Mobil and Bank of America are paying nothing in federal corporate income taxes. Perhaps Woodall would prefer that these companies were like General Electric, which not only paid zero in income taxes in 2009 and 2010, but also received a $3.2 billion tax benefit. When Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) was asked about GE’s tax dodging, his response was also that we need to cut corporate taxes.
Typical radical republican ideology, put the tax woes on the poor and working middle class.
Fox News insists that there's a difference between its "opinion" programming and its "news" programming. One top exec has been repeatedly proving his network wrong.
In exclusive new audio, Media Matters for America catches Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon bragging that he repeatedly lied when he speculated on-air "about whether Barack Obama really advocated socialism," an allegation he privately found "rather far-fetched."
If you're looking for the walking embodiment of how Fox is a political attack machine disguised as a news network, look no further than Sammon, who has a pattern of using his position as a "news" editor to distort and slant the facts and push an ideological agenda.
Watch the video here and get the word out about Bill Sammon.
Speaking in 2009 onboard a pricey Mediterranean cruise sponsored by a right-wing college, Sammon described his public attempts the previous year to link Obama to "socialism" as "mischievous speculation." Sammon, who is also a Fox News vice president, acknowledged that he had "privately" believed that the socialism allegation was "rather far-fetched."
A review found that Sammon -- then the network's Washington deputy managing editor --linked Obama's "spread the wealth around" remarks to socialism in four separate October 2008 Fox appearances. And Sammon's "mischief" wasn't limited to his on-air appearances. As NFTOS reported earlier, Sammon also pushed Fox News colleagues to play the socialism card.
In addition, multiple leaked emails to Media Matters for America show that Sammon pushes his political agenda into "news" programming on issues like climate change, health care, and the Middle East. He's even gone on right-wing talk radio to claim that President Obama has "controversial" views on "the white race."
Bill Sammon's position directing news coverage is a clear example of how Fox News hurts journalism. By making smears, falsehoods and attacks a higher priority than the facts, Sammon distorts our political process. It's Fox News' problem -- and ours.
It is NFTOS' job to support in fighting Fox News' toxic effect on our national debate.
With its union-busting “budget repair bill”tied up in court and as many as eight recall campaigns looming, the Wisconsin state GOP has apparently abandoned its argument that the fight to end collective bargaining rights was just about closing the state’s budget gap.
State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) has already revealed that the true motivation behind the bill was to defund unions to make it “much more difficult” for Democrats, including President Obama, to get elected in Wisconsin. Now, attempting to fend off efforts to recall eight of his Senate colleagues, he’s mailed out a fundraising letter that removes any doubt about the GOP’s motive:
“(Unions have) ruined California and Illinois, but they’re not going to ruin Wisconsin.
“That is because Republicans faced down Big Labor’s bully tactics and a Democratic walk-out in the state Senate to break the power of unions like WEAC and AFSCME once and for all,” Fitzgerald said in his letter.
Fitzgerald’s letter is in stark contrast from his all-about-the-budget rhetoric after the bill passed, when he said:
“Today’s passage is a momentous step toward getting our state’s fiscal house in order.”
Fitzgerald, however, isn’t alone. In Ohio, where the state senate is expected to vote on a similar union-busting bill tomorrow, state Rep. Joe Uecker (R) made it clear that the bill isn’t merely about the budget, but about “set[ting] the framework” for further anti-union efforts.
Oklahoma has now also joined the list of states considering anti-union legislation. The state Senate passed a bill through committee Monday that would repeal a 2004 law that guaranteed collective bargaining rights for municipal employees in cities with more than 35,000 residents. If the bill passes, 13 cities could collectively bargain with unions but would no longer be required to do so.
In newly uncovered audio, a Fox News executive boasts that he lied repeatedly during the closing days of the 2008 presidential campaign when he speculated on-air "about whether Barack Obama really advocated socialism."
Speaking in 2009 onboard a pricey Mediterranean cruise sponsored by a right-wing college, Fox Washington managing editor Bill Sammon described his attempts the previous year to link Obama to "socialism" as "mischievous speculation." Sammon, who is also a Fox News vice president, acknowledged that "privately" he had believed that the socialism allegation was "rather far-fetched."
"Last year, candidate Barack Obama stood on a sidewalk in Toledo, Ohio, and first let it slip to Joe the Plumber that he wanted to quote, 'spread the wealth around,' " said Sammon. "At that time, I have to admit, that I went on TV on Fox News and publicly engaged in what I guess was some rather mischievous speculation about whether Barack Obama really advocated socialism, a premise that privately I found rather far-fetched."
Indeed, in the weeks leading up to the 2008 election, Sammon used his Fox position to engage in a campaign to tie Obama to "Marxists" and "socialism." A Media Matters review found that Sammon - then the network's Washington deputy managing editor - repeatedly linked Obama's "spread the wealth around" remark to socialism during his October 2008 Fox appearances.
Sammon's "mischief" wasn't limited to his on-air appearances. As Media Matters reported, Sammon also pushed Fox News colleagues to play the socialism card. On October 27, 2008, Sammon sent anemailto staffers highlighting what he described as "Obama's references to socialism, liberalism, Marxism and Marxists" in his 1995 autobiography Dreams From My Father. Shortly after sending the email, Sammon appeared on two Fox News programs to discuss his research and also wrote a FoxNews.com pieceabout Obama's "affinity to Marxists."
On October 14, 2008, Sammon said that Obama's "spread the wealth around" remark "is red meat when you're talking to conservatives and you start talking about 'spread the wealth around.' That is tantamount to socialism."
Sammon repeated the "tantamount to socialism" line later that day, stating: "That's anathema to conservatives. That's the same as saying, 'Spread the misery around.' That's basically tantamount to socialism. And that bothers a lot of people. So I think if McCain is going to have any chance of moving ahead, he's got to turn this economic discussion from something that's been hurting him for the last couple weeks to something that can help him by focusing on what to do about the economy in the future."
On October 21, 2008, Sammon appeared on Greta Van Susteren's show, where he referred to Bill Ayers "talking about being a Marxist." Sammon then said, "I have read Barack Obama's books pretty carefully, and he in his own words talks about being drawn to Marxists. ... Now all this stuff's coming out about whether he's a socialist. I don't know why anyone is surprised by it, because if you read his own words and his sort of, you know, orientation coming up as a liberal through college and as a young man, it's not a huge shock."
On October 25, 2008, Sammon said: "As soon as I heard Barack Obama say, and it's gone on almost two weeks ago - two weeks ago -- 'spread the wealth around,' I mean, the red flag went up. I mean, that's just code - and I knew that conservatives would say, 'That is exactly code for income redistribution which is tantamount to socialism.' And I talked about this for several days right after it happened. And the McCain campaign has now picked up this socialism word on their own, and they're running with it."
"I think some of these substantive issues, such as, you know, higher taxes, are we going to head more towards a socialistic government, could play in McCain's favor," Sammon said on October 27, 2008, after Fox aired a clip of Obama responding to McCain's accusations of socialism.
"I do think that when you start talking about 'spread the wealth around,' which is what Barack Obama said to Joe the Plumber, and now this new radio thing that came up today where he talks about redistributing the wealth, you know, those two things together are tantamount to socialism to conservatives," Sammon added later in the October 27 interview. "That's red meat. That'll fire up the conservative base, who had been a little bit dispirited."
Sammon went on to say that Obama "was drawn to Marxists, he was drawn to liberals, he was drawn to socialists by his own admission as a young man, so I think even though he postures as a moderate now as a presidential candidate, I think his heart is really towards the hard left, and we may see whether that comes out as he governs, if in fact he wins."
During an October 28, 2008, appearance on Fox & Friends, Sammon again said Obama "was drawn to Marxist and socialists as a young man" before adding, "Now, let's be clear. I mean people had political ideologies in college that they don't necessarily have later in life, but I do think it indicates that he may be a little bit more liberal than he presents himself."
Later in the interview, Sammon said that "there certainly is a consistency there when you look at the people he was drawn to going to socialist conferences, hanging out with Marxist professors, going to see Stokely Carmichael, even after he got out of college, for inspiration. The former Black Panther. And then you look later at life, where his association with Bill Ayers, the radical. You look at his association with the Reverend Wright. It does make you wonder whether indeed some of his leanings in his college days still carry through today, only are a little bit more fuzzed up because he's a politician who's running for high office. And I think it's worth examining."
Sammon made his startling admission during an August 2, 2009, speech onboard a 12-day cruise sponsored by Hillsdale College. Conservative writers Walter Williams, Paul Johnson, and Victor Davis Hanson also gave lectures. A Hillsdale newsletter states that "in addition to giving lectures, guest speakers also hosted private dinners for invited guests, and joined in the daytime excursions and camaraderie with their fellow 136 Hillsdale friends and nine Hillsdale staff."
Abrochure for the cruise promised attendees a "great opportunity to gather and discuss history and ideas with noted scholars and like-minded friends of Hillsdale." Cabin rates ranged from $11,800 to $37,600 per couple.
The National Review has described Hillsdale as "a citadel of American conservatism," and the conservative Young America's Foundation haslisted Hillsdale as one of the top conservative colleges in the country. Hillsdale PresidentLarry Arnn, Sean Hannity, andMark Levin have issued fundraising appeals touting the college's conservative credentials. Rush Limbaugh has also done on-air radio advertisements for Hillsdale.
During his cruise speech, Sammon said that while he found his own socialism speculation "far-fetched" in October 2008, it was actually proven correct during the first months of Obama's presidency.
"Now imagine my surprise when this year, I witness President Barack Obama standing in the cross hall of the White House and having taken over the American car industry, look into the camera, and announce to the nation essentially, that he would personally vouch for the warranty on your car's muffler," Sammon said on the cruise. "All of a sudden, the debate over whether America was heading for socialism seemed anything but far-fetched."
