Today would have been the 100th birthday of former president Richard Nixon. Nixon has gone down in history for his role in bugging the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, for which he later resigned his presidency.
The conservative media movement exists primarily as a moneymaking venture. As Rick Perlstein explained in the Baffler, some of the largest conservative media organs are essentially massive email lists of suckers rented to snake oil salesmen. The con isn’t limited to a couple of newsletters and websites: The most prominent conservative organizations in the nation are primarily dedicated to separating conservatives from their money.
FreedomWorks, which is funded primarily by very rich people, solicits donations from non-rich conservative people. More than 80,000 people donated money to FreedomWorks in 2012, and it seems likely that only a small minority of those people were hedge fund millionaires. And what are people who donate to this grass-roots conservative organization funded mostly by a few very rich people getting for their hard-earned money? In addition to paying Dick Armey $400,000 a year for 20 years to stay away, FreedomWorks also apparently spent more than a million dollars paying Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh to say nice things about FreedomWorks, in order to convince listeners to send FreedomWorks money that FreedomWorks would then give to Limbaugh and Beck. It’s a pretty simple con. Beck, meanwhile, also has a subscriber-based media operation, in which people pay his company money for access to programs where Beck expresses opinions that he was paid to hold. He also spent years telling everyone to buy gold from a company that pays him and defrauds consumers. ....
Under the Twentieth Amendment, “[t]he terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January.” Accordingly, as of this very...
Short-term history hasn't been very kind to our 43rd president. Four years after he left office, more than two-thirds of Americans still blame George W. Bush for our lousy economy — including nearly half of Republicans — and he has the lowest approval rating of any living U.S. president, according to a mid-2012 CNN poll. When the German news weekly Der Speigel mistakenly published its obituary for Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, last week, it called the elder formerly president "the better Bush," dubbing him a "colorless politician" whose legacy only looks good next to that of his bumbling son. But the ongoing effort to rehabilitate Bush 43's image got an unexpected assist this week: President Obama and an overwhelming majority of Democratic lawmakers voted to permanently enshrine most of his signature tax cuts, sending only about the top 1 percent of earners back to Clinton-era marginal tax rates.
"The retention of 98 percent of the Bush tax cuts by the most liberal president to hold office reminds us that a mere four years after leaving office, George W. Bush has a legacy that is becoming more impressive with time," says Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post. It's not just taxes: From pushing immigration reform to advances in drone warfare to fighting AIDS in Africa, "Bush seems to be a more accomplished Republican figure in the Obama era." But this tax victory is especially sweet for the GOP and Bush family. Rubin quotes Kevin Hasset at the American Enterprise Institute:
On January 1, just before 2 AM, the Senate overwhelmingly agreed to pass a bill that will avert the Fiscal Cliff. The House approved it later that night.
The bill is pretty straightforward. Income tax rates will only rise on those making over $400K (liberals wanted $250K, GOP wanted no taxes to rise). Spending cuts will be delayed for 2 months to give the sides more time to address them.
So why is the bill 157-pages long?
Because when Washington does business and passes a huge bill, there are all kinds of little other pre-existing tax things most Americans have never heard of, but which needed to be extended, that also get into the bill. It's just how it works.
The latest sign of right-wing radio's malaise may be seen in the apparent demise of Boston's WTKK-FM.
The Greater Media Inc.-owned smooth-jazz-turned-right-wing-talk station is reportedly preparing to undergo yet another format change in early-January, returning to music.
As a conservative who listened to WTKK for years, I'm amused by this development, especially in light of the continued industry-wide fallout over Rush Limbaugh's verbal assault on Sandra Fluke earlier in the year.
Friedman and Wilson have shown conclusively that good progressive radio is not being allowed to succeed --- that the national corporate interests of these large media conglomerates (just as predicted by some media observers decades ago, following the passage of the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996) are being placed ahead of the local public interest obligations which broadcast licensees are required to meet in exchange for their use of our public airwaves.
With the challenges now being faced by good progressive talkers facing obstacles stacked against their success, is there anything wrong with enjoying the spectacle of seeing bad right-wing radio fail, as appears to be the case in Boston at year's end?...
Our history is filled with constitutional disobedience. What's kept our country stable isn't parchment, but institutions and the sense that, as one nation, we must work out our differences.
President Barack Obama gave a New Year's gift to returning members of Congress, federal workers and Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday, signing an executive order calling for an end to a years-long pay freeze.
Former House majority leader Dick Armey says he took an $8 million consulting deal in return for leaving the conservative organization FreedomWorks because the group was "dishonest" and because he "couldn't leave with empty pockets."
The arrangement, he says, will allow him to "never have to work again forever."
In an interview with ABC News as he was winding down his Wii Fit workout, Armey spoke frankly and at length about his dispute with FreedomWorks, his eyebrow raising consulting contract, and the strategy of the Republican Party.
In 2008 the big banks were "too big to fail," but now in 2012 bank "criminals" seem to be "too big to jail."
According to a Dec. 11, USA Today story, the British banking giant Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) agreed to pay a record $1.92 billion settlement after a broad investigation by U.S. federal and state authorities found the bank violated federal laws by laundering money from Mexican drug trafficking and processing banned transactions on behalf of Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma.
In 1997, a craven Congress, doing the bidding of the pro-gun lobby, withdrew funding used for gun-violence research by federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That ban on funding — and similar prohibitions in a few states — sent an intimidating message to scientists across the nation, shutting down research. The bans exist to this day, frustrating efforts to understand the epidemic of gun violence that has gripped this nation in such savage forms as the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown two weeks ago.
The bans should be reversed and research funding restored for the sake of saving lives.
Martin Bashir (67 points)“[Newt] Gingrich lies repeatedly. First of all, we know today that more people were collecting food stamps under George W. Bush than are under President Obama. So, that’s the first — something like a difference of about a half a million people.”— MSNBC host Martin Bashir on The Ed Show, January 23. In fact, U.S. Department of Agriculture showed more than 46 million Americans on food stamps at the end of 2011, a figure 40 percent greater than the highest number of recipients recorded during the Bush years (31.98 million, in January 2009). [MP3 Audio]
"ALEC Rock" Produced by Mark Fiore and the Center for Media and Democracy, which is the creator of ALECexposed, and co-produced by the Alliance for a Better Utah.
Stunning news from WaPo's Ezra Klein: The Treasury is ruling out the use of a trillion dollar platinum coin to break the debt ceiling impasse.
Klein writes:
That’s the bottom line of the statement that Anthony Coley, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, gave me today. ”Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” he said.
With this, the White House has now ruled out the two best options for preventing a default in the event that the House GOP refused to life the debt ceiling. The White House has been quite adamant that the other alternative (invoking the 14th Amendment) is not acceptable.
The GOP’s cave on the fiscal cliff is galvanizing the Tea Party, which vows retribution. By David Freedlander. (RT @freedlander: "If you think 2010 was the Tea Party Congress, just wait until 2014.
Congress has voted to keep intact an independent office that polices the behavior of House members. Lawmakers approved the Office of Congressional Ethics as part of a package of rules that will govern the new Congress, which convened Thursday.
The terms of four of the six members of the office's board were set to expire this week — raising concerns among congressional watchdogs that the office would lose its investigative powers. The staff cannot start probes without board approval, and new members have not been named.
Michael Charney's insight:
I guess they plan to keep it around just to see if they can get it right this time... ;-)
Al Jazeera Media Network announced that it will launch a new U.S.-based news channel that will provide both domestic news and international news for American audiences.
The Network has won numerous U.S. and international awards for its journalism and with more than 70 bureaus across the globe it has one of the largest bureau footprints and newsgathering forces of any news network in the world.
Al Jazeera Media Network also announced that it has acquired Current TV in the United States and that the new U.S.-based news channel will be available on Current’s distribution network when it is launched in 2013. There will be a transition from existing programming until the new Al Jazeera channel begins to air.
The new channel will be headquartered in New York City. In addition to the existing Al Jazeera news bureaus in New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago, Al Jazeera will open additional bureaus in key locations across the United States. Al Jazeera’s expansion will double the network’s U.S.-based staff to more than 300 employees.
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who voted for Tuesday’s debt deal averting the worst of the so-called “fiscal cliff,” said Republicans should be prepared to shut down the government when Congress votes on the debt ceiling in two months.
“We Republicans need to be willing to tolerate a temporary, partial government shutdown,” Toomey said. “We absolutely have to have this fight over the debt limit.”
Excerpt from article by CHRIS CILIZZA, Washington Post
Fueled by the grass-roots energy and, in some places, anger of tea party members, Republicans gained more than five dozen House seats in 2010, a sweep that put Boehner — an institutionalist’s institutionalist — at the top of a GOP he didn’t really recognize anymore.
For the first two years, Boehner was a SINO (Speaker in Name Only) as he regularly saw his legislative and political goals upended by the purists in his party who regarded compromise as capitulation. The debt-ceiling fight of 2011 was a sign of things to come for Boehner. The speaker engaged in long and serious talks with President Obama aimed at not simply raising the country’s debt limit but also addressing our long-term budget problems. But as it became clear that Boehner was going to have to give to get, the tea party crowd in the House, who saw the debt ceiling vote as a chance to tie the government’s purse strings, made clear that they wouldn’t be going along to get along.
Then came the 2012 elections, a rebuke of the tea party’s ideas and leaders. Sensing an opportunity to wrest control of his party, or at least the House GOP, back from the fringe, Boehner went on offense. He kicked Reps. Tim Huelskamp (Kan.), Justin Amash (Mich.) and Dave Schweikert (Ariz.)off plum committeesafter the election, insisting that they had been insufficiently loyal to the party leadership on key votes — the most notable of which was on the budget proposal put forward by Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), the vice-presidential nominee.
Stories of Boehner’s reemergence were crafted, citing his renewed power over his Republican colleagues and using the tea party committee purge as example No. 1. Emboldened by his newfound strength, Boehner set out to show some force in his negotiations with Obama over the “fiscal cliff.” He introduced “Plan B,” a bill that would preserve the George W. Bush-era tax cuts on everyone except those making $1 million or more a year, and he held a 51-second news conference pledging that it would pass the House and daring the president to ignore it.
Twenty-four hours later, Boehner released a statement admitting defeat. Plan B never made it to the House floor. The speaker and Majority Leader Eric Cantor couldn’t come close to securing the votes required.
The defeat was spurred by the tea party, which saw Boehner’s plan not as a way to put political pressure on the president but as an unnecessary sacrifice of a core principle. That principle? It’s never okay to raise taxes on anyone. [MORE]
Worth noting is that the Plan B defeat was with the current Congress--all of those Tea Party losses haven't taken effect yet. I expect better progress with the 113th.
"Danny Hafley of Casey County, Ky. said this week that people are reading the mannequin in his front yard depicting President Barack Obama eating a watermelo...
Michael Charney's insight:
This is incredibly disgusting. Free speech: yes. Racist? Hell yes... We need to expose this whenever we see it...
In a fitting coda to 2012, we’ve learned that the ratings for rock-ribbed conservative Sean Hannity cratered after Barack Obama won his second term, with viewers tuning out the Fox News Channel talk show host in droves.
Paging Frank Luntz: Fox News has taken on a partisan line of a depth and ferocity I have not seen since 2003-2004, but the messaging seems to me very tone deaf. They are not helping their cause. And except for some issues like immigration, i think they are not going to bend till near to the end of the decade because of gerrymandering and the rabid enthusiasm for the Tea Party at the local and congressional levels in Tea Party congressional deistricts: the politicians in the Tea Party at these levels are bold and brash and will resist with all their might a more moderate approach because that will infringe on their "turf." What do you think?
I think in general, you're right, Bob, but I would factor in ratings. Murdoch is first and foremost a businessman, and if he can't make money with this line, it will soften. The underlying ideology might still be there, but perhaps filtered through softer voices and a cleaner separation between news and "newsy" stuff... One can hope...
He single-handedly delivered the swing vote to approve Obamacare and perhaps even crushed the American health system that has been the envy of the world.
WND has selected U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. for its first-ever Benedict Arnold Award.
“There are lots of bad guys out there who would qualify as ‘Villain of the Year,’ but precious few candidates for the ‘Benedict Arnold Award,’” explained WND Vice President and Managing Editor David Kupelian. “Benedict Arnold, after all, was a good guy; he was an American general in the Revolutionary War who fought valiantly on behalf of the Continental Army – that is, until, for reasons yet unknown, he defected to the British side and betrayed the cause he had formerly served.”
Tea With the Mad Hatter: Musings on Politics, The Tea Party, and America's Rampant Electile Dysfunction: Michael Charney, Michael Stafford: Amazon.com: Kindle Store
"If you are fed up with our dysfunctional political system, the two parties which control it and with media shrillness and banality you will like Michael Charney's clever essays on our 'Electile Dysfunction." This book will make you smile, make you think, and it might just make you even angrier about the sorry state of American politics. We need more voices like Michael Charney's calling for change."
--Linda Killian, author of The Swing Vote: The Untapped Power of Independents
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