“It appears that the Republican Party leadership in the Congress has made a decision that they want to deny President Obama success, which means, in my mind, they are rooting against the country, as well,” the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman told WAMU radio host Diane Rehm on Tuesday morning, promoting his new book, “The Waxman Report.” ~politico.com

It gets better:

“They [Republicans] want to play politics and see if they can keep any achievements from being accomplished that may be beneficial to the Democrats. They’re rooting against the country and I think in this case, even rooting against the world because the world needs to get its act together to stop global warming.” ~realclearpolitics.com

Waxman isn’t the only one either. There is a sense that Democrats have forgot that they once felt that lying about and smearing your opposition was the embodiment of patriotism itself.

Far left writer Paul Krugman says opposing liberal policies is betrayal of the planet.

…but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases.

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet. ~nytimes.com

Video of Pelosi saying Republicans are unpatriotic.

More video of Pelosi saying that Enforcing American immigration law is un-American and illegal immigrants are, “very, very patriotic.”

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don’t understand it at its core..

You scare me because you lack humility and ‘class’, always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the ‘blame America’ crowdand deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer ‘wind mills’ to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because you have begun to use ‘extortion’ tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O’Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Lou Pritchett

~Retrieved from snopes.com

The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing* terrorists are currently planning acts of violence,
but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues. The economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment.

• Threats from white supremacist and violent antigovernment groups during 2009 have been largely rhetorical and have not indicated plans to carryout violent acts. Nevertheless, the consequences of a prolonged economic downturn—including real estate foreclosures, unemployment, and an inability to obtain credit—could create a fertile recruiting environment for rightwing extremists and even result in confrontations between such groups and government authorities similar to those in the past.
• Rightwing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning.
• The current economic and political climate has some similarities to the 1990s when rightwing extremism experienced a resurgence fueled largely by an economic recession, criticism about the outsourcing of jobs, and the perceived threat to U.S. power and sovereignty by other foreign powers.
• During the 1990s, these issues contributed to the growth in the number of domestic rightwing terrorist and extremist groups and an increase in violent acts targeting government facilities, law enforcement officers, banks, and infrastructure sectors.
• Growth of these groups subsided in reaction to increased government scrutiny as a result of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and disrupted plots, improvements in the economy, and the continued U.S. standing as the preeminent world power.

The possible passage of new restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.  ~thelibertypapers.org

Only government can implement policies and subsidies to provide an institutional framework for quality journalism.

Because the free market has failed? What– failed to reward blatant liberal bias? Failed to reward shoddy reporting and a failure to check facts? Failed to keep afloat journalists who skew their stories so routinely that the new objectiveness is in fact liberalism. The reason for these failures is that journalism = liberalism. There is no objectivity.

…We begin with the notion that journalism is a public good, that it has broad social benefits far beyond that between buyer and seller. Like all public goods, we need the resources to get it produced. This is the role of the state and public policy. It will require a subsidy and should be regarded as similar to the education system or the military in that regard. Only a nihilist would consider it sufficient to rely on profit-seeking commercial interests or philanthropy to educate our youth or defend the nation from attack. With the collapse of the commercial news system, the same logic applies. Just as there came a moment when policy-makers recognized the necessity of investing tax dollars to create a public education system to teach our children, so a moment has arrived at which we must recognize the need to invest tax dollars to create and maintain news gathering, reporting and writing with the purpose of informing all our citizens.

So, if we can accept the need for government intervention to save American journalism, what form should it take? In the near term, we need to think about an immediate journalism economic stimulus, to be revisited after three years, and we need to think big. Let’s eliminate postal rates for periodicals that garner less than 20 percent of their revenues from advertising. This keeps alive all sorts of magazines and journals of opinion that are being devastated by distribution costs. It is these publications that often do investigative, cutting-edge, politically provocative journalism.

What to do about newspapers? Let’s give all Americans an annual tax credit for the first $200 they spend on daily newspapers. The newspapers would have to publish at least five times per week and maintain a substantial “news hole,” say at least twenty-four broad pages each day, with less than 50 percent advertising. In effect, this means the government will pay for every citizen who so desires to get a free daily newspaper subscription, but the taxpayer gets to pick the newspaper–this is an indirect subsidy, because the government does not control who gets the money. This will buy time for our old media newsrooms–and for us citizens–to develop a plan to establish journalism in the digital era. We could see this evolving into a system to provide tax credits for online subscriptions as well.  ~thenation.com

Couple this with the fairness doctrine and what do you have? State-run and approved media.

On last night’s episode of Countdown, the always excitable Keith Olbermann led the show with a “bombshell allegation” from investigative reporter Seymour Hersh exposing a “covert executive assassination ring” run out of Dick Cheney’s office. Or least that’s what I think he said. Hersh made the sensational revelation during a speaking appearance at the University of Minnesota on Wednesday. The segment:  ~reason.com

I hope they save that video should it disappear any time soon as an embarassed political hack realizes what an incredible moron he has been… naaah, he hasn’t enough sense.

I mean I didn’t go to cornell either and I know BS when I hear it!

But is this the policy that Obama got elected on? A tax cut for 95% of all Americans? Conservative fiscal discipline? Cutting the deficit and outlawing earmarks? Already in the first 50 days this is nothing if not a trainwreck of lies and broken promises.

• The ‘tax cut’ is estimated to actually be $13 extra a week from changing the withholding tables not the tax rates — meaning that it is not actually a tax cut if you’re still paying the same rate.
• A trillion dollars of increased spending in the first five weeks alone with more spending to come.
• Budget increase to $3.6 trillion dollars in the first year of office.
• A trillion dollars in tax increases.
• No earmarks ‘next year’ as Obama signs bill with 9000+ earmarks
• Federal takeover of Healthcare…

pic stolen from gatewaypundit!

Some argue that capitalism itself has failed and free market ideology is the problem. Hence the Obama Solution: tax, spend, control. Repeat.

Higher taxes not just on the wealthy but on everyone and everything. Notably energy.

Republicans had one chance to turn back the tide of tax and spend policies but failed to seize it. Republicans controlled all three branches of government. Did they follow through on their platform? No. They compromised. They may have slowed the growth of government in comparison to the extent that Democrats would have but in the end will anyone note this?

Culture of corruption update:

By GEOFF EARLE Post Correspondent
March 11, 2009

WASHINGTON – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has gone from frequent flier to jet-aircraft connoisseur, with aides berating military officials to get the best planes, e-mails revealed yesterday.

Pelosi, who clashed with the military to get nonstop service when she flies home to California with police protection on government planes, revealed a particular fondness for Gulfstream’s sleek G-5 – a plane glamorized in Hollywood films and rap videos.

“It is my understanding there are no G-5s available for the House during the Memorial Day recess. This is totally unacceptable . . . The speaker will want to know where the planes are,” a Pelosi aide wrote in an angry e-mail to the military. ~nypost.com

These people are out of control. Mitch McConnell says they are spending $1 Billion dollars an hour!

“In just 50 days, Congress has voted to spend about $1.2 trillion between the Stimulus and the Omnibus,” McConnell says. “To put that in perspective, that’s about $24 billion a day, or about $1 billion an hour—most of it borrowed. There’s simply no question: government spending has spun out of control.”  ~politico.com

So what it begins to look like is that all these years that Democrats were using spending as a cudgel against republicans the reality is that the precense of the GOP in power was actually holding back Democrats from spending like drunken sailors (which is in fact an insult to drunken sailors everywhere).

Maybe Democrats believe that it’s necessary to destroy all their enemies first in order to save the planet. This would make sense when you look at the actions of the left rather than their words.

The ‘new’ politics of hope and change looks just like a ramped up, more hateful and malicious version of the old politics (of personal destruction). Who would have thought that this was the way to unite America?

So my liberal friends, is this the blueprint on how to be a uniter and not a divider? Attempting to silence your critics? Using the power of the media and the Executive branch to crush any dissent or disagreement as the model of civility?

Obama’s plan to target Rush began in October according to the Politico. The demonization of Rush Limbaugh was planned, coordinated, and executed by members of the Democratic machine and the administration. Obama himself pulled the trigger, signaling that the slander and coordinated attacks should begin. It continues day after day as liberal journalists demand a disavowal from every Republican on their respective shows.

“Are you now, or have you ever agreed with Rush Limbaugh?”

Ironically (or not) democrats are a caricature of their own psychological projections.

What we should be asking is how long will this targeting of Rush Limbaugh be the main priority of the Obama administration?

First they came for Rush, next, who knows, everyone who disagrees with the President’s plans for radical and “fundamental transformation of the United States of America” may be targeted. Beware.

No, only McCain is inciting hatred in this election.

http://frighteningprospect.com/

November 2007:

Amid reports that the U.S. military surge has helped to stabilize insurgent attacks in Baghdad and a recent Pew Research Center poll that found 48 percent of Americans now believe the U.S. military effort in Iraq is going well, up from 30 percent in February, Biden said, “This whole notion that the surge is working is fantasy.” ~swamppolitics.com

But wait there’s more! Biden and an entire committee of Democrats told Petraeus that his surge was a failure –even as it was being implemented– and Biden himself all but demanded that the troops should be pulled out immediately.

Democrats tell Petraeus that Iraq surge has failed

Democratic leaders in the Senate bluntly told the US military commander in Iraq today that President Bush’s troop “surge” strategy had failed in its prime objective – to force a political settlement between Iraqi factions.

…“We should stop the surge and start bringing our troops home,” Joseph Biden, the Senate Foreign Relations committee chairman, said as General Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the US Ambassador to Iraq, prepared to testify before the committee. ~timesonline.co.uk

Biden voted against the surge. He claimed it would fail. He claimed it had failed. Until finally faced with overwhelming evidence of it’s success he did what any rational, sane, and ethically fairminded thinking person would do– he claimed all the credit for it’s success!

SEN. BIDEN: No. The surge helped make that–what made is possible in Anbar province is they did what I’d suggested two and a half years ago: gave local control. They turned over and they said to the Sunnis in Anbar province, “We promise you, don’t worry, you’re not going to have any Shia in here. There’s going to be no national forces in here. We’re going to train your forces to help you fight al-Qaeda.” And that you–what you had was the awakening. The awakening was not an awakening by us, it was an awakening of the Sunnis in Anbar province willing to fight. ~msnbc.msn.com

In one telling and insightful paragraph Joe Biden tells us everything we need to know about what kind of man Joe Biden is. Disregarding the hard work, blood, sweat and tears of those who made the surge a success Biden nevertheless claims the credit for himself and his running mate Obama. What class.

Far from–look, the bottom line here is that it’s–let’s–the surge is over. Here’s the real point. Whether or not the surge worked is almost irrelevant now. We’re in a new deal. What is the administration doing? They’re doing what Barack Obama has suggested over 14 months ago, turn responsibility over and draw down our troops. We’re about to get a deal from the president of the United States and Maliki, the head of the Iraqi government, that’s going to land on my desk as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee saying we’re going to set a timeline to draw down our forces. The only guy in America out of step is John McCain. John McCain’s saying no timeline. They’ve signed on to Barack Obama’s proposal. ~msnbc.msn.com

The Jawa Report- “Joe Biden has become a parody of his own caricature.”