Glenn Beck held his “restoring honor” rally in Washington, DC yesterday. It was funny and scary all wrapped in an extravaganza of demagoguery.

Sarah Palin whined that “they” are trying to take away her motherhood.

“Say what you want to say about me,” Palin said, “but I raised a combat vet. You can’t take that away from me.”

Beck proclaimed that we must turn America “back” to the once great nation it had been before “they” took over.

Who “they” is wasn’t explained to the crowd of about 80,000 because it didn’t need to be. Everyone knows who “they” are. They are President Barack Obama, Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. If Beck had delivered this same speech in 1965, the “they” would consist of President Lyndon Johnson, Speaker of the House of Representatives John William McCormack and Martin Luther King.

Beck sees himself as a Dr. King type of figure, which is why he held his “restoring honor” rally on the anniversary of Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech. Beck sees himself as someone who’s going to radically alter America’s course for generations to come. But unlike Dr. King who looked forward, Beck wants to go back to the good old days before the Civil Rights movement of 1960s, before Roosevelt’s New Deal and the creation of Social Security and unemployment insurance, and long before Medicare and Medicaid.

“Something that is beyond man is happening,” Beck told his followers as their heads nodded with affirmation. “America today begins to turn back to God. For too long, this country has wandered in darkness.”

Beck’s utopia is one in which labor unions are outlawed, banks, corporations and the wealthiest of the wealthy are allowed to do whatever they want and everyone else just has to deal with it. You know, back when the Ford’s, Dupont’s and Rockefeller’s ruled the country as they saw fit. There was no Environmental Protection Agency or Occupational Safety and Health Administration telling businesses what to do.

In Beck’s Garden of Eden, African Americans couldn’t vote in much of the country, particularly in the Jim Crow South, and before Women’s Suffrage. That was a time of “honor” for Beck and his followers. It was a time before “they” took over.

–

Related stories:
Martin Luther King ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech (Video and Transcript)
Radio Host Joe Madison Confronts Glenn Beck On Claim Obama Is Racist
Beck: God Will Wash This Nation With Blood
Glenn Beck Mocks 6-year-old With Asthma

In his column today, I thought for sure David Brooks was going to dazzle me – I was wrong.

Brooks began today with a grueling story about a woman getting a mastectomy without anesthesia in 1811.

“I felt the instrument — describing a curve — cutting against the grain, if I may so say, while the flesh resisted in a manner so forcible as to oppose & tire the hand of the operator who was forced to change from the right to the left,” she wrote later.

“I began a scream that lasted intermittingly during the whole time of the incision — & I almost marvel that it rings not in my ears still.”

The woman is Fanny Burney and her story is one of both horror and strength.

Certainly Brooks was going to say something big – something really eye popping. He used to do that from time to time, but not anymore.

His point was that we’re mentally lazy today. Back in the good old days, when women had their breasts removed without anesthesia, everyone was a mental giant. Today “mental flabbiness” has swept the nation.

And where the mental midgets have really taken control is politics, it’s hard to argue with that.

“Many conservatives declare that Barack Obama is a Muslim because it feels so good to say so,” Brooks explained. “Many liberals would never ask themselves why they were so wrong about the surge in Iraq while George Bush was so right. The question is too uncomfortable.”

Really? These are the two examples of what Brooks sees as mental flabbiness?

Lying to the American people about President Obama’s religion for the purpose of scoring political points while misleading millions of Americans, he’s right, that is mental laziness. It’s also a concerted effort to pander to a swath of the American population desperate to hear that the black man in the White House isn’t one of them – the other. I agree these people spewing these lies have small brains and lack the mental capacity to be in politics, on TV or anywhere in the public sphere.

However, liberals who “would never ask themselves why they were so wrong about the surge in Iraq” is in of itself an incredibly mentally deficient idea.

First of all, true liberals opposed the war with Iraq from the beginning, so any escalating or change in strategy, regardless if it worked or not, is irrelevant. Secondly, simply because we’re leaving Iraq, something we had promised we’d do years ago whether we “won” or not, has nothing to do with whether the surge “worked.”

His examples of mental frailty really do highlight the differences between the left and the right. The right, as Brooks does, looks backward. They want a world when blacks were slaves, and women cooked and cleaned all day, while the men worked manly jobs. Those were the good old days, for the white man, excuse me, the rich white man.

The left on the other hand, looks forward. They envision a day when there is no war, and men and women, people of all races and religions, can coexist and prosper. And while the left isn’t perfect – not everyone is a genius – yet critical thinking is far more prevalent on the left than on the right. Brooks proves that today.

Just look at how many on the left criticize Obama, and how many on the right criticized Bush. The right is fueled with lies, hate and unquestioning servitude. The left is critical and challenges its political leaders.

I’ll put it this way, conservatives are frustrated we can’t go backwards and liberals are frustrated by how slowly we move forward.

To convince people we have to go back to a time when things were supposedly so much better, you have to lie to them. To convince people that the future is bright, you just have to convince them that they can make a difference today to bring a better tomorrow. One group is selling fear while the other is selling hope.

The blog, Right Wing News, asked 100 rightbloggers, “Out of all the gangsters, serial killers, mass murderers, incompetent & crooked politicians, spies, traitors, and ultra left-wing kooks in all of American history — have you ever wondered who the worst of the worst was?”

Jimmy Carter. That’s right, of the 43 bloggers who responded, President Jimmy Carter is ranked as the worst person in American history.

Carter’s worse than Osama bin Laden, actually, he didn’t even make the list. Barack Obama is number two, followed by Franklin Roosevelt at number three, and then the Rosenbergs.

These mouth-breathers actually pegged Ted Kennedy as a worse person than Timothy McVeigh.

Benedict Arnold and Woodrow Wilson were tied for fifth worst of the worst figures in American history. I wonder how many of the respondents actually know who Benedict Arnold was, or does his name just sound like someone who’s way worse than John Wilkes Booth. Not surprisingly, Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t make the list either, but Lyndon Johnson came in seventh.

It’s time to turn off Fox News, put down the remote and go for a walk. Get some fresh air nimrods, your heads are clogged with all of the spew flying from Beck’s hyperbolic screeching.

23) Saul Alinsky (7)
23) Bill Clinton (7)
23) Hillary Clinton (7)
19) Michael Moore (7)
19) George Soros (8)
19) Alger Hiss (8)
19) Al Sharpton (8)
13) Al Gore (9)
13) Noam Chomsky (9)
13) Richard Nixon (9)
13) Jane Fonda (9)
13) Harry Reid (9)
13) Nancy Pelosi (9)
11) John Wilkes Booth (10)
11) Margaret Sanger (10)
9) Aldrich Ames (11)
9) Timothy McVeigh (11)
7) Ted Kennedy (14)
7) Lyndon Johnson (14)
5) Benedict Arnold (17)
5) Woodrow Wilson (17)
4) The Rosenbergs (19)
3) Franklin Delano Roosevelt (21)
2) Barack Obama (23)
1) Jimmy Carter (25)

Source: Right Wing News. Aug. 13, 2010.

According to rightbloggers, such as Jonah Goldberg and Paul Berman, they’re not allowed to talk about links between Islam and Nazism.

The gist of Goldberg’s argument today is that there was a connection between Islam and Nazis and no one in the mainstream media is talking about it, and so Goldberg and other rightbloggers are being silenced on the issue.

Yeah, I know, it doesn’t make any sense.

On his blog today he pulls some text from Berman’s recent post in the Wall Street Journal.

“In our present Age of the Zipped Lip,” Berman moans, “you are supposed to avoid making any of the following inconvenient observations about the history and doctrines of the Islamist movement.”

Among the taboo topics is the Islamic-Nazi connection.

Berman assures us that “no one disputes that the Nazis collaborated with several Islamist leaders.”

Yes, I’m sure it’s indisputable.

And he said that “Nazi inspirations have visibly taken root among present-day Islamists, notably in regard to the demonic nature of Jewish conspiracies and the virtues of genocide.”

Goldberg is shocked that “such an enormously significant historical fact – the Nazi-Islamist connection – could be ignored for so long.”

Well I don’t think it’s been ignored. The issue is that 70 years later, it’s only of academic significance. I can’t imagine a front page New York Times story with the headline “Islamic-Nazi Connection Exposed” popping up in the near future.

It’s not news that Islam has had a serious beef with Jews – they have for a very very long time – even before Hitler.

It’s also not news that many people in the US, Christians even, supported Hitler. In fact, the George W. Bush’s grandfather was a shareholder and director of companies that benefited from Hitler’s rise to power. Historical documents show that Prescott Bush financially backed Hitler – these are actual war crimes.

My question is this, what does Goldberg hope to achieve by connecting the dots between Islam and Hitler? Should we launch another Crusade against Muslims? How about burning down all of the mosques in the US and rounding members of the religion and putting them concentration camps like we did with the Japanese during World War II? What’s the practical application that can be gleaned from this historical observation?

And who’s telling Goldberg he can’t talk about this stuff? His own blog post refers to two recently published books on the matter. That’s right, books on printed paper and sold in book stores. Yeah that’s some serious suppression of ideas there.

My theory is that Goldberg, like many rightbloggers, is trying to ratchet up the hatred towards Muslims because they are today’s enemy du joir. It used to be communists, and to Glenn Beck it’s both commies and Muslims, but for most of the rightwingers out there – we’re at war with Islam.

They’ve got to hate somebody – I guess.

On Wednesday, Fox News’ Neil Cavuto interviewed Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) about the congressional investigation into the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but Pence was more concerned with the alleged slowness of the Obama administration’s response to the disaster.

Pence said the people “want to get to the bottom of what happened on April 20.”

Evidently, what Pence meant was that he wants to use a congressional investigation to attack what he says was Obama’s lackadaisical response to the crisis.

Read this story in its entirety on Examiner.com

Here’s more evidence that the Tea Party movement is not a movement but merely a political operation geared towards getting Republicans elected and making lobbyists rich.

On Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night, Olbermann interviewed Politico’s Kenneth Vogel about his story on Sarah Palin’s Tea Party Express and the lobbyists who are backing it. As it turns out, this so-called grassroots movement is little more than a well-funded old-school political operation funded by Republican political consultants Russo Marsh + Rogers out of Sacramento, California. That’s the same group that helped boot out Democratic Governor Gray Davis in 2003.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I’ve been scratching my head as to what this Tea Party thing is all about since it started last April 15 with people protesting paying their taxes, it didn’t make sense to me then, but I’ve got it figured out now.

What has had me perplexed, besides the contradictions in their message, is why the Tea Party people crawled out of the woodwork now. I mean, we’ve been paying taxes for a long time. Congress has been wasting our money for as long as there’s been a Congress. None of the issues that they complain about are new. So why now?

At first I thought, it’s because we have a black president and a lot these people are just old white racists who can’t stand seeing a black man in the White House. While that’s undoubtedly a motivating factor for some Tea Partiers, it doesn’t explain it all – it’s too simplistic an answer.

Here’s why the Tea Party exists today, and it didn’t in 2008.

Once the Democrats took over the Congress and the White House, really really rich people started freaking out in their really really rich people way; they hired lobbyists and agitated a faction of the American population.

One of the lobbyist they hired was former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. Armey is the chairman of FreedomWorks. FreedomWorks is a lobbying organization headquartered in Washington, DC and it’s a major backer of the Tea Party movement.

To get enough white people riled up, the scared filthy rich folks then turned to Fox News. The cable “news” channel not only covered the events, Fox News employees even egged on the crowd to shout louder, louder and louder while the cameras were rolling. Rupert Murdoch’s news network sponsored and promoted Tea Party rallies with virtually 24-hour coverage of Tea Party events.

Fox News commentators and anchors banged the drum that President Obama is a socialist, a communist, a Nazi, not really American, a Muslim, etc. They successfully created the illusion that Obama isn’t legitimate. He’s not one of them. He has no right to tell you what to do. That’s where the subtle racism comes into play.

So with the money and organization flowing through FreedomWorks and the propaganda spewing forth from Fox News the Tea Party movement was born.

It has the illusion that it’s just a grassroots organization that just popped up out of nowhere, but no, this is a political organization funded by scared rich white people who need these angry lower and middle class white people to travel around the country to do their bidding, which is to stop government regulation of their industries and taxing their billion dollar bonuses.

It’s really the same old story, people with money convince average Americans to rally for their cause despite the fact that what the average person needs is exactly what they’re fighting against.

A perfect historical example of this was slavery. The average poor white southerner not only didn’t benefit from cheap slave labor, but it drove down their own income potential, yet, plantation owners convinced them to protect slavery and even fight a war over it.

The Tea Party backers have been able to tap into existing animosity towards Congress, and now a black President, to push their real agenda which is to stop any and all Democratic policies. If the Democrats lose the Congress and the White House, the Tea Party will fade into the background – at least that’s what the GOP and rich and powerful hope.

When it’s convenient, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele claims his race is a non-issue, and when he needs to do so, he uses his race to slither out of a tight spot.

The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein has the story.

On Monday, the RNC chairman told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that, as an African-American, he is being held to a higher standard than his white peers.

“The honest answer is, ‘Yes,’” Steele said. “Barack Obama has a slimmer margin. A lot of folks do. It’s a different role for me to play and others to play and that’s just the reality of it. But you just take that as a part of the nature of it.”

The remark capped a week’s worth of largely unfavorable stories about Steele’s competence to manage the party. They also introduced the element of race into a conversation that truly had nothing to do with the topic — in the process inviting another debate about whether or not skin color plays a role in political discourse.

The fact is that obviously the RNC’s choice to put an African American to lead the party’s primary fund raising organization to blunt President Obama’s race.

Stein reported.

Steele has expressed similar criticism of Democrats on multiple occasions. Indeed part of his appeal when he was picked for his current job was that a black Republican would be the perfect foil for a president who was insulated from criticism due to his race. When he was running for the chair, Steele more or less accused Obama of building his campaign on top of this pedestal.

“[T]he Obama campaign played the race card, and it worked beautifully,” he told a conference call of conservative bloggers. Charges of racism, he said, hurt Bill Clinton, “tripped up Hillary Clinton,” and “stymied” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) because he refused to bring up Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

The sad truth is that race does matter. Post-racial? I think not. Pretending race doesn’t matter is political correctness for political correctness’ sake and Steele can’t have it both ways. Regardless of his skin color, Steele has failed as the leader of the RNC and should step down. I predict Steele will be forced to resign.

I hate call-in programs because rarely does a caller make a valid or intelligent point. On Monday, C-SPAN’s Bill Scanlan got a call from North Carolina complaining that “80 percent of your callers” are black and that C-SPAN should change its name to BLACK-SPAN.

The caller said that he was just making “a little respectful criticism,” and Scanlan thanked the caller for his comment.

Scanlan should have just cut this guy off and moved on. He certainly shouldn’t have thanked him for his racist diatribe, but that’s C-SPAN for you.

I hate cable news. At least 99 percent of all cable news is a bag of throwaway garbage that serves no purpose other than to confuse, distract, misinform and stink up the room. The same can be said about talk radio. It’s not that broadcasting can’t be used to inform and educate the populous, sometimes it is, but the trend has been to simply chase ratings and fill airtime with whatever is cheap and easy.

And what’s the cheapest and easiest content to produce? Opinion masquerading as news, or as Glenn Beck likes to say ‘Truth.’

Take this story for example. It’s easy for me to sit here and blast out an opinion story bemoaning the horrors of cable news, but if I actually wanted to do an investigative piece about cable news and why it got this way, well, that would take time and money – none of which I have.

But I’m not Rupert Murdoch. He does have money. He could pay people to investigate stories and produce in-depth analysis segments on things like health care reform, the Iraq war or the nation’s struggling education system. So could GE’s MSNBC and CNN, but they don’t do that.

I know, I’m taking a long time getting to my lead, so let’s get down to it.

Today, Eric Boehlert of Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog organization, published a story detailing the conservative nervous breakdown we’re watching unravel across this once great nation. The thesis of Boehlert’s story is that conservatives believed their own hype, and now they’re freaking out that they weren’t able to kill health care reform. Now they’re worried about what else they won’t be able to stop the liberals from doing.

What happened was that Fox News, along with other right-wing media, convinced the Tea Partiers that they were winning. They believed Fox News when they said 2 million people rallied in the nation’s capitol last September, even though there might have been 100,000. They believed Fox News and Rush Limbaugh when they were assured that after the gun-touting town hall screamers had shouted down Democratic politicians that health care reform was dead.

I believed them too. Not more than a month ago, I was convinced that health care would not happen.

But what everyone forgot is that the people get to speak in the voting booth and that’s pretty much it. Anti-war protesters couldn’t stop the Iraq war no matter how many people rallied against it because George W. Bush was elected, well sort of, in 2000, and Congress was controlled by the GOP. In a republic, the people vote for their representatives in November and it’s up to those elected leaders to lead. And leading doesn’t mean changing your mind every time the New York Times or Fox News publishes a public opinion poll. Depending on your point of view, that’s either the upside or the downside of living in a republic.

And so now that health care reform has passed, conservatives are losing their shit.

Boehlert said:

After all, late last week the nation stood on the precipice, just three “days away from the United States of America being over as we’ve all known it,” according to Rush Limbaugh, who warned that reform would drive every private insurance company out of business. Glenn Beck also went full tilt, warning that the bill represented a “turning point,” like the Civil War and Peal Harbor, while colleague Sean Hannity pinpointed the health care vote as the ‘very hour’ that America turned ‘completely towards socialism.’

The Washington Times likened reform to the “Black Plague,” and the online reaction was somehow even more unhinged. It was “RIP USA,” because with the vote, America would become “occupied by a hostile foreign power.” Indeed, a “socialist putsch” had been sprung and “America’s Day of Wreckoning [sic]” was at hand. Why? Because the Democrats’ health care legislation “will make every American a POW, strip them of their Freedoms and Liberty and shove them in a meat cellar for cold storage.”

Basically what Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Partiers want is to run the government regardless of whether or not they win elections. To them, it doesn’t matter who gets elected, what matters is that politicians do what they tell them to do. And because Fox News effectively created the illusion that they were winning the debate, right-wing fringers are now throwing a hissy fit.

When health care reform passed Congress, Boehlert wrote, “It was the sudden and rude realization that, instead, they’d spent the past few months trapped inside an echo chamber, I think, that created the volcanic and unhinged response we’ve seen play out in recent days. It’s the kind of childish and hysterical reaction I didn’t think we’d ever witness from a major political movement.”

So the Tea Partiers and other conservative groups out there need to understand that in order effect change in this country they’re going to have to organize into a political movement. It takes more than a few gun-touting fanatics to pass legislation, and most people would agree, that’s a good thing. So turn off Fox News and actually engage in the process or you’ll be left on the corner shouting to no one.

Read Boelhert’s story.

“Take Steve Driehaus, for example,” Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) said. “He may be a dead man. He can’t go home to the west side of Cincinnati.”

That was Boehner last week. Since then, Driehaus (D-OH) did vote for health care reform and he’s had several threats against his life. Photos of his children have been used in attack ads.

And over in Virginia Rep. Tom Perriello’s brother has been inadvertently targeted by right-wing extremists. A conservative blogger posted what he thought was the representative’s home address and told his followers to pay him a visit. It turned out to be Rep. Perriello’s brother’s address.

“Federal and local authorities are investigating a severed gas line at the home of U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello’s brother, discovered the day after Tea Party activists posted the address online so opponents could ‘drop by’ and ‘express their thanks’ for Perriello’s vote in favor of health care reform.”

When the blogger realized his mistake, he said, “Do you mean I posted his brother’s address on my Facebook? Oh well, collateral damage.”

Free speech has its limits. Inciting violence is not protected speech. Sooner or later someone is going to be injured or killed and these people will need to be held accountable for their recklessness.

–
Boehner last week: Driehaus (D-OH) could be a “dead man”
FBI Investigating Severed Gas Line at Perriello’s Brother’s House
Palin puts rifle targets on Democrats

Barack Obama has been talking about health care reform since 2007. Back then he talked about single-payer and universal health care – and you elected Obama with a landslide victory. While you didn’t get universal health care or single-payer – you did get health care reform.

Last night’s vote in the House of Representatives to pass health care reform was historic. But what makes it so amazing is that the Democrats didn’t cave – they actually passed a huge piece of important legislation despite the lies and fear mongering spewing from the mouths of Republicans and so-called “conservatives.”

The campaign to misinform you about health care was quite effective. Support for health care reform did fall substantially as more and more Americans started to believe Republican liars. Sarah Palin kicked off the “death panel” lie. And who knows where all the crazy numbers about the cost of the bill came from – yesterday someone said the bill could cost $10 trillion. Abortion, the GOP’s old fallback position, became a central theme for the opposition. Some Republicans even said that this bill will not only fund abortions but it will “promote” them – as if you’re going to see ads on TV for abortions next to ads for Viagra.

The list of outright lies are too many to list but they’re irrelevant now.

What is relevant is that Democrats did what they needed to do and they didn’t cower in the face of the vicious hate-filled opposition to health care reform. They didn’t quit when they were called socialists, communists, niggers, faggots, baby killers and when they were spit on. So if you have a moment, send your member of Congress an e-mail or call them on the phone and say thank you.

And remember that while it’s easy to say that there’s no difference between Democrats and Republicans – there is. Paul Krugman made a great point in his column today by highlighting a fundamental distinction between what Democrats and Republicans believe.

The day before Sunday’s health care vote, President Obama gave an unscripted talk to House Democrats. Near the end, he spoke about why his party should pass reform: “Every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made … And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine.”

And on the other side, here’s what Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House — a man celebrated by many in his party as an intellectual leader — had to say: If Democrats pass health reform, “They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation.

The GOP sees the world in purely cynical political terms. They don’t see you. They don’t see your family. They only see the next election and the next tax cut or war profit. And maybe Gingrich is right, maybe passing civil rights legislation was wrong politically, but who, besides racists, can argue that it wasn’t the right thing to do.

Looking back at our nation’s history, how many politically challenging decisions were still clearly the right choice? Civil rights, Medicare, Social Security, and let’s not forget that great Republican President Abraham Lincoln who ended slavery despite a nation that had yet to cleanse itself of overt racism. President Lincoln was murdered for that decision.

No, despite the cynicism of people like Gingrich and Karl Rove, politicians sometimes need to make unpopular decisions, even if that means they will lose their seat in Congress. That’s what a republic is. To paraphrase James Madison, a republic is virtuous men making virtuous decisions in spite of what an excited faction may want.

So please, call your members of Congress and tell them you’ve got their back. Tell them you will vote for them in November. While you’re at it, why not sign up to volunteer for them too?

Ralph Reed was the head of the Christian Coalition. He was a major player in the 1994 Republican took-over of Congress. Then the Jack Abramhoff scandal broke. Abramhoff went to prison and Reed went into hiding for his well-documented association with the corrupt lobbyist.

Now Reed is back to fight against health care reform.

Mother Jones’ Stephanie Mencimer has the story.

As the future of health care reform seems to be coming down to the very last wire, the high-stakes political battle seems to be drawing out of the woodwork long lost activists and groups once associated with the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramhoff. Yesterday we noted the participation of the National Center for Public Policy Research, which has put out some slick new campaign materials for health care opponents. That group was accused of flacking for Abramhoff clients in exchange for big donations. Today comes none other than Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition leader who helped Republicans take over Congress in 1994 but then crashed and burned after revelations about his work for Abramhoff. (Reed famously took millions from an Indian tribe represented by Abramhoff to run a religious-based anti-gambling campaign that was actually designed to prevent a rival tribe from opening a competing casino.)

Read entire story on Mother Jones

Watching the conservative echo chamber in action is a frightening experience that most people don’t have to stomach on a daily basis.

The latest misinformation parroted by the rightwing machinery is that President Obama is buying votes on health care with judicial nominations.

As usual, it all starts with just a simple question. This time the ultra-conservative Weekly Standard got the ball rolling.

Read the entire story on Examiner.com

Almost all politicians stretch the truth, or outright lie, to convince people that what they’re doing is for their benefit. But what’s happening right now regarding a possible parliamentary move by Senate Democrats to use reconciliation to pass health care reform is just too much.

There are so many Republican lies whizzing across the media landscape about reconciliation it’s hard to keep up. The two biggest whoppers that GOP Senators and Fox News are disseminating are that Republicans would never dream of using reconciliation to thwart a filibuster, and that the use of the existing reconciliation rule (created in 1974) is the so-called “nuclear option.”

Republicans and Fox News are counting on no one looking at the public record and uncovering their blatant fabrications. If you look, you’ll see that Republicans have used reconciliation way more often than Democrats have. In fact, in the more than 20 times it’s been used, Republicans are on record with using reconciliation 17 times.

Most recently the GOP chose reconciliation to pass the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 and the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005.

And as far as the so-called “nuclear option” is concerned – that has absolutely nothing to do with reconciliation – nothing, nada, zip, zilch.

It was Republicans who coined the “nuclear option” phrase back in 2003 when they threatened to change Senate rules outlawing the filibuster. They were pissed at Democrats who were trying to filibuster judicial nominees. It had nothing to do with reconciliation.

Watch this video. Stop watching Fox News. Think. Read. Research. Be critical. The information is there. “The truth is out there.” — Fox Mulder

President Obama appears to have finally realized that Republicans will never support any effort to reform health care. On Wed., Obama is expected to release a plan to pass health care reform. According to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, the president would like Republicans to not filibuster the bill in the Senate and allow a simple up-or-down vote, but that’s not going to happen.

Now Republicans know they have lost this battle and they’re freaking out. One can only hope there’s a special place in hell for these so-called Christians who lie through their teeth.

The mainstream media often refers to the Tea Party spectacle as a “movement.” It isn’t.

A CBS News poll shows that Tea Party “members” are actually pretty dumb. Tea Party people believe that President Obama has already raised taxes – he hasn’t. One-third of Tea Party people think Obama favors the poor – that’s code for blacks and other minorities – and there’s no basis for that belief in anything Obama has done or said. If anything, Obama favors Wall Street bankers and corporate fat-cats more than he does poor people.

Who’s to blame for the federal deficit? Only 7 percent of Americans say it’s Obama’s fault, but 19 percent of Tea Partiers blame him. Forty-one percent of Americans put the problem squarely on Bush’s while only 16 percent of Tea Party people do.

These so-called patriots hate the government. Ninety-one percent of Tea Party identifiers are dissatisfied or angry at the United States government.

Not surprisingly, most Tea Partiers live in the South.

“Tea Party identifiers are overwhelmingly white – 95 percent are white, compared to 77 percent of Americans,” the poll said.

If it’s a “movement,” not many people have no knowledge of it. Fifty-five percent of Americans have not even heard of the Tea Party. Only 19 percent of Americans claim to know a lot about the Tea Party.

And among those who’ve heard of the Tea Party, 42 percent said it doesn’t reflect most Americans’ values with 21 percent are unsure.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote that Sarah Palin may just be the smartest politician in America today.

Well, he didn’t say that exactly. What he did say was that while liberals, including White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, were yucking it up over Palin’s hand-scrawled Tea Party cheat sheet, she was building her base.

“You had to wonder if Palin, who is nothing if not cunning, had sprung a trap,” Rich wrote. “She knows all too well that the more the so-called elites lampoon her, the more she cements her cred with the third of the country that is her base. Her hand hieroglyphics may not have been speaking aids but bait.”

Maybe Rich is right, perhaps Palin is just playing the fool to pander to American goobers who relate to her while baiting the liberals into acting like elite assholes. If so, she’s one hell of an actress.

I think Palin is the real deal. I think she’s as ignorant on the issues as she appears to be because she knows that her base doesn’t care. Palin followers don’t care that she campaigned as governor of Alaska on the so-called “bridge to no one” and then claimed to say “no thanks” when running for vice president.

Palanistas really believe that being the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (population 6,700) and the governor of Alaska for a few months gives her international bona fides, because you know, Russia is right there.

They just don’t care.

These are the same people that voted for George W. Bush because he seemed like someone they’d like to have a beer with at a backyard BBQ.

And this is what has liberals so riled up.

For the left, it’s inconceivable that anyone could look at Palin and see the next president, but her base certainly does.

While Rich is right, the Obama administration should spend less time poking fun of Palin and more time ripping into Wall Street fatcats, Palin’s success is not their fault.

Palin’s a rising star in politics for the same reason Glenn Beck has millions of viewers in a pretty crappy time slot – millions of Americans just don’t care about politics. And because they don’t care, they don’t take the time to understand really complex problems, and so they gravitate towards people who appear to offer “common sense solutions.”

Palin says those words over and over again – “common sense solutions.”

Beck mocks liberals and other intellectuals for claiming he’s stupid, or you’re stupid, because you just don’t understand. Beck then proceeds to break it down for his viewers. Sadly, his viewers really don’t understand the issue, and therefore think Beck makes perfect sense – intellectual heads explode.

Palin panders to that huge swath of America that thinks politics is stupid, politicians are crooks and all that’s needed are some simple “common sense solutions” to fix the whole kit and kaboodle.

The problem is that many of the problems this nation faces are not simple. Health care, two wars, energy policy, the economy, terrorism, and the list goes on are not going to be solved with simple sound-bite solutions, and as far as common sense goes, that’s subjective.

Democrats need to stand for something and stop wavering. They need to come out strong against greed and corruption. They need to stand by the average American and say we’re here to help you and not them. For some reason Democrats don’t do that. They’d rather position themselves with the Wall Street executives and corporate fatcats while the Palinistas and Beckheads write them off as elite assholes.

But Democrats just aren’t going to win over Palin supporters – it’s impossible. What they need to do is focus on the huge majority of Americans who really do get it. It worked in 2006 and it worked in 2008, but making Palin jokes, that’s not going to cut it.

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Read Rich’s column “Palin’s Cunning Sleight of Hand.”

Sarah Palin has achieved what Ralph Nader never could – she’s the leader of a populist revolution. Palin is successful because she appeals to the lowest common denominator and progressives, like Nader, appeal to high level intellect.

Palin sees the world in black and white. She often refers to her “solutions” as simple and common sense. Palin’s for freedom, free markets and lower taxes. These are easy concepts for her to sell because Palin avoids detailing any proposals that would actually solve any of the problems this country faces. Her speech at the tea party convention last weekend was a series of poorly written slogans and catch phrases. She told the audience everything they wanted to hear.

Progressives on the other hand see the world in shades of gray. They understand that health care reform is a complex problem, the solution therefore is necessarily complex and requires more than three words to explain and understand.

I’m not saying that all Americans are stupid, but 300 million collectively are not that intelligent. And the anti-intellectual streak that permeates our culture makes it difficult to explain complex problems. Some things are require more than “Got Milk?” marketing tricks. Also, unfortunately critically thinking is just not taught in most high schools – that’s hurting us as the world becomes much more complicated and politicians hone their ability to lie.

But rather than offer counter proposals and honestly challenging the Democrat’s health care reform, conservatives resort to slogans and misinformation. They call the president a communist. They accuse Democrats of nationalizing health care and setting up death panels. It’s easier for conservatives to just push American’s buttons. Communist. Socialist. Death panels. Prominent conservatives today are just not honest brokers in the nation’s political discourse.

So when it comes to global warming, health care reform, unemployment and fixing the economy, progressives are labeled as pointy headed intellectuals while conservatives mock them and spread lies appealing to their base’s base instincts.

Rather than trying to “reach across the aisle,” Democrats should just go it alone. If Republicans want to filibuster their legislature – let them. They held up civil rights legislation in the ’60s for almost three months.

Force Republicans to bring our legislative process to a halt and see how that works out for them. While they might not succeed, if Democrats truly embrace the progressive agenda and educate the people about their policies, enough people will get it and those that don’t – oh well.

Here’s the complete transcript of a debate between me and @GregWHoward on Twitter. It’s almost 2010 and this is how far we’ve come in the health care global warming debate.

This exchange took place today. I started the debate, unknowingly, by criticizing a stupid joke. I retweeted an update by @GregWHoward with the hashtage #DumbestJokeEver and then the following “discourse” ensued.

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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

ME: RT @GregWHoward: Let’s see how many libs really believe CO2 a pollutant and do us a favor by not breathing anymore. #DumbestJokeEver about 2 hours ago from web.

@GregWHoward: @svendarko Who said I was joking abt libs not breathing any more to cut CO2? #tcot #p2 #ocra #sgp #ucot 40 minutes ago from UberTwitter in reply to svendarko

ME: @GregWHoward Spoken like a true pro-lifer. Proponent of anything that results in liberals being dead. #tcot #p2 36 minutes ago from TweetDeck in reply to GregWHoward

@GregWHoward: @svendarko I just want libs to practice what they preach. If CO2 harms planet, stop breathing #p2 #tcot #ocra #sgp #ucot #hhrs 17 minutes ago from UberTwitter in reply to svendarko

ME: @GregWHoward It’s not the CO2 from breathing that’s the problem but from burning fossil fuels. #duh #climate #tcot #p2 13 minutes ago from web in reply to GregWHoward

@GregWHoward: @svendarko Still expect libs to do their part to improve man’s lot by dropping dead #p2 #tcot #ocra #sgp #ucot 3 minutes ago from UberTwitter in reply to svendarko

END TRANSCRIPT

Twitter can be a creepy place.