After nine years of battling Barton's lies, the first three or four of which were spent writing my book, Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History, I'm at a point of utter frustration as I watch this Christian nationalist liar get more and more influential. Jon Stewart's interview was the tipping point. If Jon couldn't nail this shameless and obvious history revisionist to the wall, I don't know who can.
A lie can be told in a few words. Debunking that lie can take pages. That is why my book, (which is only the first volume of what will be a three volume series), is five hundred pages long. Nobody is going to be able to adequately prove to any audience that Barton's lies are lies in an interview like Jon Stewart did last night, and David Barton is never going to agree to debate anyone that he knows can defeat him.
KENOSHA — Paul Ryan, the smooth-if-not-always-substantive congressman, is the darling of the D.C. talk shows. The House Budget Committee chair, chosen by GOP House leaders to respond to President Obama’s State of the Union Address, is the prime pitchman for the Wall Street lobbying agenda on everything from privatization of Social Security to tax cuts for the rich. During Congress’ spring break, he took his show on the road. ...
Outside the cloistered confines of Capitol Hill and the few blocks of southern Manhattan where he is a hero, the congressman had a hard time peddling his fiscal snake oil.
And in Kenosha, Ryan bombed.
When he claimed that he was serious about balancing the budget, someone in the crowd shouted: “That’s not what the Congressional Budget Office says.” And the room erupted with cheers for the correction of the congressman’s attempted deception.
When Ryan claimed his Republican budget plan would save Medicare and Medicaid, the packed room erupted with shouts of “Liar!”
When Ryan claimed that he didn’t want to replace Medicare with a voucher system but rather with “choices,” a woman piped up: “You can call it what you want, but don’t tell us that it’s still Medicare.”
When Ryan claimed that taxes needed to be cut for corporations and the wealthy in order to create jobs, he was greeted with a collective groan from hundreds of workers in a town that recently lost a major auto factory. One man yelled: “We’ve been cutting their taxes for 30 years and what did it get us? Outsourcing and layoff notices.” ...
So it went for Paul Ryan, the salesman for the Republican plan that may be selling in Washington — at least to Republicans — but is earning a thumbs down from his constituents in Wisconsin. Likewise, voters in other states have also been rejecting the plan at increasingly contentious town hall meetings of Republican members of Congress.
It may be true that congressmen can fool some of the people some of the time. But, for Ryan, the further he gets from Washington — where he has spent almost half his life as a congressional aide, conservative “think tank” staffer and member of the House — the harder it has been for the budget committee chairman to find buyers for his schemes. Not only does he want to restructure Medicare and Medicaid in order to shift money away from patient care and into the coffers of insurance companies, he also wants to gamble the retirement security of Americans with his campaign donors on Wall Street and to give more tax cuts to the rich, more tax breaks to the corporations, and more goodies to the bankers he served when he led the charge to get GOP votes for the 2008 bailout.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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One of the more interesting documents published by the IRS — I know, I know, not the hardest criterion in the world — is its report on the income and taxes of the top 400 taxpayers (pdf). A lot of attention gets focused, rightly, on the remarkably low average tax rate these people pay — less than 17 percent in 2007, the lowest on record.
But I was struck by something else: in several years during the last decade the top 400 accounted for more than 10 percent of all capital gains income in America. Just 400 people!
Conservatives often try to sell the notion that reducing the capital gains tax is about helping small business people. But you really want to think of the fact that a significant chunk of that tax break is going to just 400 people.*
And when you think about financial regulation, you similarly want to bear in mind that when asset prices rise, a tiny handful of people get a large chunk of the gains; I don’t know this for sure, but I’d bet that they somehow end up bearing a much smaller share of the losses when the bubble bursts. - Paul Krugman
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| To Kill a Mockingturd - Pakistani Intelligence | ||||
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WHEN we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, “It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren’t there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition.
And yet in education we do just that. When we don’t like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don’t like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources.
Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them better tools, better weapons, better protection, better training. And when recruiting is down, we offer incentives.
We have a rare chance now, with many teachers near retirement, to prove we’re serious about education. The first step is to make the teaching profession more attractive to college graduates. This will take some doing.
At the moment, the average teacher’s pay is on par with that of a toll taker or bartender. Teachers make 14 percent less than professionals in other occupations that require similar levels of education. In real terms, teachers’ salaries have declined for 30 years.
We found that the average weekly pay of teachers in 2003 was nearly 14% below that of workers with similar education and work experience, a gap only minimally offset by the better nonwage benefits in teaching. Teacher earnings have fallen below that of the average college graduate in recent decades, losing considerable ground during the late 1990s, as earnings of college graduates grew 11% relative to the much lower 0.8% growth in teacher earnings.
NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) – With the public’s attention focused on the death of Osama bin Laden, billionaire Donald Trump huddled with advisors for the second straight day to try to decide what stupid shit to say next.
“The bin Laden thing has definitely stolen the headlines from Donald,” said close associate and advisor Tracy Klugian. “The only way he can grab them back is by doing what he does best: saying something really fucked up.”
Trump’s two-day hiatus from spewing messed up shit is the longest on record, experts say, adding to the pressure on the billionaire to break his silence with something truly craptastic.
To that end, he has closeted himself with a circle of advisors including the Rev. Pat Robertson, former NBA star Charles Barkley, and the former voice of the Aflac duck, Gilbert Gottfried.
Mr. Trump has drawn up a short list of verbal turds that have potential, including attacking President Obama for overdue library books during his grade school years, but so far he has failed to come up with a comment that is both objectionable and ill informed enough to meet his high standards.
“People don’t know how much work goes into saying the stupid shit Donald says,” Mr. Klugian said. “He just makes it look easy.”
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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Yes, we shouldn't have killed him... Now the terrorists are going to want to attack us. But you know what? Even when they do, you know who won't see it? Bin Laden. Because we shot out his eyes, and now he lives in a pineapple under the sea!
"I will wait for the Mujahideen to confirm this, and will not believe until I see a picture of his dead body," wrote one jihadi sympathizer on Islamic Awakening (IA)—one of several such forums provided to Mother Jones by Aaron Y. Zelin, a researcher at Brandeis University who tracks online militant activities on the website Jihadology.net.
This sentiment, and many others by Islamists, were echoed by conservative detractors of the president. "Obama can claim what ever he wants but his word is no good," wrote one commenter on the right-wing site Free Republic. "Without proof that Osama is dead and staying dead, I don't have to believe anything he says."
The "Osama is still alive" theory, in fact, gained traction with Islamists and right-wingers alike through the night after the Pakistani Taliban released a statement to that effect and the White House announced Bin Laden would be buried at sea. "Good news brothers," wrote one IA commenter. "Its aired on pakistani news channel ,the word of taliban that Shaykh Osama is alive!" About the same time on Free Republic, a poster calling himself salamander wrote: "The commie muzzie usurper in chief had better release photos and videos toot sweet. WTF with this burial at sea before the body is cold?...Something about this smells."
Among those who took the president at his word, the jihadis and right-wingers expressed anger...albeit for different reasons. Some Muslims suspected that Bin Laden had been defiled, in life and in death. "Brothers and Sisters," wrote one IA poster, "ive recieved disturbing news that the Sheikh was tortured before being shot, Their are videos reportedly surfacing of...a plunger being stuck in his rectum before being shot... MAY ALLAH destroy these barbarian kuffar."
Conservatives, on the other hand, were concerned that the sea-burial plan, undertaken according to Muslim edicts, was too respectful an epilogue for a terrorist. "This is pathetic and I am sick of kissing up to Muslims, of which our president is one," wrote dayglored on Free Republic. "Muslim and Arab leaders all over the world are threatening the USA, and endorsing the slaughter of Christians and Jews on a daily basis. This is not an ending, this does not satisfy justice."
Whether or not the White House lied about killing Bin Laden, many jihadis and right wingers seemed to agree that Obama was looking to score political points. Papa Ray, a commenter on the right-wing military blog Blackfive,...
CJ Grisham, a prolific conservative military blogger, tweeted...
Grisham's feelings (about everything but the shirts) were mirrored by the IA Islamists. "The gist of [Obama's] speech unequivocally bares election-driven character," wrote Abu Abdallah al-Bulghari on IA. "That's what all we are to Kuffaar [infidels]: not friends (of course), not honest business partners, not enemies - pawns in their election battles."
Another user, Yahya, argued that the Pakistani army had actually held Bin Laden for some time before Sunday. "they were waiting for the right time to benefit americans to show him to world after killing him," he wrote. "nowadays american economy was so low that americans were near the brink of protests so now americans will forget there situation for while."
Free Republic user imfrmdixie agreed that Obama was playing politics, but added an islamophobic twist. "Who wants to bet Obama didn't know a thing about this when it happened," he wrote. "He claims he all but pulled the trigger in his earlier Me! Me! Me! speech but I suspect we kept it from him out of fear he'd blab to his Muslim Brotherhood/AQ buddies."
Remember people — in the wake of the U.S. military's successful surprise raid of Osama bin Laden's suburban home in Pakistan — this is no time relax and enjoy a well-earned moment of national success.
We must remain ever-vigilant in our quest for ever-vigilance. We must not relent one tiny bit in our fear of all things and all people. We must remain strong in our belief that we are weak and helpless…
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who chairs the Senate's Homeland Security Committee, warned Americans on Monday to be vigilant against homegrown radicals who may improvise attacks in response to Osama Bin Laden's death…
While the threat level has not been raised as there is no specific evidence of any credible threats, Lieberman said that he was concerned Bin Laden's demise could inspire an attack along the lines of the Ft. Hood massacre, in which a radicalized individual soldier killed 13 people. He urged Americans to be especially vigilant in reporting any leads to authorities in the coming days.
"This is a classic 'If you see something, say something' moment," he said. "If you see suspicious behavior, call the police immediately — and that includes if you see suspicious behavior by someone who is a friend or family member."
You know, the last time I saw my brother, he looked a little bit shifty around the eyes.
When the space shuttle Atlantis makes its final flight at the end of June, the United States’ manned space program will come to an end for the foreseeable future. For those of us who grew up with the space program, first catching up to the Soviets after their launch of Sputnik, then through the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, culminating with landings on the moon, there could be nothing more inspiring than seeing Americans expand our horizons into space. First the moon, then Mars, then–who knows? Jupiter, out past the edge of the solar system, intergalactic exploration, starships flying close to the speed of light. But, no. The moon was as far as we got. The shuttle program, interesting as it was, took us only into near-Earth orbit. Shuttles exploded, burned up in re-entry, the romance faded, the fleet aged with nothing to replace it, and the moon is as far as we got. We somehow became a nation more obsessed with cutting taxes and spending than with exploring the universe. A nation that put men on the moon now can’t even figure out how to pave our highways or pay for our schools, much less send men to Mars.
Throughout the 1960s, public opinion polls indicated that 45 to 60 percent of Americans felt that the government was spending too much money on space exploration. Even after Neil Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind,” only a lukewarm 53 percent of the public believed that the historic event had been worth the cost.
“The decision to proceed with Apollo was not made because it was enormously popular with the public, despite general acquiescence, but for hard-edged political reasons,” writes Roger D. Launius, the senior curator at Smithsonian’s divison of space history, in the journal Space Policy. “Most of these were related to the Cold War crises of the early 1960s, in which spaceflight served as a surrogate for face-to-face military confrontation.” However, that acute sense of crisis was fleeting—and with it, enthusiasm for the Apollo program.
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