Anti-American Conservative Freaks at Fox News Ignore Fact That IRS Scrutinized All Political Groups

Anti-American Conservative Freaks at Fox News Ignore Fact That IRS Scrutinized All Political Groups

Fox News selectively covered new reports on the IRS' targeting of political groups, raising questions about how the network will handle the new revelations in future reports.

According to an internal IRS document obtained by The Associated Press, the IRS targeted groups seeking tax exempt status by screening for terms that are not unique to tea party and conservative groups. Terms such as "Israel," "progressive" and "occupy" were also used by the agency to further scrutinize certain organizations.

On the June 24 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier, host Bret Baier failed to mention the memo obtained by the Associated Press and instead suggested that the new information extended targeting to only religious groups, saying, "You can add Jewish and other religious groups to the agency's hit list." Fox's chief political correspondent Carl Cameron pointed out that "other religious groups" were targeted, and acknowledged that "as for those conservative groups that were targeted, they weren't just tea partiers and they included other type of policy groups." However, both Baier and Cameron neglected to mention that the words associated with left-leaning groups like "occupy" or "progressive" were also used in targeting.

On Fox Business' Lou Dobbs Tonight, Dobbs also reported on new revelations in the IRS story but did not comment on the the Associated Press memo or the fact that left-leaning groups were also subject to improper scrutiny.

The Fox affiliated FoxNation.com also included an Associated Press story about the IRS' overreach, but focused on a conference call IRS commissioner Danny Werfel held with reporters in which he did not specify which terms were on the list of targeted words.

What day was it that evil became part of journalism. That was something that Fox News, which is nothing more than a fax machine for conservative propaganda, decided that journalism was to be. It is simple, you ut a lot of people in business attire, make them look like they might pass for respectable journalists, and use them to propel lies, half truths and rumors as news. Evil doesn't wear a red suit, have horns and pointed tail, it looks like the clowns in make-up at Fox News. They wrap their evil in the flag and the Bible, and pass their garbage out as patriotism.

How Low Can Morally Corrupt Republicans Go, GOP Opposition Researcher Names Drudge As A Propaganda Model

How Low Can Morally Corrupt Republicans Go, GOP Opposition Researcher Names Drudge As A Propaganda Model

The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin interviewed Tim Miller, executive director of a new conservative political action committee centered on opposition research, who reminisced about how conservative operatives successfully used blogger Matt Drudge to push debunked or thinly-researched smears against Democrats in 2004, describing it as a "great model" that needs to be updated.

In a March 24 post at Rubin's "Right Turn" blog, Miller described his organization, America Rising, as being dedicated to the "collection, dissemination and deployment of opposition research against Democrats," and uses Drudge's DrudgeReport.com circa 2004 as a model to return to (emphasis added):

    Last week former Mitt Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades and two young Republican sharpshooters, Tim Miller and Joe Pounder, announced they would set up a new organization, America Rising, devoted to the collection, dissemination and deployment of opposition research against Democrats and a counterpart to the hugely successful American Bridge on the left. On Friday I sat down with Miller and Pounder at a Capitol Hill Starbucks to talk about their new venture.

    They plan on instigating nothing less than a revolution in the way the right does and uses oppo research. They are keen on connecting research to communication and every other aspect of campaigns. Pounder tells me, "It must be responsive to the news cycle and polling." Miller jokes that "research has been people sitting in a dungeon or going through trash cans" and then funneling the information up to a press person to send out in a mass e-mail. Miller says, "Now you have to drive the news cycle."

    The Romney campaign was certainly hobbled by the Democrats' opposition machine, which cranked out information on everything from Bain to Cayman bank accounts, funneled it to friendly press outlets and the Obama super PAC, and kept the Romney team on perpetual defense. But the problem is not specific to the Romney campaign. Miller recalls, "We had a great model in 2004 -- research guys who fed to Drudge. Drudge drove the mainstream media." But, he says, "in a lot of ways we haven't done a good job of updating [that model]. Over time we rested on our laurels."

In 2006, ABC News highlighted Drudge's influence on media, particularly in the 2004 election cycle, saying, "Republican operatives keep an open line to Drudge, often using him to attack their opponents...And then the mainstream media often picks it up."

Drudge did help drive stories to Fox News, right-wing radio and other outlets during the 2004 presidential election, but much of the blogger's content -- which included discredited attacks on John Kerry's military service -- was thinly-researched, deceptively edited, or flat-out wrong.

What does it say about your radical political movement that it's single biggest weapon is not truth, not American values, not legal or economic justice, not liberty, not the Constitution, not progress and jobs, but smears from mentally unstable ideologues.

6 UnAmerican Media Pundits America Should Ignore in 2013

6 UnAmerican Media Pundits America Should Ignore in 2013

Readers, I recommend you do likewise. Herewith, a barrel of horribles who ought to be jettisoned, exuberantly flung from civilization. They are boils on the ass of the media beast, and it is my well-considered opinion, they should be ruthlessly lanced. With one exception, these offenders were not chosen simply on the basis of awful election-year prognostications, though all were indeed guilty. No, this is a lifetime achievement award. These folks (with one exception) have been awful for a very long time; I propose that in the new year we stand athwart their shitty track records and yell “Enough!”

1. Dick Morris.Regrettably, the Big Dog’s coattails are impossibly long (see Penn, Mark). If Morris couldn’t put “former Clinton adviser” in front of his name, he would be just another toe-sucking mercenary with a gift for impossibly goofy [3] predictions. What’s remarkable -- indeed, an achievement -- is Morris’ ability to continually find suckers willing to compensate him. This includes The Hill, that respected Washington rag, where he still collects a check. The staffers are suitably embarrassed [4] by Morris’ weekly dross. But I do not include Morris for his predictive failures [5]. Stupidity is forgivable, but his sin, operating in bad faith, is not. Morris confessed to Father Sean Hannity a week after Mitt Romney lost the election that he, Dick Morris, projected a Romney victory because [6] “the Romney campaign was falling apart, people were not optimistic” and “nobody thought there was a chance of victory.” There is no value in a man willing to tell you what you want to hear.

2. Niall Ferguson.In America a Scottish brogue, a nice build and good hair can get you pretty far. These attributes go a long way, I assume, toward explaining why Ferguson hasn’t been run out of Harvard Square on a rail. A review of Paul Krugman’s clips are instructive; if he’s not racist [7], he’s brutally stupid -- ignorant of borrowing costs [8] and willing to lie [9] to his audience about the cost of healthcare reform. Ferguson really showed his ass in the week before the presidential election: in a single Daily Beastcolumn, he argued [10] that Barack Obama still needed to win over undecided voters (he didn’t [11]), that polls were “scar[y] for the incumbent” (they weren’t, which accounts for the War on Nate Silver), and that Obama, on the cusp of the election, would support an Israeli attack on Iran. So: Ferguson was, in the words of Meat Loaf, doubly blessed: ill-equipped to adequately comment on economics -- his area of “expertise” -- and politics. Since he’s also a two-time loser (an adviser to McCain ‘n’ Mittens, respectively), there is no compelling reason to give him the time of day.

3.Peggy Noonan.Mary Ellen Noonan has been around so long it is assumed she must have been, in the supply-sider universe far, far away, talented. Her reputations rests on “a thousand points of light,” a meaningless, ambrosia salad phrase made funny by Dana Carvey, and “Read my lips: no new taxes,” a lie. But that’s enough for a lifetime Journalsinecure, apparently. Noonan’s prose, turgid and purple, is at its worst when evoking the name of Ronald Reagan, which is always. The irony: Her relationship to the 40th president was tenuous. As a former Reagan adviser pointed out [12], after Noonan trashed [13] her fellow speechwriters in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, Noonan was “never part of the team” and her gifts, such as they were, were limited to self-promotion. And yet Noonan, like the execrable Mr. Morris, has dined out on this skimpy presidential connection well past the sell-by date.

4. Michael Barone. There are rumors Barone was once a reason-based, intelligent lifeform. I have heard nice thing about The Almanac of American Politics. He continues to be revered by conservatives, who treat him like a combination of Nate Silver and Jesus. But there has been no trace of this supposedly erudite, analytical man for a very long time. In March 2003, Barone wrote [14] that “Quick success in Iraq, followed by success as soon as possible in Syria and Iran, will help us deal with” the threat of North Korea’s nuclear weapons. (To recap: An invasion of two countries that hadn’t attacked us, so quickly on the heels of an invasion of yet another country that hadn’t attacked us.) Indeed, this is in keeping with a fellow who, in 2005, e-mailed Glenn Reynolds (below) to say [15] “there might be something to Intelligent Design.” That same year, he predicted [16] “the end” of political polarization. In 2006, he wrote [17] that a McCain-Lieberman presidential ticket “would probably win easily.” By the time Barone said journalists didn’t care for Sarah Palin because "she did not abort her Down syndrome baby," it wasn’t really a surprise.

5. Charles Krauthammer. Krauthammer once argued [18], in the pages of America’s second-most-influential newspaper, that torture was okay under “the ticking time bomb” scenario, which does not exist and has never existed in real life. For reasons that escape me, the New Republic keeps on its masthead [19] a man who lets a "24" wet-dream dictate his views on foreign policy. I hope it’s simply a matter of priorities -- the magazine has undergone a redesign -- but perhaps they believe, as does Politico, that he is “sophisticated [20].” Krauthammer certainly fooled the Pulitzer committee, which must be so proud to have honored a man so addled he hates [21] the Berenstain Bears and believes Obama blackmailed [22] David Petraeus. In any case, by Krauthammer’s own metric, he ought to be put out to pasture. On April 22, 2003, he told [23] an American Enterprise Institute audience, “Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.” And here we are.

6. Jennifer Rubin. Rubin’s descent into outright hackery (see this Drudge-sirened “EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW [24]” with, ugh, Ed Gillespie) wasn’t precipitous, even though she wrote for Commentary, a journal of sub-basement quality. Her columns filed during the previous election cycle for the New York Observer were relatively clear-eyed. Romney, she wrote [25], was “the least adept politician in the field.” She criticized his “manicured appearance and cautious language [ibid].” In another column, she noted [26] that “Americans don’t like it one bit when candidates adopt positions (or entire platforms, for that matter) for political expediency.” (You don’t say!) It’s unclear what transpired between that election and the most recent, but this time around she functioned not as a reporter but as an unpaid spokeslady for the Romney campaign. Her advocacy [27] was breathtaking brazen; she often resembled those fixtures [28] of pre-Giuliani Times Square, cleaning up after each Romney flub. To Rubin’s credit, she admitted [29] as much.

Actually there are four more at the link. These are people who have huge megaphones via media like Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, AM radio and some are syndicated to newspapers across the country. Why? They lie a lot, they always spin, they hate logic and science, they say they're for freedom and yet are always advocating laws that infringe on freedom.   And speaking of Charles Krauthammer, he really knows how to make a insulting analogy, Larger Sandy Relief Bill Was 'Rape Of The Treasury' (VIDEO).

Awful and UnAmerican Things The Conservative Media Did This Year

Awful and UnAmerican Things The Conservative Media Did This Year

1) Romancing Petraeus: Fox News CEO Roger Ailes tries to recruit for the GOP [4].

The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward revealed that Fox News CEO Roger Ailes had dispatched a Fox News defense analyst, to Kabul, Afghanistan to recruit Gen. David Petraeus as a GOP candidate for president. The notion of a news network soliciting candidates for political office is a perversion of the role journalists play in society. In response, Ailes claimed that it was “a joke” and that he “thought the Republican [primary] field needed to be shaken up.” Where Ailes got the idea that it was his right and/or duty to shake up the GOP primaries is unexplained. News people are supposed to report the news, not make it. Woodward’s story affirms that Fox News is a rogue operation. Its intrusion into the political process debases journalism by breaching all standards of ethical conduct. And it debases democracy as well by exploiting its power and wealth to manipulate political outcomes.

2) Fox News produces its own anti-Obama video [5].

Last May on Fox & Friends, the program’s hosts introduced a video that purported to examine “Four Years of Hope and Change.” What it was in reality was a four-plus minute campaign video that presented a variety of soundbites by President Obama accompanied by ominous graphics and eerie music that falsely implied his campaign promises were unkept. The video (which Media Matters thoroughly debunks here [6]) could not have been a more pro-Romney, anti-Obama attack had it been produced by the Republican National Committee. Apparently Fox News also recognized the gross inappropriateness of its anti-Obama attack ad. Minutes after the video was posted online it was removed. Later, an edited version was re-posted, and then that too was removed. Eventually, Fox EVP Bill Shine issued a statement scapegoating an “associate producer” and concluding that the matter “has been addressed.” But it’s difficult for Fox to absolve itself of responsibility for this atrociously unethical affair. By now it is so obvious that Fox exists only to promote Republicans and bash Democrats that this video fits squarely within its mission.

3) Question for Fox News: How much rape is too much? [7]

In a discussion of the role of women in the military, Fox News contributor Liz Trotta expressed an opinion about new rules from the Pentagon that would permit women to serve closer to the front lines. Trotta’s take on this centered on the problems faced by servicewomen who are sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers whom she regards as whiners because they won’t shut up and accept the fact that if they work closely with men they should expect to be assaulted. And if that weren’t bad enough, Trotta went on to complain about the expensive military bureaucracy set up to “support women in the military who are now being raped too much.” I would really like to know precisely how much rape is acceptable before it crosses Trotta’s line. Is there any context in which she might have meant that that isn’t unfathomably repulsive?

10) Fox News “Democrat” Kirsten Powers accuses Obama of sympathizing with terrorists [14].

The next time you hear the Fox News slogan “fair and balanced," be sure to remember that its rendering of fairness is to trot out covert conservatives and label them Democrats. A perfect illustration of this is alleged Democrat Kirsten Powers, who took to Fox News to attack President Obama in an article titled “President Obama, stop blaming the victim for Mideast violence.” Powers was addressing the violence at American facilities in Libya and Egypt when she wrote that respecting religious beliefs “is implicit sympathy for the claims of some of the attackers and rioters.” So Powers thinks that respect for the diversity of faith is tantamount to sympathizing with terrorists. She cannot comprehend that such respect is offered to the vast majority of peaceful Muslims who had nothing to do with the violence. And allowing her to spew that bile while posing as a Democratic analyst is part of how Fox distorts its presentation of fairness and balance.

11) Fox News spinning furiously on unemployment rate. [15]

Behaving entirely consistently with a network that harbors politcos who want to see President Obama fail, Fox News cavalierly dismissed the October unemployment report showing a drop from 8.1 to 7.8 percent. Heaven forbid anything good happens in this country while President Obama is in charge. Fox spent the whole morning trying to hatch skeptics. It brought in former General Electric CEO Jack Welch to explain his delusional Tweet: “Unbelievable jobs numbers...these Chicago guys will do anything...can’t debate so change numbers.” Fox’s Stuart Varney concurred along with Donald Trump and a bevy of correspondents and guests. None of them could explain why an independent agency of career economists, without a single Obama appointee, would fudge the numbers for a president to whom they owed nothing.

It is beyond me to explain why conservatives and their media puppets hate America and its ideals. The people mentioned above are not exactly hurting they make well into 6 figure salaries and more. They live in houses most Americans can only dream of. The men wear suits that cost more than a coal miner's salary for a month and yet complain about how terrible things are in America. During the 2012 campaign we actually had radical conservative billionaires on TV complaining about how hard they have it because of something Democrats did or will do.

House GOP scraps Sandy relief bill. Republicans abandoned a vote this session, infuriating NY lawmakers in both parties

Beware of conservative math when discussing the national debt - The National Debt? Republicans Built That

His Royal Highness Mitt Romney Owes American Workers An Apology

His Royal Highness Mitt Romney Owes American Workers and Seniors An Apology

Mitt Romney's narrative -- long-popular among right-wing bloggers and talk-radio squawkers -- that 47 percent of households pay no federal income taxes and 53 percent do is the least honest, least factual talking point to ever be taken seriously in our political discourse for a number of reasons. First and foremost among them is this: it's just not true.

According to studies by the Tax Policy Center [3], six in 10 households that pay no income taxes are working families having a tough year or two. The authors note, “most of these working households... pay federal income tax in other years, when their incomes are higher.” Many take advantage of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), originally a Republican policy that offers a tax break to low-income working parents. According to the authors, “the majority of households that receive the EITC get it for only one or two years at a time, such as when their income drops due to a temporary layoff, and pay federal income tax in most other years.” We have a social safety net, albeit one of the flimsiest in the developed world, and it is doing what it is designed to do – keeping people's heads above water (before the crash, 39.9 percent of households paid no federal income taxes).

In other words, these are not discrete groups. People in the 47 percent (it's actually 46 percent) one year will find themselves in the 53 percent (54 percent) the next year, and vice-versa. These are not different groups of American households separated by different cultures. Those who find themselves in the 47 percent in a given year will, over the course of their working lives, pay a fair share of all taxes, including federal income taxes and those who find themselves in the 53 percent in a given year will, over the course of their lives, enjoy a fair share of government benefits as well [4].

There is also very little significance whatsoever to the fact that 46 percent pay no federal income taxes, which represent only about a fifth of the taxes collected in this country. As such, it's nothing more that a bit of tax trivia. Eighty-two percent of households paid federal payroll taxes last year, which also yield about a fifth of our nation's overall tax revenues (income taxes account for 42 percent of federal revenues and payroll taxes represent 40 percent – same thing).

In 2010, the only year for which Mitt Romney has released tax returns, he and Ann Romney paid around 17.1 percent of their income in federal, state and local taxes combined. According to the Tax Policy Center, in 2011, the poorest 5th of American households paid about 16 percent of their incomes in taxes, on average, and the second poorest 5th paid 21 percent of their incomes – a significantly higher share than the Romneys forked over on over $21 million in income. That the poor don't have enough “skin in the game” – another popular myth on the right – is also just a lie.

Who else doesn't pay federal income taxes? 17 percent are students, the disabled and the unemployed. Most among this group will pay federal income taxes after they find work or graduate. Again, the entire premise that there's a large group of Americans who have developed an “entitlement mentality” is nonsense – students do schoolwork. With a real underemployment rate of almost 15 percent, the unemployed aren't jobless by choice. Then there are active-duty military personnel in war-zones -- combat pay is exempt from federal income taxes.

More than a fifth of households that pay no federal income taxes are elderly. This is a group that should feel entitled. They paid into Social Security and Medicare during their working years, and are now in retirment. Many are struggling to get by [5].

There are a good number of rich people among the 47 percent of households that pay no federal income taxes. According to the Tax Policy Center, [6] 18,000 households with incomes over $500,000 – and 4,000 households bringing in over $1 million – paid no federal income taxes in 2011.

Because there is no discrete group of Americans who routinely pay no income taxes year in and year out, it's impossible to say for sure what their partisan loyalties might be, but it's highly likely that a majority of them are Republicans. Around four out of 10 of those households are divided between demographics that lean towards the Dems – students, the poor – and those that lean toward the Republicans – the elderly, disabled veterans. But a majority of that group – six in 10 – are just lower income working families whose incomes fell below a certain threshhold in a given year. And this is where they live:

The Romney campaign is reportedly going to run with this narrative in the coming weeks. The problem is that it only resonates with a minority of hard-right voters who aren't up for grabs anyway. Most Americans understand that half the country isn't indolent and doesn't see themselves of victims of anything but the depression in which we find ourselves today. And that's why, according to a Gallup poll released on Wednesday [7], only 20 percent of registered voters say that Romney's sneering remarks make them more likely to vote for him, while 36 percent say they're turned of by them.

Why is Mitt Romney polling even over 10%. he is so disconnected the the realities of everyday life of the vast majority of Americans from constructions workers to dentists that there is no way he he capable of being the president of the people. He'd be a great president for multimillionaires who seat around and complain about how much richer they would be if they paid no taxes. How many Americans wish they could whine like that - of yea i have millions, but I could have more if I did not have to pay for my fair share of the infrastructure, schools and military that make civilization possible.

Elizabeth Warren Warns GOP-Controlled Senate Would Make Climate Denier Jim Inhofe Head Of Environment Committee

Paul Ryan Booed At AARP (VIDEO). Which might be because he and Mitt want to sentence seniors to golden years of poverty - Secret Ryan Transcript: Social Security and Medicare are the Target

Can Massachusetts Voters Guess How Many Faces Scott Brown(R-MA) Has?

Can Massachusetts Voters Guess How Many Faces Scott Brown(R-MA) Has?

Question: What happens when a politician wants to look tough on Wall Street, without actually doing anything to rein in the big banks' excesses?

Answer: Scott Brown's recent letter to JPMorgan Chase.

Scott Brown wrote to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, supposedly "to express [his] concern with the surprising $2 billion trading loss" by the bank -- a total that has since climbed to $3 billion. But anyone who reads the letter carefully can see it for the transparent and disingenuous attempt by Brown that it is to look concerned about the havoc in the financial markets.

In that letter, Brown calls for only one thing: a clawback on the compensation of "the responsible parties in your company." The problem is that Dimon already said that was likely to happen.

How tough and independent -- telling a bank to do what it already said it would do!

What's more, the Dodd-Frank Act makes clawbacks mandatory in some cases. So what does Brown do? He tells Dimon that clawbacks are mandatory in some cases. What a maverick. Perhaps the bank should compensate Brown for the helpful legal advice (beyond the $50,000 that JPMorgan officials have already donated to Brown's campaign).

Lest his pointless letter seem too threatening to his scores of friends on Wall Street, Brown slips in some language that they would understand: "While regulations are necessary, it is also very important that when unprecedented mistakes do occur, banks will use the internal policies that they have set up to promote employee accountability."

Translation: When Wall Street screws up on an unprecedented scale and engages in risky behavior that undermines confidence in the market, they should treat it as an internal matter. No need for the government to get involved -- just move along, folks.

This, incidentally, is the same message as the one being spread by extreme conservatives like Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Of course, it was the lack of government involvement that allowed the financial crisis to happen in the first place.

Contrast the Scott Brown / Lamar Alexander approach with that of the Obama Administration, which has argued that the country still needs better regulations in the financial markets. Obama has pointed out that "JPMorgan is one of the best managed banks there is" and that Dimon "is one of the smartest bankers we've got, and they still lost $2 billion and counting...." In other words, even when a bank is well-run, there is the potential for catastrophe without proper regulation. There are few stronger pieces of evidence for this than JPMorgan's ability to quickly lose billions of dollars with some ill-advised keystrokes.

Brown tries to distinguish himself from Alexander and his ilk by pointing out that he voted for Dodd-Frank. What he neglects to mention, though, is that before he voted for it, he worked to weaken it by undermining the Volcker Rule.

All this, just days after he refuses to disclose who from JPMorgan might be serving on his finance committee, and after the Boston Globe revealed he has been raising more money from New York City than Boston and has set up a slush fund with the National Republican Senatorial Committee to help his campaign that is now flush with Wall Street cash.

This, by the way, is just the latest in Scott Brown's chameleon act.

When he stumps in Massachusetts, he tries to look like a moderate. But when he communicates with supporters outside the state, he morphs into a Republican in the mold of George W. Bush, recklessly calling for slashing government.

When he's on Main Street, he breaks out his pick-up truck and barn jacket. But when he's on Wall Street, he's right at home, pocketing millions of dollars from bankers who need him in the Senate.

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren talks about reports that Scott Brown is using the Affordable Care Act for his own daughter while trying to repeal it for everyone else. Brown is like a spoiled brat. he believes in big government by and for special interests - one of which is himself. Time to clean the useless trash out of Washington and get rid of two-faced liars like Scott Brown.

How Romney Budget will Cut Social Security and Medicare by 26% & Then Raise Taxes On the Middle Class by $3 Trillion

How Romney Budget will Cut Social Security and Medicare by 26% & Then Raise Taxes On the Middle Class by $3 Trillion

I just read the Glenn Hubbard editorial in the WSJ claiming thatthe President's budget is really a secret plan to raise everyone's taxes by11%.
Glenn and I have been friends for pushing 20 years but onthis one, Glenn seems to have jumped the shark.
Basically Hubbard says he has looked at the Obama budgetand, according to his calculation, after subtracting off the revenue projected from returning to the Clinton rates for high income people plus adding aBuffett rule, Obama's budget will raise everyone's taxes by 11% to stabilize things as a share of GDP.
Two things stuck out to me here:
1) Hubbard's numbers seem in pretty serious danger of violating the league's substance abuse policy.
His claim that the President's budget requires large tax increases on the middle class to stabilize the debt is just factually  wrong.  Just go look at the Congressional Budget Office's numbers.  They examined the President's budget and directly refute the central claim of the op-ed: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/03-16-APB1.pdf
Figure 2 on page 6 shows their forecast of debt as a share of GDP with the President's budget--and it's stabilized and falling without any taxes on the middle class.  Figure 1shows similar stability on the deficit.
I can understand the argument of some people when they say that Republicans will never allow the Obama budget to pass so it would be better to debate the right approach to reaching a grand bargain rather than arguing about the administration budget. That's probably true but unlikely in the election season.  I can also understand the people who think that we shouldn't raise revenue only from high income people but to spread it around.  But Hubbard isn't saying either of those.  He's saying something that looks to me (and the CBO) like it just fundamentally isn't true.
2) Using Hubbard's logic, an alternative title for would be HOW MITT ROMNEY'S BUDGET WILL CUT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE BY 26% AND THEN RAISE TAXES ON THE MIDDLE CLASS BY $3 TRILLION
Sadly, I'm being only slightly flip about it.  Hubbard imputes future policy based on the implications of the budget plan.  So what happens if you do that for Romney's budget promises?  Well, he has proposed a multi-trillion dollartax cut, a balanced budget amendment to the constitution and a cap on government spending at 20%.
The cap forces a cut of social security and medicare (and everything else) of 26% (you can see the numbers for yourself at http://www.cbpp.org/files/1-23-12bud.pdf).
But his tax cut reduces revenue by an additional $3 trillion or so.  Using Mr. Hubbard's argument then,the Romney budget will raise taxes on everyone earning less than $200,000 per year to cover it (and since the deductions Romney says he will limit don't come  remotely close to paying for the cost of the tax cuts, it's a bit like having your cousin take all the money from your wallet but offer to let you rummage through the couch for coins as repayment).

If Romney's silly and dangerous notions about taxes and revenue ring a bell, if you having one of those deja vu moments its because these are warmed over George Bush policies that every conservative in Congress supported. Conservatism does not work. Never has and never will. In the short term it makes a few people very wealthy. In the long term it turns the USA into some dystopian nightmare. These policies will destroy an already weakened middle-class..

FACT CHECK: Americans For Prosperity Announces $6.1 Million Ad Buy To Push Totally False Green Jobs Claims

Fox Won't Let Go Of Ridiculous Myth That Obama "Apologized" For America. When will Fox News apologize to America for its daily truckload of lies. True patriots have honor, Fox news has none.

Criminal Rick Scott(R) and Florida Conservatives Are Wasting Tax Dollars and Trampling Liberty

Criminal Rick Scott(R) and Florida Conservatives Are Wasting Tax Dollars and Trampling Liberty

Required drug tests for people seeking welfare benefits ended up costing taxpayers more than it saved and failed to curb the number of prospective applicants, data used against the state in an ongoing legal battle shows.

The findings — that only 108 of the 4,086 people who took a drug test failed — are additional ammunition for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, which sued the state and won a temporary ban on the drug-testing program in October, said ACLU spokesman Derek Newton.

Attorneys for the state immediately appealed the ban, and will face off against the ACLU again at the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta and the U.S. District Court in Orlando in coming months.

The costs and benefits of the law — and the outcome of the court case — could reverberate nationwide. This week, Georgia passed its own drug welfare law.

Since Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill into law last year, 25 states have considered similar legislation, Newton said.

Data about the law’s cost may impact the court of public opinion, but Jenn Meale, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, said it won’t play a role in the legal proceedings.

That’s because ACLU’s case rests on whether the law violates the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens against "unreasonable searches" by the government.

"Any costs associated with the program are irrelevant to the analysis of whether the statute is constitutional," Meale said.

Of the 4,086 applicants who scheduled drug tests while the law was enforced, 108 people, or 2.6 percent, failed, most often testing positive for marijuana. About 40 people scheduled tests but canceled them, according to the Department of Children and Families, which oversees Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, known as the TANF program.

The numbers, confirming previous estimates, show that taxpayers spent $118,140 to reimburse people for drug test costs, at an average of $35 per screening.

The state’s net loss? $45,780.

"That’s not counting attorneys and court fees and the thousands of hours of staff time it took to implement this policy," Newton said.

The law also didn’t impact the number of people who applied for benefits.

Conservatives are for small government? One of the biggest scams ever perpetuated on the American people. Thanks to conservatives every American has less freedom today than they had 15 years ago. And everyday they think of new legislation to intrude government into people's personal lives.

Conservatives should know about redistributing income, their policies make sure the nation's financial capital is redistributed from workers to lazy corporate executives - CEOs at top companies earned 380 times the average worker's income in 2011

What is CISPA and why it is the newest threat to internet access and privacy

Every major economic downturn in the USA has been due to conservative supply side economics. Yet they keep thinking the public has such a short term memory they can try them again every few years. Time to stop the conservative fantasy Ferris wheel and move on.

Conservative Republican John Raese Cannot Tell The Difference Between Regulated Smoking Areas and The Holocaust

Conservative Republican John Raese Cannot Tell The Difference Between Regulated Smoking Areas and The Holocaust

 

John Raese, a very wealthy Republican who may or may not live in West Virginia, was one of the most colorful Senate candidates of 2010 when he ran against now-Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV). This year, he wants a rematch against Manchin (Raese has already lost three Senate races and one for governor), and Raese appears to have lost none of the qualities that led the Manchin campaign to call him “crazy” two years ago.

Speaking at the Putnam County Lincoln Day dinner recently, Raese compared his county’s smoking regulations to when “Hitler used to put [a] Star of David” on Jews:

    RAESE: I don’t want government telling me what I can do and what I can’t do because I’m an American. But in Monongalia County you can’t smoke a cigarette, you can’t smoke a cigar, you can’t do anything. And I oppose that. … I have to put a huge sticker on my buildings to say this is a smoke free environment. This is brought to you by the government of Monongalia County. OK?

    Remember Hitler used to put Star of David on everybody’s lapel, remember that? Same thing.



In his last bid, Raese said the minimum wage was unconstitutional, said he wanted to take capitalism back to the days before child labor laws, blamed volcanoes for global warming, made fun of Chinese last names, and proudly proclaimed, “I made my money the old-fashioned way — I inherited it.” Perhaps most famously, one of Raese’s biggest ideas from 2010 was demanding “1,000 laser systems put in the sky” for missile defense. “And need it right now,” he added to demonstrate his seriousness. 

Pictured are USA hating Conservatives Raese, Palin, Nugent

Actually the laws in Putnam are like they are in most places. You cannot smoke in public buildings like schools and courthouses because of the second hand smoke.

In America, financial inequality has soared over the past few decades thanks to conservative policies that punish work and reward wealth.

Mitt Romney's Bain Represents Crony Capitalism's Worst. Conservatives caused the recession of the 1980s. They caused the recession of 2008. But hey forget all that and vote for them in 2012. Maybe they'll get it right this time.

How Strange That Providing Contraceptives Was Not an Issue During Bush Era, But Invites Conservative Outrage In Obama Era

How Strange That Providing Contraceptives Was Not an Issue During Bush Era, But Invites Conservative Outrage In Obama Era

President Barack Obama's decision to require most employers to cover birth control and insurers to offer it at no cost has created a firestorm of controversy [1]. But the central mandate—that most employers have to cover preventative care for women—has been law for over a decade. This point has been completely lost in the current controversy, as Republican presidential candidates and social conservatives claim that Obama has launched a war on religious liberty and the Catholic Church.

Despite the longstanding precedent, "no one screamed" until now, said Sara Rosenbaum, a health law expert at George Washington University.

In December 2000, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled [2] that companies that provided prescription drugs to their employees but didn't provide birth control were in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination on the basis of sex. That opinion, which the George W. Bush administration did nothing to alter or withdraw when it took office the next month, is still in effect today—and because it relies on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, it applies to all employers with 15 or more employees. Employers that don't offer prescription coverage or don't offer insurance at all are exempt, because they treat men and women equally—but under the EEOC's interpretation of the law, you can't offer other preventative care coverage without offering birth control coverage, too.

"It was, we thought at the time, a fairly straightforward application of Title VII principles," a top former EEOC official who was involved in the decision told Mother Jones. "All of these plans covered Viagra immediately, without thinking, and they were still declining to cover prescription contraceptives. It's a little bit jaw-dropping to see what is going on now…There was some press at the time but we issued guidances that were far, far more controversial."

After the EEOC opinion was approved in 2000, reproductive rights groups and employees who wanted birth control access sued employers that refused to comply. The next year, in Erickson v. Bartell Drug Co. [3], a federal court agreed with the EEOC's reasoning. Reproductive rights groups and others used that decision as leverage to force other companies to settle lawsuits and agree to change their insurance plans to include birth control. Some subsequent court decisions echoed Erickson, and some went the other way, but the rule (absent a Supreme Court decision) remained, and over the following decade, the percentage of employer-based plans offering contraceptive coverage tripled to 90 percent.

"We have used [the EEOC ruling] many times in negotiating with various employers," says Judy Waxman, the vice president for health and reproductive rights at the National Women's Law Center. "It has been in active use all this time. [President Obama's] policy is only new in the sense that it covers employers with less than 15 employees and with no copay for the individual. The basic rule has been in place since 2000."

Not even religious employers were exempt from the impact of the EEOC decision. Although Title VII allows religious institutions to discriminate on religious grounds, it doesn't allow them to discriminate on the basis of sex [4]—the kind of discrimination at issue in the EEOC ruling. DePaul University, the largest Roman Catholic university in America, added birth control coverage to its plans [5] after receiving an EEOC complaint several years ago. (DePaul officials did not respond to a request for comment.)

[1] http://www.npr.org/2012/02/03/146342576/contraception-provision-sets-off-firestorm
[2] http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/decision-contraception.html
[3] http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/eeoc/Erickson_v_Bartell.htm
[4] http://www.civilrights.org/lgbt/enda/religious-exemption-1.html
[5] http://www.projectsycamore.com/media/images/bulletins/111020/OSVins.pdf

Like so much conservative manufactured outrage this one is not about the law. It is not about religious freedom - unless freedom means the right to treat women like second class citizens. Conservative Republicans do not like what the Obama administration did - mostly continue Bush policies on contraception - because they have a knee jerk opposition to anything Democrats do. Conservatives do not love the USA, they love the Anti-American conservative agenda.

NRA Member Calls Wayne LaPierre ‘Over The Edge,’ Says Others ‘Think He’s A Wingnut’. It is one thing to be pro right to possess a gun and quite another to have paranoid fantasies that someone is out to take your guns.

Fox Spreads Romney's Dubious Talking Point On Women's Job Losses. Why. Because no one at Fox news has a shred of honor or integrity. Those are American ideals. Fox News hates American ideals.

Dear Mitt and Ann Romney America Waits for Your Apology For Playing Victim

Dear Mitt and Ann Romney America Waits for Your Apology For Playing Victim

Mitt Romney’s “I know you are, but what am I?” strategy, declaring President Obama the real perpetrator of a “war on women,” got an assist from CNN Democratic analyst Hilary Rosen Wednesday, when she questioned whether Romney should use his wife, Ann, as his expert on women’s issues when she “never worked a day in her life.” As feminists have known thanks to the silly Mommy Wars over the last 20 years, every mother is a working mother. Rosen, who is herself a mom who also works outside the home, has now apologized, as has every prominent Democrat from President Obama to Debbie Wasserman Schultz to David Axelrod (and probably FDR, from the grave).

But Republicans still won’t shut up about it. An aggrieved Ann Romney even told Fox News, “I will tell you that Mitt said to me more times than I can imagine, Ann, your job is more important than mine,” and added that as the mother of five grown boys, “I know what it’s like to struggle.”

Well, I’d like to demand that Ann Romney apologize to all women for equating the “struggle” of a wealthy mother who had full-time household help to that of a poor or working-class job-holding mother, who must choose between her job and her children when a child gets sick. How dare you, madam? Have you no shame? I’d like to demand that Mitt Romney apologize for his wife’s remarks, too. I’d like to hear every prominent Republican denounce Ann Romney for her heinous insensitivity to non-wealthy mothers who must work outside the home.

leave it to wacky conservative to have fainting spells as soon as someone points out that someone who is a millionaire's wife does not have it as hard as the average American mom. Ann Romney Can't Fix Mitt's Women Problem

The underlying, legitimate, and not-at-all-novel point Rosen was making -- that the wealth of the Romney family has insulated them from many ordinary people's struggles -- was immediately lost in the cacophony of criticism. If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that motherhood is divine and noble and saintly. (As a mother myself, I would know just what perfect human specimens all moms automatically are.) In a classy, modern touch, Ann Romney, in her Fox interview, also praised "all the dads home raising kids," thereby elevating the discussion, if only momentarily, from the retrograde notion that only women can or should raise children.
....His claim that women have been the disproportionate victims of job loss was widely criticized; his gestures to his wife as his ambassador to the women's vote made him sound like he viewed women as a foreign, distant community. His policy adviser, on a conference call specifically convened to promote the idea that it was Obama who was waging war on women, couldn't say where he stood on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Obama's landmark legislation on women's pay discrimination. This came in the wake of months of debate about access to contraception, "slutgate," vaginal probing, and so on, all of it thoroughly toxic for Republicans hoping to appeal to women voters. Recent polls have shown Romney losing the women's vote by nearly 20 points, but in trying to turn that around, he seemed to be wading into a type of identity politics he was ill-equipped to manage, and fumbling as a result.

The worse struggle the Romney family has ever faced is deciding what car to tell the chauffeur to bring around depending on which mansion they were living in at the time. Only a conservative who has never cleaned a floor, dug a ditch or emptied a bed pan would whine about how hard they have it.

Barney Frank Destroys Pretend Patriot Allen West

There have been plenty of diaries on Allen West calling members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus "communists."  Yes, this one is tangentially related to that.  However, Allen West's comments won't take center stage here.  Instead, the always astute and sharp Barney Frank's reply will be front and center.  It's really a shame that he'll be gone from Congress at the end of the year, but hopefully the utter destruction he rains on Republicans will continue.

Frank started by first slamming West and the GOP:

    "Not even Joe McCarthy would have said anything so stupid and dissociated from reality," Frank said in a call with The Huffington Post. "It's an indication of the significant deterioration of the Republican Party as a responsible entity that an ignorant, mean guy like Allen West is considered one of their stars."

He then gets considerably more serious, pointing out exactly what the intention of West, and others, is when they compare their political opponents to communists:

    "It is exactly the opposite of those of us in the Congressional Progressive Caucus who are in support of freedom, in support of democracy, in support of people's basic rights and civil liberties," he said. "Communism is really a reference to some of the worst human rights abuses of our time ... It is meant to delegitimize people and allow no basis for debate. It's a very nasty label."

    He added, "I very much object to being associated with Stalin or Khrushchev."

It is that second point that is most important.  So many on the right want to shut down the debate because they know the outcome once that debate happens.  Those atop the Republican Party see what has happened during their primary season.  As they have lurched even further to the right they alienate more and more voters.  The Republican establishment finally has their candidate, but only after he had to tack hard right to win the nomination.  That damage is done and no amount of shaking the Etch-A-Sketch is going to change that.

Frank hit the nail on the head.  The real problem is not Allen West.  It is that the Republican Party has descended so far into the abyss that someone like Allen West is a leader and is mainstream within the Republican Party.  That is what we must keep our eye on.  Yes, Allen West is the one who made the remarks.  However, he is just one of many capable of making them in the modern-day Republican Party.

West currently collects veterans benefits courtesy of those "communist" he complains about. He also collects a salary as a Congressman which all taxpayers pay for and has access to health care benefits subsidized by those "communists", whoever they might be. West is not a hypocrite, he is a poster child for hypocrisy. He baths in contradictory wacky myths. he obviously hates American values and traditions of decency.  In short West is not a man he is wart that leeches off America's greatness as he feds at the trough like a pig.

I've Heard That Rep. Allen West(R-FL) Has Sex With Animals

I've Heard That Rep. Allen West(R-FL) Has Sex With Animals - Allen West: I’ve ‘Heard’ That 80 House Democrats Are Communist Party Members

Flamboyant Tea Party Rep. Allen West (R-FL) said at town hall meeting last night that “he’s heard” of up to 80 Democratic congressmen who are members of the Communist Party. The entire House Democratic Caucus is 190 members, so West is claiming that almost half are card-carrying Communists. Not surprisingly, he would not name names. (HT: Jenn Bendery)

I've heard a lot of things about West. Since we're playing by conservative rules, what I have heard is the truth even if I do not have any evidence until West proves me wrong. Since West has proved to be a total wacko it is far more possible that I am right and West is having another moment where he has embraced pure evil in the cause of Anti-American conservatism.

Why Poorer States Aren't Buying What Romney's Selling - The Wacky Republican party appears to be increasingly divided among class lines.

Why Does Conservative Scam-artist Rick Warren Hate What Jesus and America Stand For

The Buffett Rule is Nothing Compared to the Romney Windfall

Watch the video and guess what planet Romney is from.

How Conservatism, Lobbyist and Money Are Destroying Democracy

How Conservatism, Lobbyist and Money Are Destroying Democracy

Florida’s now-infamous Stand Your Ground law, which lets you shoot someone you consider threatening without facing arrest, let alone prosecution, sounds crazy — and it is. And it’s tempting to dismiss this law as the work of ignorant yahoos. But similar laws have been pushed across the nation, not by ignorant yahoos but by big corporations.

Specifically, language virtually identical to Florida’s law is featured in a template supplied to legislators in other states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed organization that has managed to keep a low profile even as it exerts vast influence (only recently, thanks to yeoman work by the Center for Media and Democracy, has a clear picture of ALEC’s activities emerged). And if there is any silver lining to Trayvon Martin’s killing, it is that it might finally place a spotlight on what ALEC is doing to our society — and our democracy.

What is ALEC? Despite claims that it’s nonpartisan, it’s very much a movement-conservative organization, funded by the usual suspects: the Kochs, Exxon Mobil, and so on. Unlike other such groups, however, it doesn’t just influence laws, it literally writes them, supplying fully drafted bills to state legislators. In Virginia, for example, more than 50 ALEC-written bills have been introduced, many almost word for word. And these bills often become law.

Many ALEC-drafted bills pursue standard conservative goals: union-busting, undermining environmental protection, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. ALEC seems, however, to have a special interest in privatization — that is, on turning the provision of public services, from schools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations. And some of the most prominent beneficiaries of privatization, such as the online education company K12 Inc. and the prison operator Corrections Corporation of America, are, not surprisingly, very much involved with the organization.

What this tells us, in turn, is that ALEC’s claim to stand for limited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is about expanding crony capitalism.

And in case you were wondering, no, the kind of privatization ALEC promotes isn’t in the public interest; instead of success stories, what we’re getting is a series of scandals. Private charter schools, for example, appear to deliver a lot of profits but little in the way of educational achievement.

But where does the encouragement of vigilante (in)justice fit into this picture? In part it’s the same old story — the long-standing exploitation of public fears, especially those associated with racial tension, to promote a pro-corporate, pro-wealthy agenda. It’s neither an accident nor a surprise that the National Rifle Association and ALEC have been close allies all along.

And ALEC, even more than other movement-conservative organizations, is clearly playing a long game. Its legislative templates aren’t just about generating immediate benefits to the organization’s corporate sponsors; they’re about creating a political climate that will favor even more corporation-friendly legislation in the future.

Did I mention that ALEC has played a key role in promoting bills that make it hard for the poor and ethnic minorities to vote?

Yet that’s not all; you have to think about the interests of the penal-industrial complex — prison operators, bail-bond companies and more. (The American Bail Coalition has publicly described ALEC as its “life preserver.”) This complex has a financial stake in anything that sends more people into the courts and the prisons, whether it’s exaggerated fear of racial minorities or Arizona’s draconian immigration law, a law that followed an ALEC template almost verbatim.

Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population.

Now, ALEC isn’t single-handedly responsible for the corporatization of our political life; its influence is as much a symptom as a cause. But shining a light on ALEC and its supporters — a roster that includes many companies, from AT&T and Coca-Cola to UPS, that have so far managed to avoid being publicly associated with the hard-right agenda — is one good way to highlight what’s going on. And that kind of knowledge is what we need to start taking our country back.

Conservatives say they believe in individual rights. That's just so much propaganda - Mao would be proud of the way conservatives twist less liberty into more freedom. Conservatives and groups such as ALEC are turning the USA into a kind of corporate dystopia that is not hard to find in science fiction novels. People say it can't happen in the USA. It is happening. Not all at once. Just a little piece of crony corporatism here and a dash of conservative authoritarianism there. The Bush administration made unprecedented attacks on our freedoms and conservatives defended those attacks. That says a lot about the radical anti-American conservative agenda.