- Fox News employee and former half-term Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, is now defending BP's interests over those of Gulf residents. She, like many Republicans and conservatives, is comparing President Obama to Hitler for siding with the people over BP. On her twitter account, she urged her sheep-like followers to read an article by Thomas Sowell which argues that asking BP to pay for the damage it has caused in the Gulf is akin to Nazi-ism. That woman is both shameless and clueless.
- Continuing with Palin, she was finally called to account for setting up an illegal slush fund while still Governor of Alaska. An independent counsel in Alaska determined that her "legal defense fund" was illegal, and that the way it was set up, Palin could have used the money for anything she wanted. "The more than $360,000 in donations collected while she was governor, the settlement said, could have been used for reduction of 'private debts, payment of private income taxes and, theoretically at least, are subject to demand for any purpose. Thus the Trust itself contemplates personal gain and financial benefit' to the governor in violation of the Alaska Ethics Act. Palin claims she will return nearly $400K." Palin's rabid and nutty supporters have called the ruling a "witch hunt" and have started another legal defense fund for her. My question to Ms. Palin, why can't you just follow the law? Also, Palin is now a millionaire many times over. Why does she refuse to pay any of her own bills? She's the one who violated the ethics laws, yet she seems to feel that it is the obligation of others to pay her bills. Anyone else find this troubling?
- My Senator, Ben Nelson (D-NE), is easily among the worst members of Congress. He is, without a doubt, a DINO. He joined the Republicans to filibuster an extension of jobless benefits. Yeah, Ben, cut off people's benefits in the midst of the worst economy in 70 years (an economy that you helped to create by voting for Bush's tax cuts for millionaires and the two wars he started). Whose side are you on, Mr. Nelson?
- Things are not looking so good for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her once sky high poll numbers are plummeting, and her attacks on President Obama are damaging her domestically. "The French are irritated by the Germans’ reluctance to save the euro. And Barack Obama is criticizing her cost-cutting as the wrong move in an economically difficult time. Normally, Obama's criticism would mobilize Germans and cause them to rally around their chancellor. But not this time. Again, Merkel gets the worst of both worlds: trouble at home and abroad. It was much easier for Merkel under George W. Bush, who was very much disliked in Germany."
- Teabagging hero Marco Rubio, who is running for the Senate in Florida as a Republican, has flip-flopped on his promise to repeal health care reform. He said that he would like to keep the ban on denial of pre-existing conditions, but scrap all the rest. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo says, "Rubio's position is something like saying on the fancy dinner out, I'm in favor of the food, but not the check. I mean, who isn't?"
- It seems Republicans in Tennessee are having a tough time understanding the First Amendment. You know, the parts about freedom of religion. GOP House candidate Lou Ann Zelenik is publicly opposed to allowing Muslims to build a community center in her district. Her opposition is strictly on religious grounds. Her statement on the matter is one of the most bigoted statements I have ever heard from someone running for office, "Until the American Muslim community find it in their hearts to separate themselves from their evil, radical counterparts, to condemn those who want to destroy our civilization and will fight against them, we are not obligated to open our society to any of them." So, now, according to Lou Ann Zelenik, all Muslims are terrorists and supporters of terrorism. It's a fucking community center, Ms. Zelenik! Only a religious bigot would find harm in something like this. She should be ashamed.
- The Rolling Stone reporter who wrote the piece on Gen. Stanley McChrystal that ultimately got him fired, says the troops in Afghanistan are glad he is gone. In an interview conducted by Huffington Post while still embedded with the troops, Michael Hastings said, "Over here, soldiers were happy that he got fired. I've had a number of people come up to me, I got an email from a Marine this morning [Thursday]: 'Hey man, you did great work. All the guys in my company think it's good McChrystal is not there because he was putting or lives at risk."
Have a great weekend.
4 comments:
Item 1: Palin is not defending BP over the people anymore than I am. She is simply saying, again like me, that Obama has no Constitutional authority to make BP cough up $20 Billion.
Of course BP could have said no, and then the public outcry would have basically ruined the company. Obama knew this and BP knew this. What Obama did was akin to mafia extortion.
Obama was setting up extra-legal mechanisms to coerce money out of a private company. He was making law out of the executive branch instead of enforcing existing law, as is HIS JOB.
BP absolutely should be held accountable for every last dime, and they have said that they would have done so. Palin does not dipute that and your distortion of the truth otherwise is unseemly.
Item 2: "My question to Ms. Palin, why can't you just follow the law?" I agree with you if she knowingly broke the law. That being said, I find it uproariously funny that you ask that question of her when the President you support, seemingly without reservation, continuously breaks the law... especially the law of the land as laid out in the Consitution.
Item 3: Your senator and the rest of the Republicans, I suspect, are not against extending jobless benefits, and again I suspect you know that.
They are simply trying to follow the law that ironically the DEMOCRATS passed called Pay-go. In other words, they are trying to find a way to pay for this expenditure by balancing it with off-setting spending cuts.
The rest of the idiot Democrats dont' want to cut spending, ever, or so it would seem.
The Republicans and Senator Nelson are trying to follow THE LAW, just like you chided Palin incorrectly for not following.
Come on, Dave! Be consistent there, buddy!
You conveniently ignored my underlying criticism of Palin in that she endorsed an article that compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler. I don't think Palin is making a constitutional argument, as she seems to have very little first hand knowledge of what's in the document. Her brief term as governor showed us that. Besides, she was posting on twitter - not exactly the place where scholars or serious people go for information.
The "shakedown" and mafia terminology, plus the frequent comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis, show that conservatives have very little understanding of what the Nazis stood for and what they did while in control of Germany. Same with the mafia. They ruled by fear, intimidation, and bribery. Hate the president all you want, but there is nothing Nazi or mafia-like about him. It is a disgraceful comparison that makes any serious consideration of the underlying conservative argument impossible to hear.
BP is in the midst of the worst PR a company could get. If they had said no to the president's request, it might have gotten worse. But not too much. They already have an approval rating lower than Yassir Arafat and Sadam Hussein at their lowest. How much lower is it supposed to get?
The remedy that conservatives claim is out there - that Obama is ignoring - does not exist. Current law has the cap at $75 million. That is a drop in the bucket. This inconvenient fact seems to be forgotten when righties are out there "not defending BP." Maybe more could be obtained in court, but A) that would take years or even decades before anyone saw any money & B) the right wing judicial activists on the bench in that circuit would most certainly rule the way BP wants. We already saw an example with the judge (heavily invested in oil, and currently lying about when he supposedly sold his stocks) who stopped the moratorium in Louisiana.
Sorry, Paine, but Obama did right by the people of the Gulf. There is no constitutional issue when a persuasive president gets a foreign company to voluntarily do what he asks.
Cite a concrete example where President Obama broke the law, as you claim. You won't be able to. I understand that many of his policies do not pass muster with modern day right wing ideology, but no laws have been broken. Besides, you guys have been living in this alternate reality for the last year and a half where its 1950 and there's a red under every bed. The talking points about death panels and FEMA concentration camps, socialism, government takeover of health care are only taken seriously in tea party world.
As for Palin, this is not the first time she has been found guilty. That is a major distinction. She was in this case, and she says she's returning the money. What aggravates me about the Palin worship on the right is that you all automatically assume every ethics charge against her is baseless; and if it's not baseless, then she knew nothing about it, and is 100% innocent. Oh, and it's those evil Democrats who hate her because she had a retarded baby, and apparently, Democrats hate the retarded. Or something. It's hard to keep track these days.
I mean, in this case, it was about a legal defense fund. Legal is in the title, and she still set it up illegally. Then she blamed it on her lawyer! You don't find that a bit ridiculous?
Funny how you find Pay-go so important, but where were you when the Republicans ignored it for years? But, you see, most Republicans are actually against jobless benefits. It is conservative dogma (repeated daily on Fox and talk radio) that unemployed people are lazy and greedy, and they are living fat off free tax payer money. The truth is far from that.
Dave, I'll give you several IMPEACHABLE cases of Obama breaking the law.
First, the quid pro quo offer to Joe Sestak to remove himself from the senate race is clearly and inarguable against federal law.
Second, the seizing of private companies, seizing of their assets, firing of their executives, placing hand-picked executives in their place, and then dictating what these companies are to do service and product wise is completely un-constitutional and impeachable. We won't even go into the fact that he ignored bond holders and gave a majority control of the assets of the car makers to his buddies in the unions, thereby furthing skirting financial and bankruptcy law.
Further, he broke constitutional law by mandating that everyone MUST purchase insurance simply because they are alive. This will be proven out in court by the way.
Obama has a total and complete disregard for the law. He makes his own law by fiat (i.e. the BP slush fund) and refuses to enforce federal law elsewhere such as with border security.
As for Palin, ALL of the politically motivated charges against her to date have been dismissed or adjudicated as to her being not guilty. She does appear to have broken the law in this latest case, but is correcting the matter immediatly. That is far more than the Dark Lord Obama has done.
And no, I don't think Democrats hate Palin because she had a retarded baby. Hell, most of the Democrats in congress apparently started out as retarded babies.
They hate Palin because she is right, effective, and dangerous to the furthering of the socialist agenda.
Further, the similiarities between Hitler and Obama as far as governing tactics and strategy, is very scary. I don't think Obama would ever start putting conservatives into ovens or anything of that nature, but his attempts to consolidate command and control of the nation are eerily similar.
Lastly, Republicans don't think those on unemployment are fat and lazy. The economy created by Bush and exacerbated by Obama has caused jobs to evaporate. The GOP understand this. I understand this. My wife is one of these people that has been out of work for over a year now.
Lastly, Obama could care less about the people in Louisiana other than as a source of votes for him. If he cared, he wouldn't have issued that asinine moratorium that will kill upwards of 50,000 more jobs in the region and thus decimate those economies.
You don't ground all air travel simply because one plane crashes. Obama is using this as an excuse to further his political agenda to remove the U.S. from oil. That is all he is doing, sir.
100% unadulterated bullshit. You did not name a single impeachable offense. Furthermore, your recitation of supposed Obama offenses aren't even true. He seized nothing, the Sestak deal was nothing (no quid pro quo), and the health insurance bill is legal. Perhaps in teabagger fantasy world, what you are saying is true, but in the real world, it is little more than paranoid, baseless nonsense. The right has been engaged in an unprecedented political demonization of this president since day one. The charges are all politically motivated and without merit.
Seriously, I thought you were more reasonable than that, but you clearly are in the dementia stage of your Obama derangement syndrome.
As for Palin, you are wrong on that, too. She has been found guilty on a number of other instances. Troopergate, for one. She was found to have abused her office. That was 2008, you need to adjust your talking points.
There are ZERO similarities between President Obama and Adolf Hitler, and you should be ashamed for saying such garbage. Really, can't conservatives argue things on the merits rather than hyperbolic, fact-free attacks and name calling?
The moratorium on drilling was very narrow in its focus. Check the facts. There are over 3000 off shore oil rigs in the Gulf now, the moratorium applied to less than 35. There is no way that 50,000 jobs could be lost based on those facts.
Look, the Bush policies that the right enthusiastically supported for his entire time in office destroyed our economy. That is a fact. In his 8 years in office, Bush's job creation numbers were a net gain of 1 million. Contrast that to President Carter, who had 10.5 million jobs created in only one term. Compare that to Clinton with 23 million. And under Obama, were set for him to top Bush's job creation numbers in less than two years. Conservatives have no room to speak on the economy, because your trickle down theories have all been disproven.
I am convinced that the right's Obama derangement only gets stronger the more successful he is. That is the only explanation why someone like yourself, who seems reasonable most of the time, would go off on a ridiculous rant like you did in that previous comment. I can't take anyone seriously who argues that Obama and Hitler are in anyway alike. It's just idiotic.
You are entitled your own opinion, but not your own facts. That seems to be something the right has trouble with. It has become crystal clear that conservatives want the economy to fail and people to suffer in a calculated move to try to get power back. It is cynical and dangerous. And, yes, un-American.
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