16 thoughts on “Monday Open Thread”

1. Another week, another government shutdown looms! This time, surprise, in the Dept. of Homeland Security!

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2. That's a perfect quote above about the Professional Liar Bill O'Reilly of Faux News:

   CNN's Reliable Sources aired a new, clearer version of audio that further disproves Bill O'Reilly's claim that he personally "heard" the shotgun blast that killed a figure in the investigation into President John F. Kennedy's assassination.

   O'Reilly has repeatedly claimed in his books and on Fox News that while he was reporting for a Dallas television station in 1977, he was directly outside at the exact moment that George de Mohrenschildt — an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald — shot himself in a Florida home. O'Reilly has offered no evidence to confirm this claim, and the police report filed at the time makes no mention of him.

   —

   Adding to the mounting evidence against O'Reilly's tale are tape recordings of a phone conversation between O'Reilly and a congressional investigator who was interviewing de Mohrenschildt before his death. On the tapes, O'Reilly can be heard asking the congressional reporter about the details of the suicide, and adding that he is not yet in Florida — a claim that is at odds with O'Reilly's statements that he was near the home where de Mohrenschildt killed himself.

   Yes, AC (is that loser still around?), Obama lied about the keeping those cheap, ineffective health insurance plans that were ripping off millions of Americans, but these lies of Bill O'Reilly are becoming too big to ignore. He's put them in best selling books, he's bragged about them all over TV and print, and he's used them to make further millions of dollars on cheesy and suspicious historical books.

   The only question now is how long Roger Ailes will stand behind the money making force of his "fair and balanced" "news" operation.

    

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   1. All of this is irrelevant to Fox. They aren't a news network and know it. It doesn't matter how many documented examples of lies are presented. Their base demo are people who still won't admit there is proof that Obama was born in Hawaii. This simply isn't a crisis for a non-reality based "news" network that avoids fact checking like the plague because it just spoils perfectly good demo friendly hysterical stories.

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      1. sad but probably true. 

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3. The fact-free world of the ideological Movement Conservative.

   Can you argue with them? Can you convince them of something by using evidence? Can you be bipartisan with them or the politicians who represent them?

   Beginning in the 1950s, she writes, William F. Buckley formulated a strategy for pushing back against the popular New Deal. It was "an attack on the Enlightenment principles that gave rise to Western civilization." Truth no longer served. Instead, "a compelling lie could convince voters so long as it fit a larger narrative of good and evil." The Cold War provided the growth medium.

   By the George W. Bush administration, Richardson concludes,

   Buckley’s intellectual stand had won. Facts and argument had given way to an ideology premised on Christianity and the idea of economic individualism. As Movement Conservatives took over the Republican Party, that ideology worked its way deep into our political system. (This is why people like Senator Bennet thinks he should, thinks he must!, negotiate and give in on principles with his ideological foes in congress.-ed.) It has given us, for example, a senator claiming words he spoke on the Senate floor were “not intended to be a factual statement.” It has given us “dynamic scoring,” a rule changing the way the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the economic impact of tax cuts (they are refudiating math.-ed.), to reinforce the idea that cuts fuel economic growth despite the visibly disastrous effects of recent tax cuts on states such as Kansas. And it has given us attempts in Oklahoma, Texas, North Carolina and Colorado to discard the A.P. U.S. History framework and dictate that students learn instead the Movement Conservatives’ skewed version of the nation’s history. Politicians have always spun information to advance their own policies. The practice infuriates partisans but it reflects the Enlightenment idea of progress through reasoned argument. Movement Conservatives’ insistence on their own version of reality, in defiance of facts, is something different altogether.

   Examples are legion. And when confronted publicly? Double down on the lie.

   This also answers why the rich are able to use their lessers in service of policies and principles that are directly against the lessers' own interest. It explains AC's existence and willingness to live, promote, and believe every lie he is told, despite his past willingness to build libraries early in the last century that might have advanced the principles he hates in his blind ignorance.

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   1. And Headbanger thinks liberals live in a fog. How much foggier does it get than sticking with economic theory discredited by decade after decade of empirical proof? Not to mention the contemporary examples offered by the contrast of then Dem controlled Colorado v Kansas and another pair of D/R next door neighbors, Minnesota v Wisconsin? Whether you choose history or this week, reality, as recorded in reports, studies, graphs, charts, rate of economic recovery,  whatever, no one lives in a thicker fog than conservatives and the me too Dems who grant basic conservative premises so much completely undeserved credibility. 

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4. Bill Clinton: Drug War Apology:

   At a speech in Mexico last week, former President Bill Clinton seemingly apologized for the destruction unleashed upon Mexico by the war on drugs.

   Addressing a group of business leaders, students, and politicians, Clinton said, “I wish you had no narco-trafficking, but it’s not really your fault.” He explained that so-called “successes” in the U.S.-led drug war in other countries had not eliminated the drug trade, but rather just pushed it into Mexico and Central America. “I apologize for that,” he said.

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5. I just picked this up from the Washington Post. Barbara Mikulski is retiring, and the scramble to replace her is on.                                 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/03/02/sen-mikulski-to-make-announcement-about-her-future/?wprss=rss_homepage

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   1. Like the race to replace Barbara Boxer, there's not much doubt as to the eventual winning party; Maryland is about as Democratic as it gets, and the Democratic Party base there is exceedingly deep.

      The question will be: what kind of Democrat wins the race? Lots of union in MD, a decent (vocal) progressive base, but it's also close to DC and south of the Mason-Dixon line, and there are major Dem Party members in MD who are more hawkish, pundit-driven, and conservative, too.

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      1. Didn't Maryland just elect a Republican Governor?

         I wouldn't be counting them chickens.

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         1. as to an R gov in Maryland

            1–gubernatorial races are considerably less ideologically driven than Senate races–see New York State and Pataki, etc., Mass and Romney.

            2-Milkulski's seat will open ;up in a presidential year, bringing the D base to the polls.   I'll give you 5-1 the Ds take that seat.

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            1. Maybe Martin O'Malley abandons his presidential campaign and goes for this instead…..

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         2. Perhaps Alan Keyes is up for another go around the track. He ran in Maryland once before, then moved to Illinois and ran against You-Know-Who in 2004.  Or maybe one of Spiro Agnew's grandchildren is interested.

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6. Infrastructure: boring, crumbling, decaying, society's literal building blocks that have been ignored since Doug Lamborn's 5 kids were in Huggies. Will we ever go on another spending spree like China (set to spend $1 Trillion) or Brazil ($407 Billion) or India (700 Billion Rupees, not as much as you'd think) or Apple?

   Not if it could cost some Billionaire an extra penny in taxes.

   Even the Generals on the ground can't convince war-mongering Republicans to heed the warnings nor see the benefits.

   And as long as America's Billionaires say no, Republicans will continue to say no to rebuilding what was once the most modern infrastructure around.

   American Exceptionalism………whatever……..it's not sexy like ISIS and Iranian nukes.

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7. I figured out how they're going to put together a DHS funding bill which can clear both Republican-controlled Houses of Congress this week.  Bibi will help facilitate a compromise tomorrow!  

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   1. Fuck Bibi . . .

      . . . ummm, and oh yeah, no disrespect whatsoever intended towards that despicable, duplicitous, conniving asshole.

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