Someone has new talking points......
Ron Paul (R - Texas) is one of those political figures with whom I find myself in agreement about 50 percent of the time and the other 50 percent of the time I think he's nuts. Here we have an...
In defending Republican leaders' rebuffing of the President's invitation to meet at the White House this week an interesting meme has emerged. Republicans are now saying that the shellacking they took at their retreat last year (remember? It was...
Sharron Angle has already taken some heat for ads depicting nefarious looking brown men sneaking along what is presumably a border fence. Seems like she's decided she can take the heat though because her new ad is even more brazen....
Democrat Jack Conway takes a page from ultimate GOP dirty trickster Lee Atwater to slam Rand Paul on cultural issues. In an almost comically over-the-top ad out this week, Conway dings Paul on the latter's decidedly Libertarian views on religion...
In case you missed it, Fox News clown Glenn Beck held a rally in Washington DC on Saturday. Apparently, the purpose of the rally was to Restore Honor to an America that Beck believes has lost its way. Most estimates...
Most people reacted with nervous laughter to Texas governor Rick Perry's suggestion that Texas might secede from the Union should certain policies from a certain President go too far. Well now Perry's being joined by Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN), who...
On the arrest of American citizen and alleged Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, Sen. John McCain had this to say: "Don't give this guy his Miranda rights until we find out what it's all about..."Note to John McCain: Law enforcement...
ThinkProgress reports: On Fox and Friends this morning, former Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino said she was "not trying to introduce a conspiracy theory" before asking, "But was this deliberate?" "If there was sabotage involved," wondered Perino. I'm not trying...
Somebody from the Bush camp should put a cork in Rick Perry's mouth. The current Texas Governor (and rumored GOP presidential contender) tries to go to bat for his pal and Gubernatorial soul brother George W. Bush and instead asks...
ReasonTV recently interviewed John Avlon who is promoting his new book entitled, "Wingnuts, How The Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America." In the interview, Avlon does a nice job of identifying an underlying problem in modern American politics by pointing out...
This has been bouncing around my head for months now—at least since the run-up to our Afghanistan escalation: how have Republicans gone from being the guys hollering for military deference uber alles (despite a US Constitution saying something to to...
My favorite part of the 2008 presidential campaign was when Barack Obama addressed John McCain's (and moreso, Sarah Palin) bad habit of associating Obama with various unsavories. The favorite line at the time was that Obama was "palin' around with...
It's been a tough week, that's for sure, but not the disaster to Democrats and liberals some (including many Democrats and liberals) would have you believe. So now it's a test of your mettle. Are you up to the fight?...
I'll admit some sympathies with the Tea Partiers. I understand their frustration and anger. I get it. But I also think it's childish and naïve. I have the same sympathies for Libertarians, which is an ideology I explored years...
A few things bother me about this exchange between CNN's Rick Sanchez and Senator John Ensign (R-NV) that has some people worked up that this was some sort of ambush on the senator. 1. Ambush? That's nonsense. The deference already...
Despite the fact that the suspects in all known plots in the US and attached to US interests hail from a wide variety of backgrounds and nationalities, some on the right still cry for racial profililing. As ThinkProgress reports today,...
Poor Frummy. Necon apologist and former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum is already out there trying to resuscitate the horribly damaged image of an utterly failed ideaology; not by defending its tenets but by pretending it was something else...
Andrew Sullivan is having a field day with the various fact checking issues in Sarah Palin's book. My recent favorite is this gem found by the Huffington Post: Perhaps the most embarrassing gaffe so far is her mis-attributed quote to...
This about sums it up, doesn't it?...
The birther movement confounds me. Not that there are people out there dopey enough to believe and support the idea that the President of the United States is a foreign born agent who has usurped the Constitution and duped...
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (a.k.a Caribou Barbie) recently accused President Obama of trying to create Big Bad Government "Death Panels" made up of bureaucrats who would determine who would and who would not qulify for life-saving health care based...
If you haven't seen it yet, de-facto Birther movement leader Orly Taitz was given some air-time by the good folks at MSNBC. In a few minutes of fact-free incoherent babble, Taitz effectively offered nothing to support her claims, except, perhaps,...
Last night, Bill Maher opined that if the Birthers are allowed to simply keep spreading their evidence-free claims that President Obama is somehow not a natural-born American citizen, such bullshit can seep into the public's collective consciousness and, "take over...
Have the nutcase roosters finally come to roost for the GOP? Lee Atwater, the elder Bush's Karl Rove, baited these loonies but never got in bed with them. He knew that it was playing with fire and that ultimately, you...
Just when you think the conservative movement has bottomed out and can't possibly get any stupider, we can count on the likes of Rush Limpaugh to save the day. You see, since Obama has taken all of the "spirit" out...
I find the lede of this Fox News story odd: From the conscience clause to stem cell research, President Obama has shifted social policy to the left in his first 100 days in the White House. But the reversal of...
Andrew Breitbart made his name as an "editor" for the Drudge Report, arguably one of the most influential and widely read blogs out there. It's penchant for overblown headlines and rumor mongering is part of what makes it so fun...
This is what I'm talking about: I just received a fundrasing email from Michael Steele's RNC with the following unedited message: So our tax dollars are going to pay AIG executives millions in bonuses! Just another day of good news...
There's no question the Democrats, and the Obama administration in particular, fumbled this whole AIG bonus deal. The President has acknowledged as much. But they didn't screw up in the way Republicans today say they did. If anything Obama messed...
Republicans Lindsey Graham, Jon Kyl, and David Vitter have a message to their colleagues considering the $410 billion omnibus spending bill: your earmarks are "bloat" while ours are "priorities." Each has come out against the spending bill, attacking it in...
Politics is a messaging game. It's all about communicating your ideas to the people and then promoting your successes so they keep you in office. What to do then if you are flat out of ideas and largely out of...
Let's remember this if and when Republicans decide to filibuster President Obama's judicial picks (emphasis added--ed.): Focusing on President Clinton's judicial nominations in 1999, I described what has been the Senate's historical standard for judicial nominations: "Let's make our case...
This is what it's come to: languishing in the political deep woods without a leader nor bold ideas to tackle the big problems we're facing, conservatives in America resort to making up enemies and diabolical plots against which they rail....
I guess the answer to my question earlier is being answered. There's a predictable but growing hysteria surrounding Barack Obama's swearing in and whether it's legitimate. Most of us watching on Tuesday heard Chief Justice John Roberts' minor flub of...
Still setting up the West Coast office out here and busy as hell prepping for the inauguration next week so post count is down, but I had to weigh in on this nonsense: CIA Director Michael Hayden strenuously defended...
If you are paying attention you probably already know the fist line of attack against Obama's plan to stimulate the economy is to rewrite history by claiming FDR's massive infrastructure spending programs "actually prolonged the Great Depression" and that historians...
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was arrested this morning in Chicago for attempting to sell the Senate seat recently vacated by Barack Obama. Blogojevich is apparently heard on tape discussing how valuable the appointment is and that "you don't just give...
In what's been called George W. Bush's first exit interview, the outgoing President continues a lie that he first unveiled several months after launching the Iraq War, justifying the invasion by claiming that Saddam Hussein didn't let the U.N. inspectors...
Defense News reports: The uniformed services are trying to lock in the next administration by creating a political cost for holding the line on defense spending. Conservative groups are hoping to ramp up defense spending as a tool to limit...
I am not going to call Sarah Palin and idiot mainly becuase I don't think she is one and to underestimate her political talent and understanding of how to sway votes would be a mistake. Next Tuesday will not be...
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo nails John McCain for the latest smear campaign: The McCain campaign has been throwing around so much mud and smears in recent weeks that it's easy to miss just how ugly and shameful their...
Campaigning today Sarah Palin said that she and McCain would fix the economy by imposing a spending freeze. She also declared that a McCain administration would balance the budget by the end of their first term. Only problem is that...
The latest McCain Campaign tactic has been to paint Barack Obama as a socialist because he wants to repeal Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and re-target them to the middle class, but who's the real pinko here? Today, ExxonMobil...
Most of us enjoy a little political diversity in our families. There are liberals who argue with conservatives who argue with libertarians who argue with socialists...and we all ignore the anarchists sulking in the basement. Most families disagree respectfully and...
McCain says his campaign is focused on the economy and it's Barack Obama and his liberal friends who have turned this election season ugly. Google says otherwise....
John McCain gets called to the carpet over his campaign's use of robocalls in a surprisingly tough line of questioning from Fox News' Chris Wallace. Watch McCain seethe as he's confronted with his own words that he "has never and...
McCain says he doesn't care about a "washed up old terrorist," but this robocall says otherwise: Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill...
Dig this funny slide show explaining in very...simple...terms this whole ACORN hullabaloo. Money quote: Well, no. They were registrations for people who don't exist. So they're probably not gonna show up on election day. Unless my applications were magical and...
Political rallies sometimes bring out the worst in people. Especially as tight races head into the final stretch, emotions run high and you tend to rally around your candidate of choice; both because you actually support their views and ideals...
Sarah palin appeared on the Laura Ingraham Show today, where I am sure she was peppered with tough questions, to rally listeners to really demand accountability and openness from the candidate. Laura, it's so important for your listeners to start...
I am going to call McCain out for what he is: a pussy. John McCain and Sarah Palin have been doing everything they can do show a link between 60s radical and ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers and Barack Obama. They...
Barack Obama is taking some heat for comments he made regarding our strategy in Afghanistan, a strategy that forces our military to conduct operations in a way they'd rather not. In August 2007, Obama called for a change in that...
In what is either an incredible coincidence or a coordinated effort to smear Barack Obama as a friend to terrorists, Fox News' Sean Hannity debuted an hour-long special called "A History of Radicalism" that is overflowing with incredible insinuation, bizarre...
Uh oh, looks like another of Palin's claims has been debunked, this time what she cited as experience working with foreign countries, namely Russia, as evidence she's ready for the VP: Anchorage Daily News In an interview last week with...
When asked by Hugh Hewitt last night whether her family had ever suffered financial difficulties (a clear attempt to position her even more closely to working class Americans), Palin responded by saying that her family struggled to get health insurance...
McCain today: "Now is not the time to fix the blame." McCain said. "It's time to fix the problem." McCain in a statement released less than two hours before: "Barack Obama failed to lead, phoned it in, attacked John McCain,...
Further proving that his campaign suspension and call to postpone the debate was nothing more than a stunt, John McCain decided not to return to Washington D.C. to help negotiate an agreement on the financial bailout plan, despite promising to...
In trying to explain exactly what John McCain has done as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, campaign spokesman Douglas Holtz-Eakin went for the gold and made a claim that brought a blush to Al Gore's cheeks: "He did this,"...
Reversing her position (AKA: flip flopping) that she'd cooperate with the investigation into her alleged abuse of power by pressuring officials to fire a state trooper who'd been married to her sister, Sarah Palin announced that she would now actually...
Andrew Sullivan has a running list of the lies from McCain-Palin and they'd be hilarious if not so scary...and effective: The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin I: Firing Monegan The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin II: The Bridge To Nowhere...
McCain and Sarah Palin have been touring the country with their "maverick" message, the centerpiece of which is their shared battle against "wasteful Washington spending," otherwise known as pork barrel spending. But it seems Johna and Sarah haven't always been...
Politicians on the campaign trail say the same thing over and over again. They have to. I mean, who could write a new speech for every stop in a two light town from here to Tucson? So, it's not that...
We knew it was going to get ugly this fall and here's an indication of just how ugly it's going to be. In a new ad hammering Obama on his support for a bill related to sex education, John McCain...
The AP busts the McCain - Palin campaign for calling out Barack Obama on pork barrel spending despite the fact that Sarah palin FAR outpaces him on a per capita basis in Alaska: "John McCain and Sarah Palin criticized Democrat...
Sarah Palin and John McCain love to cite her supposed opposition to "the bridge to nowhere" as proof that she's a maverick ready to cut wasteful Washington spending, but the truth is she campaigned on her SUPPORT of that funding...
Anyone still wondering whether the USA Patriot Act, or the arguments used to implement it, might be misused or expanded beyond it's "original intent" need look no further than Minneapolis. Eight protesters at the RNC were charged with conspiracy to...
Josh Marshall comments on a Washington Post article detailing the ties McCain's chief strategist has to the Georgian government. Yes, his foreign policy advisor is paid by a foreign country. Conflict of interest? Not to "Maverick" John McCain. Money quote:...
Man, I had totally forgotten about the timing of the Anthrax attacks, and how they were explicitly linked to Iraq... But this article in Salon by Glenn Greewald about Bruce Ivins' suicide is shocking. Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC...
In a strange, and almost elementary school-styled op-ed for the Washington Times, Jon Voight seems to be exposing himself as an easily manipulated doofus and political neophyte. That he has an Academy Award in his closet seems to be the...
Well, since Bush's economy is tanking even further (more banks were taken over by the Feds this week and there's the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailouts), and since McCain is NOW saying a 16-month timeframe for withdrawal from Iraq doesn't sound...
John McCain has a new ad blaming Barack Obama for rising gas prices. yes, he's blaming Barack. [PRES] McCain: Pump Nevermind the fact that in another time, McCain opposed drilling in ANWR and offshore and that reversing that decision (also...
Vying for douchebag of the week, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) claims to be "proud" to support the very veterans benefits package he voted against. Just as President Bush and John McCain tried to spin away from their hugely unpopular opposition...
Chris Dodd gets to the heart of the matter on this whole FISA nonsense and immunity for telecoms. "Either the companies and the President acted outside of the rule of law, or they followed it," he said. "Either the underlying...
It's been said that a candidate steers hard left or right (depending on their political affiliation) in the primaries to woo the base of his party and then quickly tacks back to the center in the general election. Well, somebody...
Nestled in the heart of the speech in which he claimed the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama made a promise to the American people that laid out the tone and tenor of his campaign against John McCain: It is a debate...
In what must be one of the most pathetic smear attempts in years, some right wingers are actually trying to paint Barack Obama as—get this—a Marxist. On right-winger Mike Gallagher's radio show today, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX)...
This is exactly what I want to hear Obama say in response to the "appeasement" flap: Obama also slammed the notion that he'd ever supported any sort of negotiations with terrorists. "They're trying to fool you, trying to scare you,...
Here's why I still love old Joe Biden: "This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset ... and make this kind...
We come to expect this from a political huckster like George W. Bush. The fact that he recently compared Democratic plans to deal with terrorism to that of "Nazi appeasers" no longer shocks the sensibilities as something so clearly over...
Saying he just wants to get people thinking, Jonesville, S.C. pastor Roger Byrd put a new message on the outdoor sign at his church. It reads: "Obama, Osama, hmm, are they brothers?" Byrd says the message wasn't meant to by...
With all of the hullabaloo around Obama's ties to the Rev. Wright you'd think that the candidates running for president would be a bit sensitive to comments from religious leaders that...um...seem insensitive. Imagine for a moment Obama seeking and then...
The fact that we're even having a debate on the use of torture in this country is not only embarrassing to me as an American, it puts the lives and well being of American soldiers in danger. If we—the greatest...
If you follow Democratic national politics then you know that Mark Penn is one hated MOFO. The Chief Strategist for the Clinton campaign has a special talent for raising the dander of his opponents (and even supporters on occasion) that...
In a pretty lame attempt to paint Barack Obama as an exaggerator, the Clinton camp has circulated several talking point sheets trying to debunk his claim of being a law professor at the University of Chicago. Sen. Obama consistently and...
Gotta love YouTube mash-ups. If you're following the whole "Hillary in Tuzla" hub bub, this is for you. Hillary in Tuzla: The Movie...
Here's why it's important to have an independent Justice Department: White House: Computer hard drives tossed In an attempt to thwart a federal court's plan to recover "lost" emails, the White House disclosed that older workstations are routinely sent offsite...
Hillary Clinton has been teasing audiences of late with the idea of a "Dream Ticket" featuring her in the lead position and Obama supporting her as a VP nominee. It's bullshit and Obama cuts to the quick: With all due...
I love interviews with Georgia Republican Jack Kingston. He's a buffoon and completely unaware of his own ignorance, which makes watching his interviews like watching an exercise in social retardation. Last night on MSNBC's Live with Dan Abrams, Kingston laid...
Now here's an interesting tactic: a conservative blog engages in the dreaded liberal practice of "class warfare" to bash John Cougar Mellencamp, who recently asked John McCain to refrain from using Mellencamp's song "This is Our Country" at campaign events....
The biggest rat to jump the sinking ship of the Republican party is none other than blowhard pillhead Rush Limbaugh. It seems Rushbot is none-too-pleased with McCain pulling ahead in the GOP primaries and blames him and an uninspiring cast...
There are lots of reasons to hate the blogoshpere. There's a lot of weirdo bullshit out there, especially when it comes to politics. But there's also a lot of really funny one-liners floating about, and that's what I love about...
Quote of the Day: "If A Tape Is Not Safe In The CIA, We're In Trouble" --Former CIA Assistant General Counsel John Radsan The guy makes an excellent point in refuting the nonsense that the CIA had to destroy interrogation...
Quote of the day: "While the Republicans are passing a resolution celebrating Christmas, the president was vetoing health care for children. There's a little bit of irony going on around here." --Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA), explaining why he voted against...
We wouldn't normally copy and paste someone else's post wholesale, but Andrew Sullivan is opening a can of worms here and his post says it all: Scott Horton puts it simply: Let's first focus on this question: Why is this...
I don't even know where to begin with this article so I guess I'll start from the top of the page and work my way down...to the bottom. The CIA videotaped its interrogations of two top terror suspects in 2002...
If anyone questions whether Rudy Giuliani has balls need look no further than his latest radio spot. As an example of how America's health care system is the best in the world and beyond the meddling of some pinko universal...
There's a lot in this Harold Ford interview that drives me insane, but I am going to focus on Ford's answer to the very first question and how it is an abject lesson in how NOT to respond to a...
I don't know if Senator Larry Craig is gay or not. I know he's said he's not gay about 120 times since his arrest for soliciting sex in a men's bathroom in Minneapolis this summer. I also know this dude...
Exposing fathead as the pussy he is, a wounded Iraq war veteran tells Rush Limbaugh, "until you have the guts to call me a phony solider to my face, stop telling lies about my service." The gall of these chickenhawks...