Justin's Political Corner

Today in Poutrage Alert: Obama-hating shit for brains loon Dana Loesch deliberately lied about Laura Bush’s role in the 2002 Oscars in order to attack First Lady Michelle Obama for her appearance at last night’s Oscars ceremony. Obama presented the award for Best Picture Award, and Argo won.


More proof that Loesch is a condescending jerk:

Sorry, Dana, but former FLOTUS Laura Bush was a presenter at the 2002 Oscars.

Twitter user @PumpsandBumps tells the truth about Bush’s role in the 2002 Oscars:

Will someone remind these @dloesch that Laura Bush was a presenter at the 74th Academy Awards? #thanks

— Miss Hill (@PumpsandBumps) February 25, 2013

Media Matters For America has the real no-spin facts about the Oscars, which conservatives like her decided to ignore intentionally:

Right-wing media are falsely suggesting that First Lady Michelle Obama’s Academy Awards appearance is unprecedented, ignoring that former presidents and former First Lady Laura Bush have previously participated in the ceremony.
In fact, former presidents and former First Lady Laura Bush have participated in Academy Awards ceremonies. In 2002, Bush appeared at the Oscars in a taped appearance. From the Chicago Tribune:

The documentary history montage was put together by director Penelope Spheeris, whose remarkable “Decline of Western Civilization” rock documentaries likely have never been even close to nominated.
And the show’s marvelous “What do the movies mean to you?” opening segment was done by director Errol Morris, whose groundbreaking work, from “Thin Blue Line” through “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control,” has also been criminally neglected.
It was bracing to see people from Laura Bush to Jerry Brown to Mikhail Gorbachev interviewed, and mind-bending to hear film titles such as Russ Meyer’s “Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill” and William Castle’s “The Tingler” mentioned on usually sacrosanct Oscar airspace.

In 1981, President Reagan taped an appearance for the Oscars. From The New York Times:

But now that Mr. Reagan has moved on to another profession, he’s been invited to appear on the Academy Awards program on March 30.
The President will remain in the White House and tape a brief greeting to the audience at the Oscar ceremonies, and his words will be televised early in the awards show.
”President Reagan was once a member of our industry and it seemed fitting for him to join us,” said Norman Jewison, producer of this year’s show.

The Times also noted that former President Franklin D. Roosevelt “spoke to an Oscar audience by radio in 1941.”

The far right-wing loves to lie and smear any member of the Obama family (or any Democrat/liberal/alleged “RINO”).

(cross-posted from DanaBusted.blogspot.com)

Based on flimsy evidence and leaps of logic, conservative media outlets are pretending that, in the words of Newsmax, “Reagan’s Childhood Home to Become Parking Lot for Obama’s Library.” But the story doesn’t pass the smell test.

The “childhood home” is an apartment Reagan lived in for less than a year as a young child, and its planned demolition is part of an expansion by the University of Chicago that has nothing to do with President Obama’s presidential library. Obama hasn’t chosen which state his presidential library will eventually be in, let alone where people will need to park for it. Further, Obama Press Secretary Jay Carney has declared the story “false.”  

While easily dismissed, the story serves as an illustrative example of the way the conservative echo chamber can twist facts and turn baseless speculation into their controversy du jour.

Some backstory: In 2004, The University of Chicago purchased an apartment building near its campus that future president Ronald Reagan lived in for less than a year when he was four. The University recently announced their intention to demolish the building as part of a plan to provide parking for their expanding medical campus.

Attempts to preserve the building as a historic landmark were rejected by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks because it “is not associated with Mr. Reagan during his active and productive years.”

While the story sparked mild interest among conservative outlets in December, it was given new life this week thanks to a WashingtonTimes.com Communities column by Republican activist William J. Kelly, who, without any concrete evidence, managed to tie the destruction of the building to President Obama’s potential future library.

h/t: Ben Dimiero at MMFA

What is most obnoxious about the Welfare Queen myth is that it is traced directly back to Ronald Reagan, who was indulging in gleeful hyperbole to outrage his Republican base. It has probably done more than any other conservative talking point in living memory to encourage Americans to be cruel to their neediest neighbors, even when some of those Americans are receiving some form of government assistance themselves. Stupid Uncle Bonzo.

What Reagan actually said, according to Wikipedia: “During his 1976 presidential campaign, Reagan would tell the story of a woman from Chicago’s South Side arrested for welfare fraud: ”She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran’s benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000.”

The real life inspiration, according to Wikipedia: ”In 1976, the New York Times reported that a woman from Chicago, Linda Taylor, was charged with using four aliases and of cheating the government out of $8,000. She appeared again in the newspaper while the Illinois Attorney General continued investigating her case. The woman was ultimately found guilty of “welfare fraud and perjury” in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois.”

So one woman scammed the government out of a total of eight thousand dollars andgot caught and sentenced. From this one woman’s situation, Reagan creatively invented multiple imaginary dead fake veteran husbands (not true), a six-figure “annual salary” ($8,000 is four digits and not enough to live on for a year),  a dozen fake Social Security cards (not correct), 80 aliases (no) and 30 fake home addresses (also no) and so on…in short, he created the Welfare Queen stereotype by wildly exaggerating information about a real person who got caught doing something wrong and who was punished for her criminal act.

Right from the beginning, when Reagan first told the infamous Welfare Queen story, there wasn’t anyone who actually got away with welfare fraud in real life! One middle-aged woman inspired Reagan’s anecdote, and she got caught! She was punished! That fairy tale The Gipper told us has led to a lot of misery, most of it directed at the weakest members of our society: those who are the least capable of defending themselves. Are we a country of unkind assholes who lack compassion for our neighbors, now?
 

Except, again, as we have learned, Linda Taylor didn’t get away with anything. Ultimately she served years in jail and paid restitution. Crime did not pay. Gut social programs anyway! Better ten thousand starving children and babies than the chance that one woman get a penny more of “our” tax dollars than she is entitled to…even though over 91% of all government assistance recipients are the elderly, the disabled, children and the working poor (so much for the idea of an army of shiftless welfare recipients sitting at home on the couch, eating government cheese and food stamp-purchased bonbons all day).

This suggests that the Welfare Queen archetype and the distorted view of Black Americans on welfare is well-entrenched in the White American psyche. The majority of welfare recipients are non-urban and White. The majority of food stamp recipients have jobs or are children, so comparing paychecks to food stamps makes no sense.”

Let’s get this one thing straight: there are no Welfare Queens out there driving Cadillacs, having five kids specifically to get extra financial benefits from the government, getting free iPhones, and somehow getting rich off “your” money. NONE. There never were.

Over at Slate, Doug Kendall breaks down just how badly President Obama’s judicial nominees have been treated due to filibusters led by one or more Senate Republicans. “The average confirmation time for uncontroversial circuit court nominees rose from 64.5 days under Reagan to 227.3 days under Obama… . Similarly, the average waiting time for uncontroversial district court nominees increased from 69.9 days under Reagan to 204.8 days under President Obama. And the number of district court nominees who wait more than 200 days has doubled from George W.’s time to Obama’s.” Kendall uses the Congressional Research Service’s definition of an uncontroversial nominee to reach these numbers, which is a nominee who receives “little or no opposition when votes are actually cast in the Senate Judiciary Committee and on the Senate floor.”

H/T: Ian Millhiser at Think Progress Justice

At this point in time, it’s difficult to think of the Romney campaign as anything but badly burnt toast. It’s not just Democrats and previously undecided voters who are turning on Romney and his never-ending series of gaffes and inartful glimpses into the psyche of the financial elite, it’s Republicans. Rachel Maddow talks about it here:

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

. Richard Nixon - Who can tell a story of dirty Republican election tactics without first mentioning the modern day grandfather of slimy politics; “Tricky” Dick Nixon?

While Watergate is the most famous of GOP election scandals, it’s arguably the least interesting. Some of Nixon’s operatives broke into the Democratic campaign headquarters. They got caught. Some went to jail. Nixon was forced to resign in shame. By today’s standards, it sounds downright pedestrian, but at the Presidential level, it’s the only such scandal that had real accountability.

Nixon didn’t manage to steal that election, but not for lack of trying. Oh, but not so fast. In 1968, during the height of the Vietnam war and predating Watergate, Nixon committed a small crime we call treason. The achilles heel of then President Lyndon Johnson was the war. Nixon negotiated with the South Vietnamese to stay out of peace talks, at least until Nixon was in charge. They succumbed to his pressure and the war went on longer than probably necessary.

For those of us who are Obama supporters and political junkies, it’s tempting to grab the popcorn and watch an implosion that could be the envy of Hollywood action directors, but as in Hollywood, it wouldn’t be drama if the hero (or villain) didn’t have a last-minute plan, and if Republicans are known for anything, it’s their 11th hour, 59th minute talent for electoral shenanigans.

Just in case you or your friends are thinking this election is in the bag and are tempted to stay home, allow me to regale you with a cautionary tale, one of theft, manipulation and even international intrigue and–dare I say–treason. Just because the GOP chose a yawner of a Presidential candidate doesn’t mean they aren’t entertaining.

2. Ronald Reagan – The GOP’s poster boy for all that is good with America. He was charming, clean cut, handsome (all this according to my then swooning grandmother). He was full of optimism, hope, and boy, could he give a speech. 

1980 was a tough year for Democrats. President Jimmy Carter was viewed as weak and ineffectual. The economy was suffering a double whammy of high unemployment and high inflation. By the time voters hit the polls, prices were rising at a rate of over 13% a year. Currently, our inflation rate is very low, at less than 2%.

Perhaps even more importantly, almost exactly a year before the election, the American Embassy in Iran was taken hostage by students.

3. George W. Bush – Bush 43 might be our most illegitimate President ever (and I’m including Gerald Ford, who was never elected to either Vice President or President). In 2000, the Supreme Court overrode the state of Florida to install Bush as President. Even if the five conservative justices hadn’t decided that Bush should become President, the Republican party was busy making sure that Democratic votes didn’t get counted.

You would think an incumbent wouldn’t feel the need to cheat, but if there was one thing that the Bush administration learned from the Nixon administration, it was that they should always buy insurance. In this case, it was Ohio in 2004. Before the election, Walden O’Dell, CEO of Diebold (one of the electronic voting machine companies) said he was, ”committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” O’Dell and Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State colluded to lock other voting machines out of the election. Exit polling showed that Bush’s competitor, John Kerry, should have won Ohio. Its 20 electoral votes would have given Kerry the election.

4. Barack Obama – No, he’s not a Republican and I’m not implying in any way that he stole the 2008 election, but there is absolutely no doubt that Republicans will be screaming “ACORN, ACORN – they registered Mickey Mouse!” Well, they did register Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and every other name that people outside of grocery stores pulled out of their smart asses, but Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck never got to vote. All organizations that registered voters are required by law to accept every registration. They are also required to report suspicious registrations, which ACORN did. The false registrations were quickly eliminated.

The real problem behind ACORN, of course, wasn’t about fictional characters who never made it to the polls, it was about the legitimate voters they were registering, African-Americans; people who vote Democratic. In the end, the GOP Mickey Mouse scheme worked. ACORN’s funding was pulled and they were forced to close their doors.

5. Mitt Romney – Obviously, we don’t know all the tricks up the GOP’s sleeve in this election, but they are numerous and undemocratic. Republicans are doing everything in their power to ensure that minorities, the poor, the elderly and the young are going to have a difficult time voting. Tactics range from requiring only certain photo IDs at the voting booths to restricting voting times and locations. The Brennan Center is reporting that the changes could affect up to five million people and up to 127 (out of a necessary 270) electoral votes. While some of the affected states will vote Republican, down ballot contests, like Congress and local legislatures, are at risk. Some of the states, like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, are considered swing states.

A quarter of a billion dollars have been spent so far in this election, the vast majority of it geared toward defeating Obama. Anti-Obama pockets are deep. The Koch brothers wouldn’t be throwing money at a candidate without at least a possibility he would win. At this point, all official polls, especially the all-important electoral polls, show that Romney has little to no chance. What do the Super PAC donors know that pollsters don’t?

As a last resort, there’s always treason. Was the release of the now infamous anti-Muslim movie trailer coincidental? Perhaps we’ll never know. Were the attacks on the US Consulate in Libya truly planned by Muslim terrorists? Again, we may never know. It might be far-fetched to pose the events in the Middle East as conspiracy theories, but Republicans have proven that they aren’t above sacrificing human lives and national security, all to win an election. As a game changer, if the unrest can be traced to a cynical ploy to try and sway an election, it has had little effect on Obama but Romney’s premature criticism of the Obama administration seems to have given him a lasting scar. With October just a few days away, it’s not difficult to imagine another pre-election surprise.

h/t: Wendy Gittleson at AddictingInfo.org/

Republicans and Right-Wingers have a rich history of supporting a policy for decades and then opposing the very same program.  In this article we explore just a few of the major flip flops of the GOP since President Obama took office.

Abortion: Believe it or not there have always been many pro-choice Republicans out there. Ironically enough, June 14, 1967, Ronald Reagan signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act, after only six months as California governor. From a total of 518 legal abortions in California in 1967, the number of abortions would soar to an annual average of 100,000 in the remaining years of Reagan’s two terms — more abortions than in any U.S. state prior to Roe v. Wade.

(GOP largely flipped to being anti-Choice, around the time of Reagan’s Presidency).

Cap and Trade: You might remember that Ronald Reagan first conceived of the concept of cap and trade, George H.W. Bush signed the very first cap and trade legislation back in 1990 and George W. Bush gave it his full support.  Now Republicans oppose cap and trade as big oil and coal companies along with

other special interests have spent hundreds millions of dollars over the past two years to convince legislators, politicians, and citizens to oppose cap and trade and other measures that would create jobs, cut oil use, and reduce pollution. 

Child Labor: Republicans were once part of the initial movement to create child labor laws back in 1852, even trying to pass a Constitutional amendment in 1924. Democrats were finally successful in getting the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 passed which established the minimum wage and place limitations on the use of “oppressive child labor,” as defined in the statute.  Republicans are now opposed to child labor protections as part of their overall support of corporations.  You might recall Newt Gingrich referring to child labor laws as “truly stupid” during his unsuccessful campaign last year for the party nomination as President.  Source

Civil Rights: Republicans once championed civil rights ending slavery, adopting the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments and it was even a Republican led Supreme Court that ruled in Brown vs. Board of Education, the landmark casing ending school segregation. 

Deficit Spending: Republican have used deficit spending going back to Ronald Reagan who doubled the national dept and George W. Bush who doubled it again.  With Democrat control of the Presidency and Congress, Republicans have done a complete reversal on the matter.

Public  Education: Education is interesting in that Republicans have managed to do a double flip flop on this one.  Back in 1964 Barry Goldwater and the conservative movement  were against any kind of federal aid to education of any kind.  As time progressed conservative voters came around to supporting federal aid in the form of programs such as college loans and aid for handicapped students.  By 1981 both President Reagan and Senator Goldwater had flip flopped and no longer opposed such funding, but still were attempting to shut down the Department of Education as part of a wider reaching goal of removing what was perceived by them as unnecessary intrusions into state’s rights.  The administration of George W. Bush first proposed the No Child Left Behind Act immediately after he took office and the bill was passed with bipartisan support in Congress. For nearly a generation there has been bipartisan agreement that the federal government has a vital role in public education, primarily in the form of federal funds which compel states to raise academic standards. Fast forward to modern times and the Republicans have done yet another about face and are now pushing to weaken education, particularly public education, by promoting vouchers, charter schools and other forms of privatization now believing that education responsibilities should revert to states and local school districts to sort out their own problems.  

h/t: Samuel-Warde.com

The laser-like Republican focus on jobs continues:

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is floating legislation that would name most U.S. coastal waters after former President Ronald Reagan.

Issa reintroduced his bill Wednesday to rename the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which generally extends from three miles to 200 miles offshore, as the Ronald Wilson Reagan Exclusive Economic Zone.

To be fair, we’re not talking about renaming all the oceans after Ronald Reagan. Just any parts of them within 200 miles of America, in honor of the guy who first said “yeah, all that over there? That’s ours.”

While creating at least several jobs in the lucrative map-printing sector of the economy, this otherwise seems a rather pointless little exercise. For one thing, I thought true conservatives hated Ronald Reagan now, but it turns out that while they now hate most of what he said and did, they still like putting his name on things.

Reagan was a godawful President.

h/t: Hunter at Daily Kos

Ahead of a Republican-led House vote Wednesday to try to repeal ‘Obamacare’ for the 33rd time, House Democrats expressed a growing sense of optimism that their biggest achievement in a generation is here to stay, invoking the lessons of history.

“This [law] is alive and well and has a big future,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told TPM in her Capitol Hill office, during a discussion with a handful of reporters and bloggers. “I knew it would pass, I knew it would be upheld and I know it will survive.”

Energized by the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act, as well as recent polling indicating a favorable swing in public opinion, Democrats are less worried about the fierce, unabated conservative push to repeal the law.

“I think what has occurred was entirely predictable,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) told TPM. “This was a massive overhaul of over one-seventh of the national economy. And the history of major things like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid is that it takes time to sink in. Social Security was not wildly popular at the time. And Medicaid was not adopted by all the states until 1982.”

Pelosi rattled off the benefits already in place — including 5 million seniors who are paying less for Medicare prescription drugs, 17 million children with preexisting conditions who are now guaranteed coverage, and 6.6 million young adults insured via a parent’s policy.

She predicted the 14-point swing in the law’s favor since April, according to a Washington Post/ABC survey, will continue “as people see what this is without the fog of the misrepresentations — flat out and out mischaracterizations — of what the bill is.”

The bad news for Democrats is that if Republicans win the White House and Senate majority in the November elections, they’ll have the tools to gut major pieces of law, if not roll it back entirely. Mitt Romney has promised full repeal. Pelosi demurred when asked how Democrats might fight such an effort, forecasting that such a situation won’t come to pass.

Although Social Security and Medicare won over some Republican votes, unlike the Affordable Care Act, the nature of the conservative opposition was remarkably similar, with warning signs about a tyrannical government threatening freedom.

In the 1960s, Ronald Regan teamed up with the American Medical Association to warn that if Medicare were to pass, “you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”

The fierce early resistance to Social Security and Medicare gave way to acceptance and, eventually, embrace. Today the two programs are deeply embedded in the fabric of American society and conservative efforts to unwind them have failed. Democrats are optimistic that the Affordable Care Act will enjoy a similar fate.

h/t: Sahil Kapur at TPM