Woodie Guthrie, Happy Birthday

Number 34 on the 2002 National Recording Registry list of "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" recordings, "This Land of Your Land" was intended, as the description on the Registry to be a "a grassroots response" to "God Bless America."

Both are songs we all know from grade school, right?

But there's more to the story.  From Will Kaufman, professor of American Culture, University of Central Lancashire, England:

Woody saw [God Bless America] as a strident, jingoistic, complacent, tub-thumping anthem to American greatness. And now, he had just come from the Dust Bowl. He’d just come from the barbed-wire gates of California’s Eden there. He’d seen the Hoovervilles. He’d seen the bread lines. He’d seen labor activists getting their head busted. And so, he’s thinking, what—God bless—what America, you know, is Kate Smith singing of? So he sits down and writes a song in response to Irving Berlin, and he calls it "God Blessed America for Me." And later on, he decides to come back to that song and change the title, change the verses, change the refrain, and it becomes "This Land Was Made for You and Me."

We all know the beginning lyrics.  But do you know the ending?  There are many versions from Guthrie himself but let's take a look at how Arlo Guthrie (Woodie's son, in case you're younger than 40 or so) ends it:

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

Happy Birthday, Woodie.

I wonder what you'd think about Citizens United, the Koch Brothers, the Tea Party Movement.

Tea-Party Democracy

From an editorial in today's P-G:

For lack of congressional compromise, payroll taxes are going to rise from 4.2 percent to 6.2 percent and long-term unemployment benefits are going to run out -- this in the worst economic times since the Great Depression. As a result, some 160 million Americans are going to have to pay the price of freshmen Republicans who don't give a damn unless they get their own way.

The Senate did its part, with Democrats and Republicans agreeing on a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut. The Republicans succeeded in including language requiring President Barack Obama to make up his mind within 60 days on the Keystone XL pipeline project, which environmentalists oppose. The bill passed 89-10, with 39 of 46 Republicans voting for it.

Including, we must add, Senator Toomey.

He even explained his vote on his website, saying that, while flawed, the legislation was "worthy of support."

The P-G goes on:

Then it came to the House of Representatives, with holdouts giving the excuse that they wanted a one-year tax cut extension or none at all. Would one year be better? Of course. Are the Democrats also playing politics, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid refusing to negotiate further? Of course.

But can the blame be shared equally? Of course not. The House Democrats unanimously voted against rejecting the compromise bill. So in approving the rejection bill 229-193 and repudiating the efforts of adults in their own party, the House Republican majority owns this Christmas tax hike.

Even The Wall Street Journal editorial page, the daily bible of conservatives, was aghast at how badly Republican leaders such as House Speaker John Boehner had handled this "fiasco." It wrote, "At this stage, Republicans would do best to cut their losses and find a way to extend the payroll holiday quickly."

Yes, but how? Republican leaders now find themselves in the same position that Dr. Frankenstein was in -- unable to control the monster of his own creation. After all, the tea-party types who now inhabit Congress did what their electorates voted them in to do -- reject compromise and bipartisanship. All other Americans should note how this is working out.

That WSJ editorial is brutal in its assessment of the state of the House GOP.  Go read it.  But the P-G got it right.  How many years did the far right wing of the far right wing GOP complain about RINOs?  Those "Republicans In Name Only"?  They gain some control over the GOP, get some tea partiers elected to the House this is what happens.

This is what happens:



From Thinkprogress:

During a quick pro-forma session of the House this morning, Republicans rebuffed a Democratic attempt to force an up-or-down vote on the Senate-passed payroll tax holiday extension, which Republicans have thus far refused to allow. Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA), who was serving as the speaker pro-temp, ignored shouts of “Mr. Speaker!” from Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), quickly adjourning the House.

Hoyer continued talking undeterred, saying, “You’re walking away, just as so many Republicans have walked away from middle-class taxpayers [and] the unemployed.” “We regret, Mr. Speaker, that you have walked off the platform without addressing this issue of critical importance to this country,” Hoyer added.

Moments later, the mic appeared to cut out. A few seconds after that, the video feed switched away from the House floor to a still image of the Capitol Dome. It appears someone in House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) office cut the feed, as C-SPAN tweeted afterwards: “C-SPAN has no control over the U.S. House TV cameras – the Speaker of the House does.”

Doncha Just LOVE Tea Party Democracy?

Rally at Toomey's Office at Noon Today

Sen. Pat Toomey (Tea Party-PA) is a favorite son of both the Club for Growth and the teahadists. Pennsylvania's junior Senator believes in magic -- he believes that tax cuts create revenue. Not only did he sign Grover Norquist's anti tax pledge and voted no on raising the debt ceiling, he believes the best course of action during the 2008 financial meltdown would have been to do nothing and let the chips fall where they may.

Of course, this meant that he was deemed to be eminently qualified to become a member of the "Super Congress."

If you believe that what Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and the country needs is jobs and not tax cuts. If you believe that the past decade of tax cuts for the "job creators" has only made the rich richer and not produced the promised jobs. If you believe your own lying eyes and not the smoke being blown up your ass, then this rally is for you:

August 2011 Recess Action
Station Square - Toomey's Office
100 West Station Square (Map)
Pittsburgh, PA 15219
Thursday, August 18th, 12:00 PM
This action is being sponsored by many groups including MoveOn, OnePittsburgh, We Are One, Democracy for Pittsburgh, and, undoubtedly many more.

There's strength in numbers -- join us!

Many of the groups are meeting at the Stattion Square T station at 11:45 to walk over together.

Also, if you listened to Lynn Cullen's show yesterday, you know to expect to see her and Pittsburgh City Paper Editor Chris Potter there too.
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"Tea Party! America Thanks You!" Video

More On Tea Party Hijinks

Before we spend too much more time on Congressman Doyle's use of the Congressional terrorist metaphor (especially since GOP Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell approves of the tactic of taking political hostages - just not shooting them) we should probably cast our eyes and see what sort of rhetoric is flowing out of the GOP's new masters - the Tea Party movement.

You remember those guys, right? They're the folks who are now cheering at the downgrading of the nation's credit rating:

Here's what happened: Midway through the Fond du Lac event, Florida talk show host Andrea Shea King took the stage. She told the audience that commentators were describing the downgrade of US debt to AA+ from AAA as the "tea party downgrade," laying the blame squarely on Congress' right-wing faction and its supporters. But rather than boo those who claim the tea party caused the downgrade, the 200 or so Wisconsinites in attendance cheered, sounding almost proud to blamed for the downgrade.

Well, it is their downgrade - nice of them to take responsibility. From National Journal:

But it’s hard to read the S&P analysis as anything other than a blast at Republicans. In denouncing the threat of default as a “bargaining chip,” the agency was saying that the GOP strategy had shaken its confidence. Though S&P didn’t mention it, the agency must have been unnerved by the number of Republicans who insisted that it would be fine to blow through the debt ceiling and provoke a default.

As many other analysts have noted, the deficit-reduction deal wouldn’t stop debt from climbing faster than the nation’s GDP over the next decade. It warned that the government’s publicly-held debt would climb from 74 percent of GDP at the end of this year to 79 percent by the end of 2011.

But one reason S&P said it had become more gloomy was that it had revised its assumptions about the most likely course of fiscal policy. In previous projections, it said, its “base case scenario” had assumed that Bush tax cuts for the wealthy would expire at the end of 2012, while tax cuts for families earning less than $250,000 a year would be extended. That, it said, would have reduced deficits about $950 billion over ten years.

But the new S&P base case assumes that Congress extends all the Bush tax cuts. “We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act,” S&P said.

And do I need to remind anyone that the GOP's absolute refusal to compromise on raising revenue comes directly from the Taxed Enough Already party (ie TEA) wing that's now controlling the GOP?

But back to our even tempered friends at the aforementioned Tea Party. From Politico:

THIENSVILLE, Wis. -- The founder of Tea Party Nation claimed liberal ideology is responsible for "a billion" deaths over the past century during a raucous rally here Saturday in support of one of the six Republican state senators facing a recall election Tuesday.

"I will tell you ladies and gentlemen, I detest and despise everything the left stands for. How anybody can endorse and embrace an ideology that has killed a billion people in the last century is beyond me," said Tea Party Nation CEO Judson Phillips.

This is up in Wisconsin, where there's lotsa protest over the GOP Governor and recall movement afoot for some State Senators - a recall movement that's permissible under that state's constitution, by the way. And what did Phillips have to say about that? Take a look:

Phillips, who a day prior likened protesters of Gov. Scott Walker to Nazi storm troopers, urged a few hundred tea party supporters to turn out for state Sen. Alberta Darling, who is in a ferocious battle with state Rep. Sandy Pasch to hold onto her suburban Milwaukee seat.

And then there's the trump card:

Vince Schmuki, a leader of the Ozaukee Patriot tea party group compared the recall effort to a terrorist attack.

"This is ground zero," said Schmuki. "You remember what the term ground zero means? We have been attacked."

Liberals have committed genocide, killing billions. Wisconsin citizens exercising their right to protest and recall are Nazis. And of course, they're terrorists.

These are the folks (or the folks much like them) who are now dictating the actions of the Grand Old Party.

Yay for America.

Do you want fries with your sugar-coated Satan sandwich?

You want fries with that?
Via the examiner.com:

While the president seemed to breathe a deep sigh of relief that a deal was struck, members of the Democratic caucus were less than enthusiastic about the plan. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver dismissed the deal as “a sugar-coated Satan sandwich” and “a shady bill.”

Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ.), co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said, “This deal trades people’s livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals,” adding that “the lesson today is that Republicans can hold their breath long enough to get what they want.”

Looks like we do negotiate with terrorists after all

The Deal: All cuts and no revenue.
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Jasiri X's "Jordan Miles" Premieres Today

There will be a premiere of Jasiri X's "Jordan Miles" today:

WHAT: One Hood Media presents: "Jordan Miles" World Video Premiere and Forum on Police Brutality
WHEN: 7:00pm, Thursday June 30th
WHERE: Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh - Homewood Branch, 7101 Hamilton Ave, Pittsburgh PA 15208 (map)

Here's a snippet of the new video:



Pittsburgh rapper Jasiri X is probably best know for "What if the Tea Party was Black?"

Frank Gaffney - Fear Monger

This past Friday I found my self strolling, as I am sometimes fond of doing at lunchtime, towards Market Square dahn-tahn.

Needless to say I was surprised to stumble over a tea party rally being held there.

For the news details here's McNulty of the P-G:

Entering its second year, Pittsburgh's tea party movement had its now-traditional tax day rally in Market Square today, attended by roughly 500 supporters and a gaggle of counter-demonstrators.

Alas, by the time I got there the gaggle had dispersed leaving the 500 or so tea partiers to be kept wide-eyed and entertained by none other than Rose ("Obama may be the devil because he attracts flies and rats") Tennant.

An interesting morsel from the P-G follow up the next day:

Underscoring the tea party's role in the GOP, [Pittsburgh tea party organizer Patti] Weaver, a former candidate for Allegheny County executive, invited fellow GOP candidates Chuck McCullough and D. Raja onto the stage.

Chuck McCullough was there? I wonder if someone from this anti-establishment crowd asked him about his impeding trial. I wonder if anyone in the crowd asked him about his being charged with taking money from an elderly client to make political donations in her name but without her authorization.

I wonder.

I didn't see that if it happened. What I did see was blazing fear mongering by Center for Security Policy President, Frank Gaffney. Some things to keep in mind when ascertaining the credibility of Mr Gaffney:

• He's a birther. In 2008 Gaffney wrote:

Another question yet to be resolved is whether Mr. Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States, a prerequisite pursuant to the U.S. Constitution. There is evidence Mr. Obama was born in Kenya rather than, as he claims, Hawaii. There is also a registration document for a school in Indonesia where the would-be president studied for four years, on which he was identified not only as a Muslim but as an Indonesian. If correct, the latter could give rise to another potential problem with respect to his eligibility to be president.

Curiously, Mr. Obama has, to date, failed to provide an authentic birth certificate which could clear up the matter.

• His Center for Security Policy is heavily supported by foundations controlled by our very good friend Richard Mellon Scaife:

$175,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2009.
$300,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2008.
$300,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2007.
$350,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2006.
$350,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2005.
$325,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2004.
$325,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2003.
$325,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2002.
$325,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2001.

Nice to know that such a grass roots movement can host a crazie speaker connected to some very old school conservative money.

Then there's Gaffney's certainty about Saddam's WMD.

Now that we've established Frank Gaffney as completely infected with teh crazie, let's move on to what he was talking about. Gaffney's yelled, screamed, and ranted about how SHARIA LAW IS RUINING THIS COUNTRY.

Sharia's EVERYWHERE! AND IT'S TAKING OVER!

Except it's not. From Reinbach at the Huffingtonpost:

Here's how Gaffney described what he calls the threat to the New York Senate's Homeland Security and Military Affairs Committee on April 8th: ."The threat...is best described, I believe, as a politico-legal-military threat whose express purpose is to have it imposed world-wide, subject to a theocratic ruler called a Caliph. That is of course a program that is completely at odds with our Constitution, our form of government, our way of life, our freedoms."

I'll admit that sounds pretty grim. Even if it does seem a lot like the threat of Global Communism I used to hear about as a kid.

The truth? Sharia is religious law, and no religious law can be imposed on the US without amending the Constitution -- twice -- to repeal both the opening clause of the First Amendment, and the Supremacy Clause in Article 6.

Something he never got round to telling the crowd. Here's the opening clause of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion

And here's the Supremacy Clause:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

Huh. I thought the tea partiers knew the Constitution.

I guess when it comes to billionaire-funded WMD finding birthers like Frank Gaffney, the truth is something to be jettisoned in favor of fear.

Teh Tea Party Crazie - Herman Cain Edition

Stumbled across this at the Huffingtonpost. It's about Herman Cain and his tea party try at the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Here's a taste:

His candidacy is not taken seriously by party regulars, but Tea Party organizers in the crowd said Cain has been working hard to gain their support here in Iowa since the summer of 2009.

And his speech had lots of red meat for a Tea Party audience.

“We’ve got some altering and abolishing to do,” Cain said, referencing the Declaration of Independence. “The Founders got it right. It is within the power of the United States of America to alter stuff that we don’t like. We don’t like this radical socialism that’s being shoved down our throats.”

Talking to reporters afterwards, Cain also said he thinks the imposition of Islamic Sharia law is a legitimate threat in America and that he would not appoint any Muslims to any positions in his Cabinet if he were elected. [emphasis added.]

I guess he's never read the constitution. Article VI, Paragraph 3:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. [emphasis added]

But where would someone like Herman Cain get his informaiton?

Take a look:


He said:

I read a lot of the papers that are published by The Heritage Foundation. I happen to think–and I’m not on their board, they don’t pay me–they happen to be one of the greatest of sources of accurate analysis, policy and information we have in this country.

Too bad simple Constructional Law doesn't seem to be included - or if it is, it's not enough to overcome some obvious religious bigotry.

As able a public speaker as he is, to Cain it's all about the threat of Sharia Law:

“I get upset when the Muslims in this country, some of them, try to force their sharia law onto the rest of us,” Cain said.

As opposed to those Christians who are trying to force their biblical law onto the rest of us. That's OK, I guess.

Not surprising he's a tea party favorite.

Tired Of All The Nuts

That's one of the reasons the chairman of the Colorado Republican Party is walking away from the chairmanship. From The Denver Post:

Dick Wadhams today unexpectedly dropped his bid for a third term as chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, and said he has no idea what he will do next.

Wadhams said he had the votes but in the last few days got to thinking, “What happens after I win?”

“I have loved being chairman, but I’m tired of the nuts who have no grasp of what the state party’s role is,” he said.

From the memo he distributed:

I entered this race a few weeks ago looking forward to discussing what we accomplished in 2010 and to the opportunities we have in 2012 to elect a new Republican president; to increase our state House majority and win a state Senate majority; and to reelect our two new members of Congress.

However, I have tired of those who are obsessed with seeing conspiracies around every corner and who have terribly misguided notions of what the role of the state party is while saying “uniting conservatives” is all that is needed to win competitive races across the state.

And who would these nuts who see conspiracy theories around every corner?

TPM offers a clue:

Wadhams oversaw Republican losses in both the Senate and gubernatorial races in Colorado last fall, races that the party could have conceivably won if the Tea Party-backed nominees in both races hadn't committed some serious errors.

And from Vincent Carroll at the DenverPost:

Ted Harvey is seeking the post of state Republican Party chair because he wants to "return authentic conservative leadership to the party structure," he said in his announcement.

You've got to appreciate the audacity of the word "authentic." The current party chair, Dick Wadhams, who announced Monday that he will not seek re-election, has only spent his entire career working for the likes of Bill Armstrong, Conrad Burns, Bill Owens, Wayne Allard and George Allen — and no, I don't mean the coach — with nary a political moderate in the mix.

So Dick Waldhams, called by Slate as an heir apparent to Karl Rove himself, isn't "authentic" enough a conservative for the Tea Partiers who scuttled those GOP races in Colorado.

Teh Tea Party Crazie has infected the GOP. Should be fun to watch!

Ruth Ann Dailey Spins - Badly

In an attempt to find some sort of right-left equivalence regarding the tone of our current political climate, the P-G's Ruth Ann Dailey proves, yet again, that while she certainly knows how to write, her ability see to the truth from the fog of her politics is always in question.

Her opening:

Given their scurrilous, insupportable yet sustained accusations against Sarah Palin, tea party activists and other non-Democrats after the Arizona mass shooting, it would seem that Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, Clarence Dupnik and other left-wingers have created a "climate of hate" and are thus responsible for Eric Fuller's violent threats and arrest on Saturday.

She then points out:

After all, within hours of the Jan. 8 shooting, Messrs. Krugman, Olbermann and Dupnik et al. had publicly pinned the mass murders on the right wing, the tea party and conservative media figures. And throughout the week, despite growing evidence to the contrary, these irresponsible provocateurs and their supporters refused to retract their slander.

So when Mr. Fuller, a member of their ideological throng, threatened one of those supposed culprits with death, it was cause and effect, right?

Let's take a look at what Krugman, Olbermann and Dupnik had to say. From Krugman's "Climate of Hate" column:

It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn’t mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate.

And then he illustrates something Dailey probably wants us to miss:

It’s important to be clear here about the nature of our sickness. It’s not a general lack of “civility,” the favorite term of pundits who want to wish away fundamental policy disagreements. Politeness may be a virtue, but there’s a big difference between bad manners and calls, explicit or implicit, for violence; insults aren’t the same as incitement.

And then:

Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

And there’s a huge contrast in the media. Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.

No equivalence. But perhaps that's part of Dailey's issue - that the left is hypocritically accusing the right of violent political rhetoric. And that's the root of the left's immorality here.

But then there's Olbermann's comment, where he ends the piece with this:

Violence, or the threat of violence, has no place in our Democracy, and I apologize for and repudiate any act or any thing in my past that may have even inadvertently encouraged violence. Because for whatever else each of us may be, we all are Americans.

Something Dailey left out.

To be true, Olbermann does point out some of the violence/threats of violence coming from the right. For example:

If Sharron Angle, who spoke of "Second Amendment solutions," does not repudiate that remark and urge her supporters to think anew of the terrible reality of what her words implied, she must be repudiated by her supporters in Nevada.

If the Tea Party leaders who took out of context a Jefferson quote about blood and tyranny and the tree of liberty do not understand - do not understand tonight, now what that really means, and these leaders do not tell their followers to abhor violence and all threat of violence, then those Tea Party leaders must be repudiated by the Republican Party.

Or the Tigris and Euphrates of the Fox "News" political rhetoric:

If Glenn Beck, who obsesses nearly as strangely as Mr. Loughner did about gold and debt and who wistfully joked about killing Michael Moore, and Bill O'Reilly, who blithely repeated "Tiller the Killer" until the phrase was burned into the minds of his viewers, do not begin their next broadcasts with solemn apologies for ever turning to the death-fantasies and the dreams of bloodlust, for ever having provided just the oxygen to those deep in madness to whom violence is an acceptable solution, then those commentators and the others must be repudiated by their viewers, and by all politicians, and by sponsors, and by the networks that employ them.

As far as I know, none of those things have happened yet.

The violent rhetoric is there - by far more so on the right. This is the politics of "if ballots don't work, bullets will." And it's a tea party thing. Something else Dailey doesn't want you to think.

Anyway, the big point that she missed, is that Fuller (the nexus of this column) was only threatening violence. He didn't pick up a Glock with 30 bullets in it and spray a tea party crowd with death. It was a threat - a stupid threat, to be sure, but a serious threat nonetheless.

And he was arrested for it.

Will we see an arrest for the next tea partier that gushes on about the tree of liberty being sprinkled with the blood if tyrants?

Good Times

In part of what a NYT's editorial called "A theatrical production of unusual pomposity" the Constitution was read aloud in the House chamber today.

And, on cue:

An apparent member of the birther movement seated in the gallery of the House of Representatives on Thursday interrupted a reading of the Constitution. The woman yelled out "Except Obama, except Obama, help us Jesus!" as Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) read the "natural born citizen" clause of the Constitution.

Moreover, despite their claims to be reading the entire Constitution, House members are reading an amended slavery-free version of the US Constitution.

Good times.
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Please just go away

Via Shakesville:

“Today marks a lot of tragedy. … Tragedy comes in threes... Pearl Harbor, Elizabeth Edwards’s passing and Barack Obama’s announcement of extending the tax cuts, which is good, but also extending the unemployment benefits.”- Christine O'Donnell, speaking at the launching for her new political action committee, "ChristinePAC."

Found Object (Message To The Tea Party)

From Alternate Brain:

Message to the Tea Party - What took you so long to get angry?

You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate Energy policy and push us to invade Iraq .

You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.

You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.

You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn't get mad when we spent over 800 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn't get mad when Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined.

You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars in cash just disappeared in Iraq .

You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.

You didn't get mad when Bush embraced trade and outsourcing policies that shipped 6 million American jobs out of the country.

You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.

You didn't get mad when Bush rang up 10 trillion dollars in combined budget and current account deficits.

You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn't get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans , drown.

You didn't get mad when we gave people who had more money than they could spend, the filthy rich, over a trillion dollars in tax breaks.

You didn't get mad with the worst 8 years of job creations in several decades.

You didn't get mad when Federal regulators looked the other way while banks and Wall Street reaped billions writing faulty mortgages, short-sold the debt and even wagered that the debts would fail.

You didn't get mad when over 200,000 US Citizens lost their lives because they had no health insurance.

You didn't get mad when lack of oversight and regulations from the Bush Administration caused US Citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments, retirement, and home values.

No.....You finally got mad

When a black man was elected President and decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.

Yea. What took you?

Pass it on.

Some Notes On Today's Tribune-Review

It's fun, sometimes, to notice how skewed the reporting (or at least the choice of what to report - which is different and puts the bias-onus on the editors and not the reporters) can be over at Richard Mellon Scaife's Tribune-Review.

Most of the time it's subtle and within bounds.

Today, however, it is not.

An estimated 200,000 people showed up for Jon Stewart's "Restore Sanity and/or Fear" rally at the National Mall yesterday. The estimate comes from the same firm that estimated 87,000 attended Glenn Beck rally in late August. Whether the Beck numbers are too low is beside the point here. The point being that with the same company using the same methodology for the two different events, the Stewart rally racked up more than twice the people attending.

Having written that, I gotta ask what did the Trib go with this morning as the most prominent cover story online?

Of course - a local Tea Party event:

Brian Durbin of Hempfield got up Saturday morning and transformed himself into Benjamin Franklin.

He pulled on brown knickers, a tan vest and ruffled neckpiece, and then covered his hair with a white wig. After pushing wire-rimmed glasses onto his nose, he grabbed a cane, ready to party.

Durbin set off to a Tea Party event in Unity, where physician Bill Hennessey invited several hundred people to a pre-Election Day rally.

Several hundred. Impressive. And no mention (as far as I can tell) of the tens of thousands attending the Stewart/Colbert Rally.

See? Not to subtle today.

Then there's this from the editorial page:

Notes a New York Times headline: "Fraudulent voting re-emerges as a partisan issue." Since when is voter fraud a "partisan" issue? Since it's Republicans complaining about Democrat-orchestrated fraud, you can bet.

But if you were to actually read the Times piece, you'd see what the story is really about:

In 2006, conservative activists repeatedly claimed that the problem of people casting fraudulent votes was so widespread that it was corrupting the political process and possibly costing their candidates victories.

The accusations turned out to be largely false, but they led to a heated debate, with voting rights groups claiming that the accusations were crippling voter registration drives and reducing turnout.

That debate is flaring anew.

Tea Party members have started challenging voter registration applications and have announced plans to question individual voters at the polls whom they suspect of being ineligible.

In response, liberal groups and voting rights advocates are sounding an alarm, claiming that such strategies are scare tactics intended to suppress minority and poor voters. [emphasis added.]

"Democrat-orchestrated fraud"?

While many states have voter registration records riddled with names of dead people, out-of-date addresses and other erroneous information, there is little evidence that such errors lead to fraudulent votes, many experts note.

A report by the public-integrity section of the Justice Department found that from October 2002 to September 2005, the department charged 95 people with “election fraud”; 55 were convicted.

Among those, fewer than 20 people were convicted of casting fraudulent ballots, and only 5 were convicted of registration fraud. Most of the rest were charged with other voting violations, including a scheme meant to help Republicans by blocking the phone lines used by two voting groups that were arranging rides to get voters to the polls.

It's a "partisan issue" when the Republicans are using trumped up charges (myths, really) of "Democrat-orchestrated voter fraud" to suppress the voter registration of members of demographic groups they think will vote against them.

If they truly believed in democracy, they'd be bending over backwards to make sure everyone voted.

Which leads me to one shining moment at the Trib. Joe Mistik's column - stunning defense of the Separation of Church and State:

In truth, God is not mentioned even once in the Constitution. While the Founders all adhered to some form of Christianity or deism, their diverse religious beliefs instilled in them a fear that a theocracy could be established here. And contrary to the religious tests that some political movements impose on candidates, the Constitution says, "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

Some extreme candidates even wrap themselves in the flag and argue that the principle requiring the separation of church and state does not appear in the Constitution. But James Madison, "The Father of the Constitution," said, "The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries."

Striking the proper balance, the Constitution does say, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

How long before Joe is branded un-American is anyone's guess.

Found YouTube Object

Don't let whatever disappointments you may have with the Obama administration (and I've had a few) keep you from voting on November 2 (I won't).

Reminder: Sestak Rally 6:30 on Saturday.

Constitutional Law - Tea Party Style

When they're not stomping on the heads of protesters or looking to oust a sitting member of the House of Representatives because he's a muslim, the Tea-Party has done some "homework" on the Constitution and found some well established guv'ment programs to be, un, unconstitutional.

The overall reason? These things are not described in the Constitution and according to the 10th Amendment, should be left to the states.

From TPM:

• Social Security
• Medicare
• Minimum Wage
• United Nations
• Unemployment Benefits
• Civil Rights Act

Here's the 10th Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

You know what else isn't in the Constitution?

• Centers for Disease Control
• Security and Exchange Commission
• Food And Drug Administration
• OSHA

Can someone please find these phrases in the Constitution? If they're not there, then why am I paying all my taxes to support something that should be relegated to the states? The guv'ment has no right to take my money to put limits on the free market (as what happens with the SEC) and it has no right to dictate to small business owners their guv'ment definition of "safety" (as what happens with OSHA) If a business is unsafe or fraudulent, it'll quickly go out of business.

The free market (and low taxes) are the only solution to the trouble we face.

And stomping on the heads of political protesters.

Hey, Did You Know This??

From Washington Monthly (quoting the Wall Street Journal):

The federal government budget deficit shrank in fiscal 2010, but the big gap was only $122 billion lower than the record high set a year ago.

The U.S. spent $1.294 trillion more than it collected in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the Treasury Department said Friday.

The deficit amounted to 8.9% of gross domestic product. That's down from fiscal 2009, when the deficit of $1.416 trillion was 10.0% of GDP.

They put it another way:

The $1.294 trillion shortfall is smaller than last year's total; it's slightly lower than the deficit President Obama inherited from his predecessor; and the final figure was smaller than projections made by the administration and the CBO earlier this year.

Still way high, but Obama's first budget deficit was (now wait for it) lower than Bush's last.

And now a thought experiment:

Want to have some fun? Ask your favorite Tea Partier whether the deficit they claim to care so much about is higher or lower now than when Obama took office. They won't care for the answer, but it's true.

Any takers?

Dick Armey Credits Toomey With Sparking 'Conception' Of Tea Party

Via The Philadelphia Inquirer's Commonwealth Confidential:

Former Rep. Dick Armey (R.,Tex.), whose Freedom Works organization has helped the Tea Party grow, said Tuesday in Philadelphia that the movement was conceived the moment President George W. Bush endorsed Sen. Arlen Specter (then-R, now D) over Pat Toomey in the 2004 Republican primary.

[snip]

Naturally, Democrats would like to hang responsibility for some the more - er, unusual - Tea Party candidates around Toomey's neck. After all, he was head of the Club for Growth, a powerful advocacy group that has spent a decade pushing from the GOP candidates and officeholders deemed insufficiently pure in their conservatism.

Sestak's campaign said in a statement that Toomey and O'Donnell would be a "perfect match" in the Senate...

[snip]

"Congressman Toomey may not be a witch, but his policies are just as scary," said Sestak spokeswoman April Mellody. "Eliminating all corporate taxes, privatizing Social Security and shipping jobs to China are so out of touch with Pennsylvanians that if you didn't have a private plane, you'd need a broomstick to reach them."