I blame the First Amendment. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not making excuses for bad behavior by Islamic fundamentalists or any other fundamentalists. And the First Amendment is great. It’s my favorite amendment. It’s why I can do what I do here. It’s why I can read what I read and believe what I believe…
Republicans love the socialism in National Socialism but as Hitler explained to his fellow Nazis, socialists were just “salon Bolsheviks”
It’s no secret the Republicans want to take us back and that Democrats want to take us forward, but isn’t Genesis a little unrealistic?
Romney, running on the same Republican policies as Bush, the same policies as McCain, hypocritically accuses Obama of having no new ideas
The Democrats missed an opportunity to take a step forward for the Founders’ vision of a secular government by putting God in their platform
There’s lots of pressure on the remaining party ‘stars’. For today (Wednesday), you know prime time (10-11:00) speakers Bill Clinton and Elizabeth Warren won’t disappoint, but this is already a great convention.
Mitt Romney celebrated the college football season with lies about the economy and job creation and Obama told Ohioans to punt his plan away
The Democratic National Convention in Charlotte is being targeted by fundies as Ground Zero for acts of martyrdom and cries of persecution
Personhood fell victim to its own dishonesty yesterday in Colorado, even as the Romney campaign called the abortion debate a distraction
John Stemberger tosses facts aside to claim that only Christianity could create the American experience and only Christianity can save it
Warren says he canceled his planned forum with Obama and Romney because of incivility but the real reason was neither man was interested
Bryan Fischer is upset that his word isn’t good enough; that his Christian male voice does not invalidate a woman’s experience and science
Rachel Maddow shows us what a monumental mistake the Romney Campaign made in selecting the Kill Medicare Guy as his running mate
Christian Fundamentalism represents less a coherent religion than a collection of excuses and justifications for bigotry and hatred
The right is heralding Paul Ryan as a policy wonk, but a closer look at his ideas and where they come from reveals that he is anything but.
For years we’ve been told Obama’s Christianity matters but where Romney’s Mormonism comes in, will expediency win out over dogma in 2012?
Mitt Romney is hurting in the polls, has insulted nearly everyone he’s met, and now plans to take to the road to show his blue-collar cred
Fundamentalists are adept at constructing arguments based on cherry-picked evidence and lies of commission and omission in pursuit of a goal
The verdict is in: based on fundamentalist Christian response to the Democratic Party’s marriage equality platform, God is a whiny little bitch
Michele Bachmann was spanked by her party leadership but got herself appointed to an Islamophobic law center and hauled in a cool million
We like people who contribute to our society, people who build, who create goods and services, who create jobs. We have a word for people who suck the life’s blood out of others: vampires. Vampires are parasites. Vampires do not sparkle. We don’t like vampires. We want to protect ourselves from them. If private equity’s…
Republicans have discovered that the candidate they got is not the candidate they wanted, or needed. Nevada’s ballot offers a solution
Rush Limbaugh claimed to be speaking for black America on his show, saying that African Americans feel Obama has abandoned them and Romney will win if Obama loses the “black vote”.
We can take a page from the right’s playbook and fight voter suppression with the message that voting is a self-interest that everyone can understand.
Televangelist Bill Keller doesn’t like Mormons or Romney and he doesn’t like Obama so he says you should vote for Jesus on Election Day
Ted Nugent believes we’d be better off if the South had won the Civil War, completely ignoring that states rights was all about slavery
After underwhelming Houston, Iowa, South Carolina and Florida, The Response is bringing its brand of extremist Christianity to Kansas City just before Election Day
Right wing values are all about profit values –and nothing more. Whether poisoning our water, triggering a war or making us pay the receipt for their economic stupidity.
Yesterday was a bad day for the GOP but we should remember they’ve had many bad days recently and that its fun to watch their heads explode
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TRP), a secretive trade agreement, could criminalize your use of the Internet or even terminate it
This is a huge reason for the stubborn unemployment! President Obama doesn’t have the benefit of adding public workers to the payroll, like Reagan did.
I like PFAW and the work they do; I do not like getting fundraising letters accusing me of supporting Mitt Romney if I don’t give them money
Conservatives in Michigan and across the country seek to regulate women’s bodies and their relationships with medical profession, but women are pushing back.
By banning science, by banning any discussion at all of climate change in North Carolina, the anti-regulation Republicans are regulating scientific thought.
Contrary to what Republicans say, only 30% of small businesses want the healthcare law overturned while 50% want it to stand with minor or no changes.
A mass majority convinced through years of struggle that a fairer, more humane, more sustainable world is possible is the best way to challenge the corporate colonization of our government.
All of the sudden extreme videos of preachers denouncing gays have gone viral, and it is all party of the mixture of extreme religion and conservatism that Republicans want America to become.
Chuck Norris takes to WND to display comedic talents in support of Scott Walker, and badly misrepresenting Ronald Reagan in the process
It’s an old right wing tactic that we should have long ago learned to recognize. When they can’t beat us in a democracy, they change the rules of that democracy.
Religious Freedom: a euphemism used by Christian groups who embrace subordination and a culture of suppression of other religious viewpoints
Southern Poverty Law Center offers a list of 30 New Activists Heading Up the Radical Right, who represent the worst America has to offer
While attending the NATO summit in Chicago, President Obama kept up the pressure on Romney and his self-enrichment record at Bain Capital
It wasn’t just what Nick Hanauer said that made his TED talk controversial, it was that he dared challenge conservative assumptions.
A turnover of as little as 5 or 6 house seats in California could mean that Democrats once again control the House of Representatives.
Karl Rove, the Brothers Koch, ALEC and Romney put on just as fake a show as their ‘rasslin’ brethren, but unlike wrestling they’re not trying to entertain their fans (voters)…they’re using them.
During the race for the Republican Presidential Nomination the wives of all the candidates have been a faithful and reliable presence. Let’s learn more about Ann Romney and rest of the wanna be First Lady wives club.
In an interview with Telemundo, President Obama dropped the hammer and served notice to Mitt Romney that his lies will not go unchallenged.
According to a couple of Republican women writing for CNN, the left is afraid of Ann Romney because she is somehow every woman.
Mitt Romney’s lie your ass off to get elected tour took the stage at the NRA’s annual meeting and uttered a barrage of falsehoods about President Obama and guns, so extreme that most of them had no relationship to any facts.
The Arizona State Legislature with the help of ALEC has done the impossible. Without involving a single sperm, they have legislated women into a state of perpetual pregnancy.
Hilary Rosen called it correctly. Ann Romney has no idea of the struggles the average American experiences every day and she is a pandering elitist just like her husband.
Even in an election year Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton remain wildly popular. New surveys have found both Sec. Clinton and the First Lady enjoy 66% approval ratings.
Rush needs to stop getting so hung up on feminism allegedly stealing his masculinity, and take a lesson in manhood from President Obama.
In South Carolina a local sheriff has justified the shootings of two men because the shooter believed his life was in peril. Even though, the victims were described as ducking and fleeing.
Special prosecutor Angela Corey has announced that George Zimmerman has been charged with murder in the second degree, and 45 days after his murder Trayvon Martin will finally a chance at justice.
Republicans are so busy throwing tantrums that they fail to recognize that President Obama is denouncing their unfair assaults on the poor and middle class.
This afternoon in a press conference with Trayvon’s parents, Al Sharpton urged supporters to be peaceful and non-violent, “This is not anti-anybody. There are whites, Latinos, who have marched with us. This is not a hate campaign. This is a love campaign… This is a love campaign, to pursue justice for an unarmed man who died.”
By pushing Allen West’s claim that 80 Democrats in the House are communists the media is helping him cover up his anti-women and anti-jobs voting record.
George Bush is back to remind everyone that he “dramatically raised the deficit”. Lawrence O’Donnell observed that Bush’s appearance is a huge gift to the President and his Buffett Rule.
The Republican Party has gone to war with the Girl Scouts, accusing them training girls to be radicalized, anti-religious baby-killing feminazis
George W. Bush announced today, “I don’t miss the presidency.” He seems as confused as he was when he was in office, as he worried that repealing the Bush tax cuts for the rich would take money out of the pockets of “consumers”.
It’s truly sad when the individuals who creates the laws that regulate greenhouse gas emissions understands nothing about carbon dioxide.
Gawker has a Fox mole. The big surprise in this pre-interview tape with Sean Hannity isn’t that Mittens’ wife has Austrian dressage horses, but that Mittens has an “easy to ride” Missouri Foxtrotter.
Rachel Maddow told Michigan Republicans to bring it on after they responded to her report on their circumventing of democracy with insults.
Republicans say we don’t need revenue to run this country, we need to cut spending. It didn’t work under Reagan or Bush, but most tellingly, it isn’t working for the Republican Party itself.
Republicans are so worried about what an examination of Mormonism can and will do to Romney’s campaign that they are already blaming Obama.
A visit to the National Mall leaves you with the impression that it was “We the People” and not “the Lord thy God” which inspired our government
Another display of grassroots muscle caused the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to drop their financial support for ALEC.
Meet some of the real life victims of health care politics in the ‘conservative republic’ of America, where only the super rich can afford to get sick.
Republicans go through life trying to find excuses to avoid the responsibility of shared humanity and citizenship. Ms. Sobchak, like many other women both here and in Russia, demonstrates the ability to not only embrace that shared humanity, but by doing so to become a better human being, and a better citizen
Better Georgia is helping voters send a simple, direct message to Gov. Nathan Deal and his Republican allies who are pushing a drug testing mandate, “You pee first.”
In order to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, Republicans use entitlement society language to stigmatize using government benefits.
In a year of highs and lows, and plenty of circus like atmosphere and drama, two of the biggest pleasant surprises for MSNBC in 2010 were the late blooming success of The Ed Show, and the immediate success of The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell. Let’s take a look at two of MSNBC’s bright spots for the year.
Anti-choice advocates in Mississippi have begun to advance so-called Personhood Amendments to attack birth-control, abortion, cloning, and stem-cell research.
In response to the federal investigation launched into the allegation that she used $20,000 of campaign funds to pay for her own living expenses, Christine O’Donnell has lost the last thread of sanity that she had left. O’Donnell did her best to keep the cash flowing by claiming that the left is out to get her, while forgetting that it was her own Republican campaign staff that outed her for misuse of funds. In short, Christine O’Donnell is bat shit crazy.
The latest Gallup poll on President Obama’s job approval rating contained an interesting nugget of information. After two years on the job, Barack Obama’s approval rating is higher than that of two recent presidents who had big reelection victories, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. One term Presidents George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, and post-9/11 president George W. Bush had higher ratings than Obama at the halfway mark.
In an interview with Rolling Stone about receiving the Kennedy Center Honor for lifetime achievement, outlaw country legend Merle Haggard reflected on meeting President Obama. He blasted “the media,” for making up and spreading lies about Obama, “It was also nice to meet Obama and find him very different from the media makeout. It’s really almost criminal what they do with our President.” It is obvious that Haggard was talking about Fox News.
According to the latest CNN/Opinion Research poll, President Obama’s latest string of legislative victories including the ratification of the START treaty and repeal of DADT have resulted in people coming back to the President. The number of Americans who want the Democrats to renominate Obama is at its highest level of the year, while the number of Americans who want someone else has dropped.
The bad news keeps coming for MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. The 2010 ratings data is starting to trickle in, and the news is not so great for the Countdown host. In a down year for cable news where all three networks registered a decline in viewers, Keith Olbermann lost 11% of his total audience, but what is most troubling is that among the coveted age 25-54 demographic Olbermann lost 25% of his audience.
Joe Miller will not try to perform a citizens arrest on Lisa Murkowski but he will take her to federal court for having the audacity to defeat him in 2010.
Senior White House adviser Valarie Jarrett was on NBC’s Meet The Press today where she offered up an interesting New Year’s resolution for President Obama and the White House. Jarrett said they are going to get the president out more to listen and engage with the American people, “It’s really what gives him his energy and his strength, and so we’re determined in the new year to make sure that his schedule reflects that priority.”
President Obama seems to have a hint of President Theodore Roosevelt in him, here. President Theodore Roosevelt stood with American families and small business when he took on the monopolies and trusts. It seems that President Obama is doing the same with health insurance companies. We must hold these companies accountable.
Every year, the President of the United States delivers a Christmas message. Some are good. Some are bad, but on this Christmas Day we take a look back at the 5 best presidential quotes about Christmas. In the spirit of the season, these quotes aren’t ranked. Please enjoy them, and have a Merry Christmas.
Even though women lean towards the Democrats more than any other party, a small minority of the left has become embroiled in a conspiracy theory regarding the accusation of sexual assault against Julian Assange. This radical group has sought to trample decades of Democratic Party advocacy on behalf of women by smearing the two possible victims of Assange. These Assange Truthers believe that the women are not victims but part of an international plot to bring Assange down.
Anyone accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty but right now I would no more trust a jury of progressives to look dispassionately at the case than I would a jury of conservatives.
On her MSNBC program last night Rachel Maddow highlighted an often overlooked fact concerning the presidency of Barack Obama. Maddow said, “By my estimation it is halftime, right, in the first term and with this vote tomorrow they will have gone 85% of the distance they said they wanted to go in the first term of the president.”
According to the new CNN/Opinion Dynamics poll, confidence is growing among Americans that President Obama’s policies will move the nation in the right direction. 55% of those surveyed believe that Obama will lead us in the right direction compared to 51% who believe that Republican policies will lead the US in the WRONG direction. Most importantly, the poll revealed that Obama, not the GOP is being given the political credit for the tax cut deal.
Main Street conservatives need to wake up to the fact that, the Republican politicians do not fight for you. They fight for Wall Street and Big Corporations who throw your neighbors onto the street. Wall Street has a plan to make working class Americans, whether your liberal, conservative, Democrat or Republican economically irrelevant. The point is, if your working class, Wall Street doesn’t need you or better yet DOESN’T WANT YOU and neither does Corporate America.
Senate Republicans are scrambling to come up with excuses for why they once again filibustered against the 9/11 First Responders health care bill: There were other issues more pressing. There’s no deadline – the bill can be looked at next year. We need to concentrate on the taxes and the budget. The bill is too expensive. The spending needs to be offset. I had to go home (Sam Brownback). I don’t remember whether I’m for the bill or against it (really, Orrin Hatch?).
On his radio show today, Rush Limbaugh accused anyone who celebrated the repeal of DADT of hating the military. Limbaugh asked, “By the way, isn’t it revealing my friends, the same people who have only shown hatred and contempt for the US military are the ones celebrating Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell as a great historic accomplishment?”
Republicans have tried every possible delaying tactic: an amendment by John McCain, failed Saturday on a 59-37 vote; on Sunday, a second by Jim Risch, 32-60.
In a charity campaign aimed at helping school lunch programs in the U.S.A, GAP is promoting FEED USA bags. These bags cost between $19.50 and $39.50. For each bag you purchase, GAP donates $5 to school lunch programs in the United States. It sounds good until you realize that GAP decided to sell bags “Made in China” for just under $40.00 and donate $5 to FEED USA.
Vice President Joe Biden was on NBC’s Meet The Press today, where he gave his own opinion on Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Biden said of Wikileaks, “I would argue that it’s closer to being a high tech terrorist than, than the Pentagon Papers.”
They call it Civil War Politics, and the death of it may be one of the only positive things to come out of the recession in Ireland. The term does not exactly conjure appealing images in the mind’s eye.
Rachel Maddow was on MSNBC providing analysis of the Senate’s vote to repeal DADT, when she pointed out that today’s vote is a huge victory President Obama, and one that the base should reward him for. Maddow said, “This was a difficult promise to keep, not just a promise kept, it was one that was hard to keep that cost a lot of political capital and a lot of work, and this is the President’s victory and his base will reward him for it.”
A lot has been said about our founding fathers in recent years. The tea party has all of a sudden become historical scholars. They have become the defenders of our Country and our Constitution. Glenn Beck is their proverbial historical professor. Unfortunately their knowledge is fairly limited to specifically what their Fox News comrade regurgitates, which inaccurately represents the true views of the Founding Fathers.
It is important that President Obama communicates to the American people his attempts at compromise and bipartisanship because it will expose the Republicans as the obstructionists they really are.
Comparisons of Sarah Palin to Abraham Lincoln are absurd. It takes more than stacking wood as a child to make another Lincoln. Facts allow no such comparison.
On his radio show today, Rush Limbaugh actually argued that the rich did not benefit from the compromise to extend the Bush tax cuts. Limbaugh claimed that the government never gives the rich anything, and, “the only giveaway is welfare. The only giveaway is our social programs. The rich are not given anything by our government.”
On his MSNBC program Keith Olbermann mocked the bomb that is Sarah Palin’s latest book America By Heart. Olbermann said, “Even if the book as sold as many copies at Walmart as it has everywhere else combined, you’re looking at 70% of a print run sitting in warehouses waiting to be returned to the publisher.”