At Rube Con 2010 (tm), poor hotel event planning leads to unpleasantness at the omelet bar...

Open Thread below...

Yup, Willie Wonka...as portrayed by Gene Wilder. Boy, does this take me back. In fact, this was the first movie I saw at an indoor theater. Ahh, to be a kid again.

Tonight you have the run of the C&L factory! Post some of your favorite songs, movie clips or cartoons from your childhood. Watch your step, and remember, there are little surprises around every corner, but nothing dangerous!

PS Our sister site Newstalgia has Pink Floyd, Live at the Paris Theatre, London 1970, for your listening pleasure.

I just put her teabagger speech on and man it's tough to listen to her. Her voice has this weird off putting quality to it. Not quite like chalk against a blackboard, but just as annoying.

Take a drink every time she says "common sense," but don't drive.

I'd rather be watching the Rangers vs the Devils hockey game right now. Brodeur and The King is a great goalie match up, but it's my job on a Saturday night so here I am.

From The Daily Show Feb. 4, 2010:

According to the blog headlines, Jon is a blood-crazed madman and Rachel Maddow is an eviscerating machine.

UPDATE: Speaking of crazy, who's watching Sarah Barracuda throw red meat to the Tea Baggers tonight? Sounds a lot like campaign speech redux to me.

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(Getting the stories straight - what they didn't know and when they didn't know it)

The echo from Ronald Reagan's first inaugural address had hardly decayed when word starting leaking around about covert activities and the CIA's renewed "fooling around" with foreign governments as a result of the Reagan Administrations stepped up efforts to destabilize (the nice word for overthrowing) various governments deemed unfriendly towards the U.S.

And Central America along with our clandestine interests came up for particular scrutiny in early 1982 when this Nightline broadcast first aired (February 18). Ted Koppel hosted a panel which consisted of Ray Cline, E. Howard Hunt, Senator Joe Biden and former Senator Frank Church. The subject was just how involved in all this were we?

From the White House Press Conference earlier that day:

Question (Press conference): “Have you approved of covert activities to de-stabilize the present government of Nicaragua?”

Pres. Reagan: “Here again, this is something upon which . ..national security interests I just . . I will not comment.

Question: “Do you approve the (muffled) policy is, as far as having American covert operations to de-stabilize any existing government without specific reference to Nicaragua?”

Reagan: “There again I’m going to say this is like discussing the options. And – no comment.”

Funny how it eventually went from "no comment" to "I don't recall". It begs the question of just how aware (or unaware) Reagan was with the goings on in his own White House. If he was truly aware, he would probably top Nixon in the honors of deceit. If he was truly unaware, that would give credence to the notion that Reagan was, indeed our first figurehead President.

While supporters are trying desperately to figure out how to pass health-care reform, I have to wonder: What planet is Obama on? He acts as if being a cheerleader on the sidelines is going to get health-care reform passed, seemingly oblivious to the very real problems that are holding it up:

In his rallying cry to a crowd of cheering supporters on Thursday, Mr. Obama described, in the clearest terms yet, his vision of how to enact comprehensive health legislation: House and Senate Democrats would resolve their differences and decide on a “final bill.” They would then invite “our Republican friends to present their ideas.” The president would convene a meeting of Democrats, Republicans and health care experts to debate the proposals, in plain-spoken terms, for the benefit of the American people.

Then, Mr. Obama said, “we have got to move forward on a vote.”

The president did not say how he would resolve the knotty questions of policy, procedure and politics facing Congress.

A senior Democrat aide who has worked intensely on the legislation described party leaders as circling a traffic rotary, over and over, looking for a road forward but unable so far to pick a path.

“We’re still going around the circle,” said this aide, who asked not to be identified while discussing the Democrats’ internal debate. “You run out of gas at some point.”

In other news, Chris Bowers writes about a conference call with Health Care for America Now director Richard Kirsch yesterday afternoon. Kirsch unveiled plans to get supporters to take part in one final push on healthcare reform, noting there were no longer enough votes to pass the public option through reconciliation:

1. House should pass Senate bill with a pledge from the Senate to fix it in reconciliation. Senator Franken talked of "pledge and pass," which means the House needs to pass the Senate bill with a pledge from the Senate that it will be fixed in reconciliation. This is somewhat in conflict with Speaker Pelosi's statement that the Senate must actually pass a reconciliation bill before the House acts at all. A pledge alone isn't good enough for the House. Franken stated that he also thought the Senate bill needed to be improved, but that "the perfect--and we all have different ideas of what perfect is--shouldn't be the enemy of the very good."

2. Into the streets to create political will. The second part of the strategy is to make enough noise through protests, rallies, letters to the editor, and calls to Congress to create enough pressure for Congress to pass health care.

So please don't stop. If we want any movement at all, we need to get behind this bill.

I am happy to share the fifth installment of the Driftglass and Bluegal podcast for your listening pleasure. If you missed the previous editions you can find them under our podcast tag as well as Fran's link below.

Blue Gal here: These podcasts are posted at our own blogs weekly, they're available at iTunes, and downloads of past episodes are available here. Thanks much to C&L's Video Cafe for their support.

[The occasional eff bomb while we talk about Republicans may make this podcast not safe for work.]

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Bill Moyers smacks the Democrats and Republicans for sucking up to corporate lobbyists at their retreats and Mitch McConnell for the hypocrisy of his statement on the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court ruling.

BILL MOYERS: Everybody's been talking about that Republican retreat last weekend, where President Obama engaged his opponents in a give and take. But what you may not know is that it was organized by something called the Congressional Institute. Nice highfalutin civic bunch, you might deduce from its name. Turns out the Congressional Institute is funded by corporate contributions and run by top Republican lobbyists. There are fourteen members on its board--twelve are registered lobbyists. And the contributors to the Congressional Institute read like a who's who of corporate America. Among its benefactors have been General Motors, Lockheed Martin, Time Warner, UPS. The institute's chairman lobbies for among others, Goldman Sachs, B.P., Health Net and AHIP. That's the trade group for the health insurance industry that fought tooth and nail against the public option and brought the White House to its knees.

Now if any Democrats out there are gloating over this, I'm not finished. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee also had a cozy little retreat last weekend at a Ritz-Carlton resort in Miami Beach, which boasts "sumptuous marble baths," a spa, and a two million dollar art collection. The website Politico.com reports that in addition to prominent Democratic senators there were plenty of representatives from industries the Democrats regularly attack when they wear their populist hat: the American Bankers Association, the tobacco giant Altria, the oil company Marathon, several drug manufacturers, and the defense contractor Lockheed Martin, as well as Heather and Tony Podesta -- two of the biggest corporate spear carriers on K Street and two of the biggest Democrats in town. Very, very intimate. And very, very politically incestuous.

One final note: after the Supreme Court handed down its decision two weeks ago, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the leader of Senate Republicans, praised it from the senate floor. He dismissed the notion that the decision might allow a flood of foreign money to influence our elections. Now we learn from TalkingPointsMemo.com that Senator McConnell has received substantial funds from a subsidiary of a big foreign defense contractor that's currently being investigated by the Justice Department for bribery. Senator McConnell has been quite good to that subsidiary -- this year alone he's requested seventeen million dollars in earmarks for its Louisville facility. Yes, the sun, and the dollar signs, shine bright in Senator McConnell's old Kentucky home.

Let's face it, two political parties; equal opportunity hypocrites.

That's it for the Journal. Go to our website at PBS.org and click on Bill Moyers Journal. You can read Dr. Margaret Flowers' letter. You'll also learn how your state's laws will be affected by the recent Supreme Court decision. We'll also link you to websites where the debate rages on.

That's all at PBS.org.

I'm Bill Moyers. And I'll see you next time.

Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson did a bang-up job in the new issue dissecting what happened to Obama's campaign apparatus -- and why. Lots of meaty stuff. For one thing, there were a lot of unintended consequences to rolling Obama For America's volunteer organization into the DNC.

It may interest you to know that the same president who can't seem pull it together on healthcare -- the same one who both Obama and David Axelrod insist isn't even thinking about re-election -- already has his reelection infrastructure in place:

OFA has quietly deployed paid staff to all 50 states, building a network from state directors all the way down to a corps of supervolunteers, trained in organizing, who recruit an army of neighborhood team leaders. "There's a skeleton of a re-election campaign already set up -- beyond a skeleton," says Figueroa, the campaign's former field director. "There's already meat to the bone in every state in the union. Three years away from the next election, that army is already being continuously fed. If you're Barack Obama and his political operation, revving the engine, how is that not a good thing?"

For the rest of us? Perhaps not so much. If Obama's putting this kind of effort into his re-election, and not into passing healthcare reform, well, it seems he's getting ahead of himself.

When he was elected in 1992, Bill Clinton openly admitted that Hillary Rodham Clinton would be an active and engaged member of his inner team, with jokes about "two Clintons for the price of one!", much to the disgust and outright hostility of the right wing. How dare Hillary Clinton be so presumptuous as to believe that her non-elected status as the spouse of the President gave her the right to sit in policy meetings and advise her husband on matters of national importance?

Don't look now, GOP, but it appears we have another case of "two for the price of one":

Nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails that Todd Palin exchanged with state officials, which were released to msnbc.com and NBC News by the state of Alaska under its public records law, draw a picture of a Palin administration where the governor's husband got involved in a judicial appointment, monitored contract negotiations with public employee unions, received background checks on a corporate CEO, added his approval or disapproval to state board appointments and passed financial information marked "confidential" from his oil company employer to a state attorney.While 1,200 separate e-mails were released this week, 243 others were withheld by the state under a claim that executive privilege extends to Todd Palin as an unpaid adviser to the government. Still, just the subject lines of those e-mails provide a glimpse of the ways the Palins divvied up their responsibilities when she became governor in December 2006, less than two years before Republican Sen. John McCain pulled her onto the national political stage by nominating her as his vice presidential candidate.You can read all those e-mails in msnbc.com's searchable online archive.

While there is no instruction manual for First Spouse involvement, there's little doubt that Todd's input on Alaskan governmental issues was more than merely 'advising' Sarah Palin. Given that they sought to suppress knowledge of Todd's membership in the extremist AIP party, it does beg the question how much his far-right secessionist beliefs played into his influence on matters of judicial appointments and other matters of state.

It also shines a new light on the news that the Palins jointly cheated on their taxes by never declaring two properties built on parcels they owned as Palin ran on a platform of cleaning up Alaskan corruption:

It was things like this that really made Sarah Palin stand out as a gubernatorial candidate. Republicans in the state were sick of the corruption that was running rampant in their own party, and they wanted change. They wanted a "fresh face" who had new ideas and ethical standards. They wanted someone who was actually bothered by a public official who would cheat his community by passing his personal tax burden on to others.

Ironically, Palin refused to do a commercial endorsing another candidate when it came out that he had an unpaid tax debt.

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Pat Buchanan unleashed his inner Tea Partier yesterday on Hardball, telling Chris Matthews that he would campaign for Tea Party challenger J.D. Hayworth over John McCain in their Arizona primary race. Hayworth, you may recall, recently voiced support for the Birthers on the same show:

MATTHEWS: Where are you on McCain versus Hayworth?

BUCHANAN: If I‘m out in Arizona, I would vote for J.D. Hayworth, who is a friend of mine and a conservative. And if he lost, I would vote for John McCain.

MATTHEWS: OK, we know where you stand.

Joan Walsh took him to task for it:

WALSH: We absolutely know where you stand. He‘s a birther. He‘s an extremist. Thank you, Pat.

The "Birther" matter is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Hayworth. Back in 2006, en route to losing his congressional seat, Hayworth tried to revive Henry Ford's program of "Americanism," which you may recall was actually a code word for anti-Semitic eliminationism; it was also a favorite program promoted avidly by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

Hayworth lost that race, in no small part because of voters were repelled by his lame denials about the "Americanization" program.

Of course, none of this would bother the author of State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, would it?

But because he's still our avuncular Uncle Pitchfork, he of course resorted to the standard retort of conservatives when confronted with the realities of the extremists in their midst:

BUCHANAN: This is why you lose—do you know why you lose these people? Because you show contempt for them. You call them birthers. You call them names. I‘m talking about the people, the Tea Party people. All they want, Joan, is respect. And you liberals never give it to them. You call them all names. No wonder they go over to the Republican party.

Walsh then took Buchanan apart:

Continue reading »

Golly, I'm so shocked! Who knew that the Tea Party members were really just another group of fringe Republicans? (Via Digby):

In a bid to advance the tea party movement from holding rallies to holding office, the leaders of the anti-establishment groups announced a new political organization Friday that they say will “endorse, support and elect” conservatives across the country.

Mark Skoda, chairman of The Memphis TEA Party, made the announcement at a news conference in the middle of the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville. Though he said the group -- Ensuring Liberty Corporation and an affiliated political action committee -- is "distinct and separate" from other parts of the tea party movement, including convention organizer Tea Party Nation, the announcement was the closest thing so far to a national organizing strategy for the upcoming 2010 midterm elections.

"Let us not be naive here. The notion of us holding up signs ... does not get people elected," said Skoda, who is poised to become president of the new group. Skoda said the organization would take in small donations as well as corporate donations.

According to a written statement, the group would work to build a "sustainable coalition of elected officials" on the national level and in state and local races that might not be getting the attention of the Republican Party establishment.

The announcement came with an official platform that could help define what the multi-faceted tea party movement stands for and expects from the candidates it supports. The group's leaders plan to support candidates who stand for a set of "First Principles."

Those principles are: fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, less government, states' rights and national security. Prospective political candidates will be expected to support the Republican National Committee platform. If a particular candidate meets the proposed criteria he or she would be eligible for fundraising and grassroots support.

Once elected to office, members would be expected to join a congressional caucus of "like-minded representatives" who attend regular meetings and are held accountable for the votes they cast. Those who stray from the tea party path would risk losing the new organization's support and a possible re-election challenge.

As a quick glance at the video tape makes clear, the supposed Tea Party movement is simply a continuation of the right-wing's failed 2008 presidential campaign by other means. (Senator Jim Demint (R-SC) spoke for Sarah Palin, John Cornyn, Michele Bachmann and countless others when he insisted, "We need to stop looking at the tea parties as separate from the Republican party.") But as the sessions by Pastor Rick Scarborough and Judge Roy Moore at today's National Tea Party Convention show, the assembled Birthers, Birchers, Deathers and Deniers have seamlessly embraced the extremist religious right agenda. They are Tea Bagging for Jesus and they are in your face about it.

On that point, Pastor Scarborough is unapologetic. The Vision America founder and face of the "War on Christians" conference, Scarborough told MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell Friday that he considered the event his organization sponsored "a good investment."

And Michelle Goldberg wrote in the American Prospect, what Rick Scarborough is investing in is new adherents to his particularly draconian right-wing vision:

In 2002, he left his post as pastor of Pearland First Baptist Church to form Vision America, a group dedicated to organizing "patriot pastors" for political action. That year, Falwell identified him as one of the new leaders of the Christian right. The author of books like In Defense of ... Mixing Church and State and the pithier Liberalism Kills Kids, Scarborough spent the Bush years organizing conferences that brought together conservative Republicans with preachers and activists working for the imposition of biblical law.

Among Pastor Scarborough's closest allies has been the disgraced former House Majority Leader Tom Delay. At his 2006 War on Christians conference, Scarborough defended His Hammer:

"I believe the most damaging thing that Tom DeLay has done in his life is take his faith seriously into public office, which made him a target for all those who despise the cause of Christ."

As the indicted Delay left the stage, Scarborough urged him to "keep your eyes on Jesus" and informed the audience that "God always does his best work after a crucifixion."

While Rick Scarborough was scheduled to host a Friday session titled, "Why Christians Must Engage," at Thursday evening's Tea Party kick-off he conducted the "Organized Prayer Session for the convention & our nation." As Time described it:

By the end of the night, much of the room knelt in prayer - one of the pastors, Rick Scarborough, went after homosexuals several times to choruses of amens -- before watching a Tea Party video.

Then there's Republican candidate for governor and former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore.

Former that is, because an Alabama ethics panel removed Moore from his position in November 2003 after he refused a mandate to remove a 10 Commandments monument from his courthouse rotunda. In response, as the New York Times recalled, Moore was unrepentant:

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If you thought, after watching the two segments of Jon Stewart's interview with Bill O'Reilly this week, that Stewart landed some telling observations, but he seemed to pull his punches a bit -- or at least they seemed to have been pulled for him -- you were right.

If you also noticed, as I did while making the clip, that the segments were pretty hamhandedly edited -- the continuity, especially in terms of Stewart's demeanor, was jarring -- it turns out you were also right.

Fox actually put the entire, unedited version of the interview up on its site, and the difference is jaw-dropping.

John Cook at Gawker (with the help of a couple of interns) got ahold of the full interview first, and provides a nice dissection that you should read (and watch) in full.

We've clipped some of the highlights for our own video, above.

If nothing else, the unedited video will be long remembered for the following quip:

I know what this is. I come from Jersey—it's the same thing: "I'm not saying your mother's a whore. I'm just saying she has sex for money. With people." [F]ox News used to be all about, you don't criticize a president during wartime. It's unacceptable, it's treasonous, it gives aid and comfort to the enemy. All of a sudden, for some reason you can run out there and say, "Barack Obama is destroying the fabric of this country."

Though I also thought this exchange was perhaps the most telling:

Stewart: But let's go into this. Because all I hear on your network is, this guy is -- it's tyranny, and socialism.

O'Reilly: That's what he believes.

Stewart: So, how is Barack Obama a socialist? As far as I can see, the majority of the billions of dollars he's given, he's given to banks. So if he is a socialist, he's dyslexic! Because when you redistribute the wealth, it's supposed to be going to --

O'Reilly: But he does believe in redistribution of income.

Stewart: Well, he's redistributed it to the banks.

O'Reilly: And that is a socialist tenet -- no, he's redistributing it --

Stewart: He's going up. He's dyslexic! It's supposed to be coming down!

O'Reilly: He -- Look. If you don't know that the Obama administration is redistributing income, then I'm gonna have to haul your program away from you. Get you off the air.

Stewart: Let me ask you: What is different about his redistribution of income and all other presidents -- he wants to raise the marginal tax rate back to where it was during the Clinton era. Was Clinton a socialist?

O'Reilly: He has promoted a variety of programs, OK, that --

Stewart: We already have Medicare, right? We have Medicaid. We have Social Security. Are we a socialist country? Do you want to get rid of those three?

O'Reilly: No.

Stewart: So are we a socialist country?

O'Reilly: But I want to moderate them so we don't go bankrupt.

Stewart: OK, but that's different. Now you're talking about fiscal responsibility.

O'Reilly: In a socialist country, the government pays for all of these entitlements -- the Obama administration is down that path.

Stewart: Who pays for Medicare? Who pays for Medicaid?

O'Reilly: The government pays for it.

Stewart: So now we're socialist.

O'Reilly: But now we're on Medicaid and Medicare with steroids, with the new health care bill. That's steroids!

Stewart: Once again, this is like the old joke. "Would you sleep with me for ten dollars?" "No." "Would you sleep with me for a million?" "OK." So now we know what you are, you're just negotiating price. For you guys to stand up --

O'Reilly: Of course, that's the degree of anybody when you describe socialism. There are little socialistic programs and giant socialist programs. OK? And some people believe that Obama is on the huge government creation -- the government dominance. And you yourself said it! You yourself said it! He wants more regulation, he wants to create things, he wants big government.

Stewart: But he's given back so much executive power!

O'Reilly: What?

Stewart: Executive power!

O'Reilly: He hasn't given back anything. He just hasn't handled the Congress. He doesn't know how to handle them yet. That's inexperience. Now --

Stewart: So he's not a tyrant. Because if he's a tyrant, then he's pretty lame for a tyrant.

O'Reilly: I don't object --

Stewart: How many tyrants do you know that really suffer because they can't get cloture? Very few.

OK, OK. So it wasn't a literal evisceration. Stewart did not unzip O'Reilly from scrote to sternum and empty out his intestines. We understand that he's a tad sensitive about how his takedowns are described these days.

Still, you can sure see why O'Reilly's producers edited this stuff out. Lord knows the regular septuagenarian Bold/Fresh audience would have fainted dead away.

Too bad we don't have a lot more politicians like Anthony Weiner in both houses of Congress. Rep. Weiner agrees with Jon Stewart -- Joe Lieberman is a dick. And Weiner says had he run against Mike Bloomberg for Mayor of New York, he'd have beaten him like a "rented mule" but he felt the health care debate was too important to leave the House.

From the Feb. 4, 2010 edition of The Daily Show.