People who throw shit for a living, may as well live in a house made of shit

Karl Rove's brave expose on the Obama administration's use of the "Friday news dump" is laughable when you consider how the administration he lied and cheated for was no stranger to the practice of dropping bad news on a Friday afternoon or evening.

Nor, for that matter is the concept of the "Friday news dump" a new discovery in any way, shape or form. One of the first episodes I remember watching of The West Wing was about exactly that, the Friday afternoon release of bad news.

So why is Rove doing this? Is it because he is a true journalist looking to uncover some fiendish plot by the present administration? No! It's because he's a scum sucking dirtbag who is not only a hack for the conservative agenda but is himself crafting that agenda. What he does is not in the interest of informing the public, or even sharing his opinions. His objective is to drum up opposition to President Obama any way he can, by saying anything, and doing everything, whether he believes it or not.

This is the biggest problem with the way that hacks for all parties and interests have been working these days. Perhaps this was always the case, but it seems to me that a very large number of mouthpieces on all sides have been saying a lot of crap they clearly don't personally believe, but pretend that they do, in the hopes of influencing the dumb public that doesn't bother to pay any attention to the issues at hand. I would like to see more open and honest debate of the issues so that those too busy, tired, or uninformed can still make decent decisions.

Instead of opposing health care reform on the basis that it will hurt Medicare (a program that you probably have opposed at every turn until now), speak your mind and be honest that you are happy to see millions of Americans die of easily preventable causes if they cannot afford insurance premiums and copays to get the treatments they need, all so that the richest 1% can keep those extra billions from the tax man.

How about, instead of running in circles screaming "the sky is falling, the sky is falling" because we might have a deficit from some responsible social spending, you take a look at your own record and all the deficits you helped create by launching 2 wars and giving sweetheart deals to your buddies' companies. If deficits are so important to you, why do you keep voting for supplemental spending bills that drive it up higher?

And when you huff and puff all day about the sanctity of life and try to restrict and abolish access to abortions, but then cheer when a lunatic kills a doctor, or don't give the million plus lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan a second thought, you sound ridiculous.

So shut your trap Karl, and quit calling people out for the same shit that you pulled during Bush's eight years in the oval office.

Give us Single Payer now!

President Obama, ladies and gentlemen of Congress, I impore you, give the American people a single payer health care plan now! How can anyone honestly frame an argument that a system run for people by the people, without a need to earn profit, can possibly cost the tax payers more than a system that is driven to maximize profits at the expense of health care services?

I laugh every time I see one of those "we have government health care and it's bad" ads on television because for every person that organization can find that talks about being denied treatment or long wait times, I'm sure Michael Moore could find 100, or even 1000 who were denied necessary treatments due to decisions made by unaccountable bureaucrats working for the big health insurance companies and HMOs. Have Americans really already forgotten their own experiences with privately run health insurance? Are Americans really so foolish as to believe those scary recordings by Ronald Reagan about the government shipping your doctor to another town?

Take a look at Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Scandanavia, or any other developed nation and you will see a health care system that not only provides excellent coverage for the people, but does so for far less per person than our broken system. I will always give the GOP and the conservative lie-machine a tremendous amount of credit for consistently tricking the masses of this country into supporting policies that negatively affect them, while propping up the big, corrupt, corporations that those "ordinary joe" politicians pretend to oppose.

Don't get me wrong, the democrats are not perfect on this issue and have caved in to so much of the conservative pressure that the result is a center/right of center initiative that will likely be labelled by the stars at Fox News as "the most socialist and/or liberal proposal ever put before the American people." When you hear Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich say these words, and they will, it's not because they've analyzed the plan and researched previous initiatives and came to that conclusion. It is solely because they believe that using that language will once again trick the American public to oppose something that is demonstrably in their best interest.

As crafty as they are...

From the sidelines one can almost admire the efficacy and the cunning that the flapping lips of the Conservative movement (since no one but Colin Powell still calls themselves Republicans anymore) have when attacking the Progressives' agenda. It conjures up a feeling, if only for a second, of awe and even a little bit of jealousy as you ponder what might be if Harry Reid lashed out with even 1/10 of the vigor and passion that Karl Rove seems to expend on his porcelain throne before going on FoxNews. But alas, that's one of the big differences that exist within our two party system.

Certainly, without any doubt, the Conservative attack machine is always fueled up and ready to go, waiting with bated breath for a signal, or an order to come down the Rove/Limbaugh/Hannity bat-phone and announce who the day's target shall be. As it turned out yesterday, the target was Sonia Sotomayor, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals judge that President Obama has just nominated to replace Justice Souter upon his retirement. It was no surprise to see Karl Rove jump out in front and begin his typical attempt of labeling her "a liberal". Truth be told, I wouldn't even mind all this incessant labeling if it was even remotely accurate. The sad truth of the matter is that most of the people FoxNews and friends label as being "unabashed liberals" are really Liberals in the Phil Ochsian definition, meaning that they are unabashed moderates.

Consider this Supreme Court nominee and her history. While the one case that Sean Hannity harped on for half of his show on Tuesday focused on a decision to allow a fire department in Connecticut to choose to not promote anyone in favor of only promoting white firefighters, that's not that earth shattering of a decision since all she did was affirm the lower court's decision in the case.

You would think that if they really cared about Liberal vs. Conservative issues, they would be happy to have Sotomayor given her likely views on abortion, but that's not even what's at stake for the GOP. Better for them to attack her as a Liberal and have it established that yes, she is a Liberal, so that the next person they talk about will seem really liberal in the eyes of the public. The game they are playing is redrawing the lines and trying to move the "moderate" line to the right...and sadly, it's working.

Pundit after putrid pundit on the cable news programs use terms like "unabashed liberal," "out spoken liberal," and "established liberal" when discussing Judge Sotomayor and they go completely unchallenged by anyone out there. If she is those things, what does that make someone like Dennis Kucinich who is one of the only true Progressivs in Congress? And if she is so far the left as they claim, does that make Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), with his record of supporting torture and opposing voting rights initatives, a moderate? It is this kind of rightward shift in the public perception of our political battlefield that allowed John McCain to pretend to be a moderate republican. Truth of the matter is, moderate republicans like Jim Jeffords (Vermont) and Arlen Spector (Pennsylvania) have been forced out of the GOP and the ones that remain (Maine's Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins) may not last much longer.

Personally, I hope this whole nomination of Judge Sotomayor is Obama's Harriet Myers, albeit far more qualified. It's not that I don't think she'd be a fine Supreme Court Justice, but given the Bush appointments of Alito and Roberts, and the current makeup of the Senate, now seems like the perfect opportunity to seize the day and put on the bench a young, progressive, healthy justice who might break William O. Douglas' record for longest serving member of the Court.

Karl Rove

Now that he has made the giant leap from Republican west wing schemer to Foxnews contributor Karl Rove gets to go on TV and continue to lie to the American people, something he got to practice for more than 6 years working in the White House. Last night he was on Hannity (no longer Hannity and Colmes) and got to spend some quality time with Reaganphilic Sean as they bashed Obama and the stimulus package.

Suddenly, it seems, Mr. Rove believes that deficits are bad for the country and the economy. Suddenly, after saddling my generation with hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions in debt to pay for unnecessary wars and unnecessary tax cuts for his buddies, Mr. Rove is disgusted at spending what we don't have. WTF?! At this point, I don't even mind ideologues. If there were any real ideologues left in the Republican party who actually stood up for some principle of conservatism like fiscal responsibility or balanced budgets I could respect that. I would still disagree when they say we need to balance the budget at the expense of health care and education, but I could respect the stance. When you've spent the last 8 years championing unbridled spending coupled with gratuitous tax cuts for the wealthy and all the while allowed the economy to completely flounder what business do you have to advise anyone on anything?

No less than 3 times did Mr. Rove mention that the discretionary spending by the federal government was going to expand from 300 something billion to 512 billion dollars. Why he felt the need to go over that number so many times is lost on me but perhaps he should have also listed how much we've spent on contractors like Halliburton and Blackwater and the increases in the budget those required between 2000 and now.

My biggest regret about the Obama administration so far is that I doubt he, or the Democrats in Congress will have the courage to haul you, Alberto, Dick, and the rest of your criminal administration before the American people to answer for what you've done.

Poor Sarah

While I am tremendously relieved that Wasilla's Sarah Palin will not be our next Vice President, the recent attacks on this poor little fish (barracuda's are fish right?) out of water have really shown the GOP's true side.  By calling her names like "Wasilla hillbillies" the GOP presidential campaign staffers show their true feelings about so called "wal-mart moms" and those folks that live in the "pro-american" parts of the country.  They may have hidden behind their "Joe the plumbers" and "Lenny the lumberjack" but the true powers behind the would-be GOP administration is more elitist than any of Karl Rove's depictions of President elect Obama.

Move on America, and leave Sarah to her gubernatorial duties.  Stop giving any more attention and coverage to this nearly catastrophic candidate and let's focus on what's ahead.  We need the news media now to focus on the work ahead and how we as a nation can and must provide health care and education to all Americans.

And fuck you Joe Lieberman!

Some interviewers don't really want their questions answered

One of Sean Hannity's greatest skills is to rant his monologue while making it appear to be a question.  I'm not entirely sure why he does this so often.  I used to think he just did it to people who might serve him up a smack down and it was his way to run the clock out, but he even does it to people like Karl Rove so I'm at a loss.

It could just be that his massive ego requires him to fill up more than half the air time on the show, or, as I am starting to believe, it is so that he spew out a bunch of non-sequitors to communicate something to his audience.  Tonight he was talking with Karl abouthow McCain can win the necessary 270.  When they discussed Pennsylvania Sean once again brought up the comments Senator Obama made back during the primaries about the folks who cling to guns and religion.  He spent about 20 seconds rehashing this comment and then finished it up with asking how, after hearing something like that, could the people of PA ever vote for him.

Ed Rendell did a decent job of stuffing it back at Sean and before Sean could do his typical interruption Rendell shut him up by pointing out he hadn't interrupted Karl Rove.