When it Comes to Jobs Conservatives Once Again Resort to Pathetic Lies

When it Comes to Jobs Conservatives Once Again Resort to Pathetic Lies

Today, the White House is hosting a jobs forum, “to sound out ideas for accelerating job growth during the worst labor market in a generation,” as Democrats in both houses of Congress are attempting to craft jobs legislation. Yesterday, the administration for the first time expressed support for new legislation, so long as it has a “relatively small deficit impact.”

This effort comes in the wake of a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report showing that the economic stimulus package is having its intended effect — creating or saving 600,000 to 1.6 million jobs — albeit in a weaker than anticipated economy.

Republicans, though, have said that additional jobs legislation “would meet resistance.” They’re justifying this position — aided by the conservative media — by claiming that the “failed economic stimulus” has not created jobs, despite the CBO reporting otherwise.

If there are any conservatives left for who the words integrity and honor mean something, your party has been hijacked by serial liars, crazy birthers, science haters and puppets of special interests.

Is Global Warming a Hoax

ClimateGate: The 7 Biggest Lies About The Supposed "Global Warming Hoax"
CLAIM: Scientists had private doubts about whether the world really is heating up.

TRUTH: Combing through over a decade of personal correspondence, which is then taken out of context can seem to prove just about anything. Skeptics have been pointing to one email from Kevin Trenberth, in which he said, "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." However, this is clear example of cherrypicking quotes. Trenberth was referring to that there was an "incomplete explanation" of the short-term variability of temperatures, but concludes that "global warming is unequivocally happening."

Former Fox News Host Calls Fox A ‘Right-Wing Partial-News-But-Mostly-Opinion Network’
Former Fox News Watch host Eric BurnsIn February 2008, Eric Burns, who had worked at Fox News since the network launched in 1996 and served as “the closest person Fox had to an ombudsman” as the host of Fox News Watch, “was told he would be terminated within the next two months.” Since his firing, for which he said “he was not given a reason,” Burns has largely avoided discussing his former employer. In a September 2008 blog post about MSNBC’s opinion shows, Burns wrote that “Fox is a topic for another article, and another writer.”

Burns has ended his Fox News silence, writing on the Huffington Post that he used to work for a “right-wing partial-news-but-mostly-opinion network.” In particular, Burns takes aim at Glenn Beck, who he calls “a problem of taste as well as ethics”:

I speak out now because it is the time of year when one is supposed to count blessings. I have several. Among them is that I do not have to face the ethical problem of sharing an employer with Glenn Beck.

Actually, Beck is a problem of taste as well as ethics. He laughs and cries; he pouts and giggles; he makes funny faces and grins like a cartoon character; he makes earnest faces yet insists he is a clown; he cavorts like a victim of St. Vitus’s Dance. His means of communicating are, in other words, so wide-ranging as to suggest derangement as much as versatility.

Comparing Beck to Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and John Birch, Burns asks himself “what I would have done if I worked at Fox now.” Noting that Jane Hall — who had regularly appeared on his Fox Show — recently left the network partially because of Beck, Burns admits that he might not have acted “as admirable as” she did:

I ask myself what I would have done if I worked at Fox now. Would I have quit, as the estimable Jane Hall did? Once a panelist on my program, Hall departed for other reasons as well, but Beck was a particular source of embarrassment to her, even though they never shared a studio, perhaps never even met.

I think…I think the answer to my question does not do me proud. I think, more concerned about income than principle, I would have continued to work at Fox, but spent my spare time searching avidly for other employment. I think I would not have been as admirable as Jane Hall. I think I would not have reacted to Beck with the probity I like to think I possess.

It is interesting that Burns would compare Beck to John Birch, considering that before he joined Fox News, Beck told a spokesman for the John Birch Society that they were “starting to make more and more sense” to him.

Conservative Hypocrisy Never Ends, Now its Health Care Transparency

After ripping Democrats for hiding ‘behind closed doors,’ GOP objects to more transparency in health care debate.

On the Senate floor yesterday, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) made a request on behalf of Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) that senators proposing amendments to the health care bill place the text of their amendments online. Immediately following Reid’s request, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) took to the floor to object to the transparency proposal. Enzi’s argued that, although the bill appears to lead to greater transparency, “we can also see ways that this can limit the ability for the minority to offer amendments.” Watch video at link:

Lincoln “issued a statement chastising Republicans for blocking efforts at government transparency.” Just weeks ago, the Republican Party lined up to accuse Democrats of opposing greater transparency.

Now that conservatives want to try parliamentary tricks to stall much needed health care reform, transparency is suddenly inconvenient. If they want to offer amendments they should be made to put them on line with an explanation for 72 hours before offering such amendments. Too bad that would let America see conservatism is all about stopping progress and giving America the shaft. Its what conservatism is all about, screwing over working Americans and hiding behind fake patriotism.

John McCain (R-AZ) Medicare Hypocrite and Liar

Despite Proposing $1.3 Trillion In Medicare Cuts Last Year, McCain Condemns Much Smaller Cuts In Senate Bill

McCain was for far more drastic Medicare cuts before he was against them. In October 2008, the McCain campaign announced that the Senator would pay for his health plan “with major reductions to Medicare and Medicaid…in a move that independent analysts estimate could result in cuts of $1.3 trillion over 10 years to the government programs.” Those cuts would have reduced Medicare and Medicaid spending by as much as 20% over 10 years and cut into benefits.

In 1997, McCain (along with many Democrats) voted for a series of Medicare cuts as part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. That act decreased Medicare spending by 12.7% over 10 years and instituted the kind of payment updates that the Senate bill is now recommending. In 1995, moreover, Republicans sought to cut 14% from projected Medicare spending over seven years and force millions of elderly recipients into managed health care programs or HMOs. As Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich admitted, “We don’t want to get rid of it in round one because we don’t think it’s politically smart,” he said. “But we believe that it’s going to wither on the vine because we think [seniors] are going to leave it voluntarily.”

Seniors and concerned Americans might want to send John an e-mail and ask him why he has abandoned traditional American values that include having honorable and honest debates about the issues.

Conservative Astroturf - Seniors Beware of 60plus

Conservative Astroturf - Seniors Beware of 60plus

Conspiracists from right-wing talk radio to street corner screamers to Republican members of Congress—all maintain that the provision and the health care bill that says Medicare will pay for the consultation if you want to get a living will, even though was that championed by conservative pro-life Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia, that‘s actually, secretly a plot to kill your grandparents.

The theory has been presented as fact by Republican members of Congress on the floor of the House of Representatives. It has been promoted by conservative talk show hosts on both radio and on television. It has been Facebook-ed by prominent Republican leaders, like Sarah Palin, who says that she‘s fearful that Obama‘s “death panels” will want to kill her parents.

And now, this bizarre, completely inaccurate, scare-the-seniors, “living wills are really a secret euthanasia mandate” conspiracy theory is the subject of a new television ad that is running nationwide.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) -at link

NARRATOR: For seniors, this will mean long waits for care, cuts to MRIs, CAT Scans, and other vital tests. Seniors may lose their own doctors. The government, not doctors, will decide if older patients are worth the cost.

Tell Congress don‘t pay for health care reform on the backs of our seniors. They‘ve sacrificed enough.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: The government will decide if older patients are worth the cost. Death panels, that sounds awful. It also sounds really made up.

As you may have seen at the end of that ad there, the organization that‘s behind this ad is called the 60-plus Association. What‘s the 60 Plus Association? I am so glad you asked.

As we‘ve done with some of the other groups pushing this kind of misinformation about health care reform, we decided to find out exactly who they are.

60 Plus is a registered non-profit organization. They‘re based in Alexandria, Virginia. On their Web site, they describe themselves as a, quote, “non-partisan seniors advocacy group.” Non-partisan.

A look at the group‘s leadership seems to suggest at least a slightly partisan tilt. The president of 60 Plus is a gentleman named Jim Martin. You may remember him from some of his previous and recent advocacy work, such as the Public Service Research Council otherwise known as Americans Against Union Control of Government. He was also involved with the National Conservative Political Action Committee. Hmm, non-partisan.

Alongside Mr. Martin is the group‘s honorary chairman, Roger Zion, who the Web site itself promotes as, quote, “one of Washington‘s leading spokesman for the conservative cause.” Indeed, Roger Zion is a former Republican congressman from Indiana who authored new book called, “The Republican Challenge.”

That‘s who‘s running this non-partisan group that‘s currently running ads scaring old people about President Obama‘s health care reform plans.

And who has a record of funding this organization 60 Plus? Well, when 60 Plus started lobbying against prescription drug reform at the state level a few years ago, AARP actually looked into who was behind them. And they found that, quote, “virtually all of their largest contributions in recent years have come from the same source—the nation‘s pharmaceutical industry.”

In 2003, the drug-maker Pfizer paid 60 Plus to help defeat prescription drug legislation in Minnesota and in New Mexico. According to the AARP‘s investigation, Pfizer, quote, “hired Bonner & Associates, a Washington-based firm that specializes in ‘Astroturf lobbying.‘ The firm‘s paid callers, reading from scripts that identified them as representatives of 60 Plus urged residents to ask their governors to veto the legislation. Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. later said it had paid Bonner & Associates to make the calls.”

Why does Bonner & Associates sound so familiar? Oh, yes, they‘re the firm that‘s now being investigated by Congress after they admitted to stealing letterhead and writing fake letters to impersonate groups like the NAACP in their coal industry-funded efforts to defeat climate legislation. Same guys.

60 Plus also appears to have had ties in the past to the platonic form of Washington things or people to whom it is best not to have ties. That, of course, would be Jack Abramoff. According to a “Mother Jones” magazine investigation, Jack Abramoff once instructed an Indian tribe to donate 60 Plus, saying that that would help garner support for their legislative causes with the House GOP leadership.

60 Plus is well-known in Republican and conservative circles. And like other corporate-funded P.R. operations, it often takes on causes that you wouldn‘t logically connect to their stated purpose. The 60 Plus Association, which again, bills itself as a seniors advocacy group, they took on a subject they want us to believe is near and dear to the hearts of seniors.

Back in 2003, it was the issue of nuclear waste, urging Congress to, quote, “move forward and approve the safe storage of nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain.” Because seniors love nuclear waste being stored in Nevada. Old people love that.

As we‘ve reported on this show before, the campaign against health care reform in this country is being brought to you by professional, corporate-funded, Republican-staffed political P.R. operations. In this case, an organization that promotes itself as non-partisan but appears to be anything but. These are professional P.R. operatives that are scaring real Americans with increasingly paranoid and kooky lies about health care. And they‘re getting rich in the process, thanks to the largess of extremely interested parties who are more than willing to pay for their services.

Also see, 60plus and their previous efforts to "privatize social security", you know give your retirement safety net to the same people that caused the economic melt down on Wall St.

60plus says they are a grassroots organization that truly represents seniors and is all about telling the truth, "Sensitive" Oil Industry Memo Lays Out Plan For Astroturf Rallies Against Climate Change Bill

The memo -- sent by the American Petroleum Institute and obtained by Greenpeace, which sent it to reporters -- urges oil companies to recruit their employees for events that will "put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy," and will urge senators to "avoid the mistakes embodied in the House climate bill."

API tells TPMmuckraker that the campaign is being funded by a coalition of corporate and conservative groups that includes the anti-health-care-reform group 60 Plus, FreedomWorks, and Grover Norquist's Americans For Tax Reform.

The memo, signed by API president Jack Gerard, asks recipients to give API "the name of one central coordinator for your company's involvement in the rallies."

And it warns: "Please treat this information as sensitive ... we don't want critics to know our game plan."

Aside from the astroturf nature of the planned events, which appear aimed at passing off industry employees as independent citizens, the memo also raises questions about the positions of several major oil companies on the issue of climate change. BP and Shell both are members of API, and also of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of groups that supports Waxman-Markey, the very climate change legislation the memo criticizes.

API has spent over $3 million lobbying against that bill this year.

Some Conspiracies are True, WMD and Iraq

Some Conspiracies are True, WMD and Iraq
With its troops no longer engaged in military operations inside Iraq, Great Britain has been liberated politically to conduct a postmortem of that conflict, including the sensitive issue of the primary justification used by then Prime Minister Tony Blair for going to war, namely Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, or WMD.

The failure to find any WMD in Iraq following the March 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of that country by US and British troops continues to haunt those who were involved in making the decision for war. The issue of Iraqi WMD, and the role it played in influencing the decision for war, is at the centre of the ongoing Iraq war inquiry being conducted by Sir John Chilcot.

Among the more compelling testimonies provided to date has been that of Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to the US, who served in that capacity during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Meyer convincingly portrayed an environment where the decision by the US to invade Iraq, backed by Blair, precluded any process (such as viable UN weapons inspections) that sought to compel Iraq to prove it had no WMD. Rather, Great Britain and the US were left "scrambling" to find evidence of a "smoking gun" to prove Iraq indeed possessed the WMD it was accused of having.

In short, Saddam had been found guilty of possessing WMD, and his sentence had been passed down by Washington and London void of any hard evidence that such weapons, or even related programmes, even existed. The sentence meted out – regime termination – mandated such a massive deployment of troops and material that all but the wilfully blind or intentionally ignorant had to know by the early autumn of 2002 that war with Iraq was inevitable. One simply does not initiate the movement of hundreds of thousands of troops, thousands of armoured vehicles and aircraft, and dozens of ships on a whim or to reinforce an idle threat.

President George Bush was able to disguise his blatant militarism behind the false sincerity of his ally Blair and his own secretary of state, Colin Powell. The president's task was made far easier given the role of useful idiot played by much of the mainstream media in the US and Britain, where reporters and editors alike dutifully repeated both the hyped-up charges levied against Iraq and the false pretensions that a diplomatic solution was being sought.

The tragic final act of the farce directed by Bush and Blair was the theatre of war justification known as UN weapons inspections. Having played the WMD card so forcefully in an effort to justify war with Iraq, the US (and by extension, Britain) were compelled once again to revisit the issue of disarmament. But the reality was that disarming Iraq was the furthest thing from the mind of either Bush or Blair. The decision to use military force to overthrow Saddam was made by these two leaders independent of any proof that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. Having found Iraq guilty, the last thing those who were positioning themselves for war wanted was to re-engage a process that not only had failed to uncover any evidence Iraq's retention of WMD in the past, but was actually positioned to produce fact-based evidence that would either contradict or significantly weaken the case for war already endorsed by Bush and Blair.

The US and Britain had both abandoned aggressive UN weapons inspections in the spring of 1998. UN weapons inspectors were able and willing to conduct intrusive no-notice inspections of any site inside Iraq, including those associated with the Iraqi president, if it furthered their mandate of disarmament. But the US viewed such inspections as useful only in so far as they either manufactured a crisis that produced justification for military intervention (as was the case with inspections in March and December 1998), or sustained the notion of continued Iraqi non-compliance so as to justify the continuation of economic sanctions. An inspection process that diluted arguments of Iraq's continued retention of WMD by failing to uncover any hard evidence that would sustain such allegations, or worse, sustain Iraq's contention that it had no such weaponry, was not in the interest of US policy objectives that sought regime change, and as such required the continuation of stringent economic sanctions linked to Iraq's disarmament obligation.

The British were never willing (or able) to confront meaningfully the American policy of abusing the legitimate inspection-based mandate of the UN inspectors. Instead, London sought to manage inspection-based confrontation by insisting that before any intrusive inspection could be carried out, it would have to be backed by high-quality intelligence. But even this position collapsed in the face of an American decision, made in April 1998, to stop supporting aggressive inspections altogether.

In the end, the British were left with the role of fabricating legitimacy for an American policy of terminating weapons inspections in Iraq, supplying dated intelligence of questionable veracity about a secret weapons cache being stored in the basement of a Ba'ath party headquarters in Baghdad, which was used to trigger an inspection the US hoped the Iraqis would balk at. When the Iraqis (as hoped) balked, the US ordered the inspectors out of Iraq, leading to the initiation of Operation Desert Fox, a 72-hour bombing campaign designed to ensure that Iraq would not allow the return of UN inspectors, effectively keeping UN sanctions "frozen" in place.

As of December 1998, both the US and Britain knew there was no "smoking gun" in Iraq that could prove that Saddam's government was retaining or reconstituting a WMD capability. Nothing transpired between that time and when the decision was made in 2002 to invade Iraq that fundamentally altered that basic picture.

But having decided on war using WMD as the justification, both the US and Great Britain began the process of fabricating a case after the fact. Lacking new intelligence data on Iraqi WMD, both nations resorted to either recycling old charges that had been disproved by UN inspectors in the past, or fabricating new charges that would not withstand even the most cursory of investigations.

The reintroduction of UN weapons inspectors into Iraq in November 2002 was counterproductive for those who were using WMD as an excuse for war. This was aptly demonstrated when, in the first weeks following their return to Iraq, the inspectors discredited almost all of the intelligence-based charges both the US and Britain had levelled against Iraq, while failing to uncover any evidence of the massive stockpile of WMD that Iraq had been accused of retaining.

The decision for war had been made independently of any viable intelligence information on Iraqi WMD. As such, the work of the UN weapons inspectors inside Iraq following their return in November 2002 was not a factor in influencing the lead-up to the actual invasion of Iraq. Having decided that Saddam was guilty of possessing WMD, the failure of the UN weapons inspectors to uncover evidence of such retention made their efforts not only irrelevant, but undesirable. The inconvenience of the UN weapons inspectors when it comes to the truth about the lead-up to the war with Iraq continues to this day.

The parade of British diplomats and officials appearing before the Chilcot hearings rightly point out the absolute lack of any "smoking gun" concerning Iraq and WMD. But until Chilcot receives testimony from those best positioned to speak about Iraq's WMD programmes, namely the UN weapons inspectors themselves, all the hearings will succeed in doing is sustain the false appearance of well-meaning British officials, stampeded into a war with Iraq by an overbearing American ally, looking in vain for a "smoking gun" that would justify their decision to invade. The evidence needed to undermine any WMD-based case for war, derived from the work of the UN weapons inspectors, was always available to those officials in a position to weigh in on this matter, but either never consulted or deliberately ignored.

There is a big difference between searching for a "smoking gun" and searching for the truth. By ignoring and/or undermining the work of the UN weapons inspectors in the lead-up to the war with Iraq, British officials demonstrated that they were not interested in the truth about Iraqi WMD, a fact that testimony provided by the likes of Sir Christopher Meyer alludes to, but falls short of actually stating.

The search for truth can be an inconvenient process, especially when it threatens to expose potentially illegal activities in the prosecution of an unpopular war. Until he calls upon UN weapons inspectors themselves to deliver testimony before his inquiry, Sir John Chilcot perpetuates the perception that Britain simply can't handle the truth when it comes to uncovering the level of official British culpability in the deliberate fabrication of a case for war against Iraq that everyone knew, or should have known, was false.

America's Collective Short Memory and Economics

America's Collective Short Memory and Economics

Americans are often praised for their resilience in the face of calamity, but there is another quality that seems to be in greater supply these days: willful amnesia. An August Gallup Poll showed that 65 percent of Americans oppose another economic stimulus even though the first one, which was inadequate by most economists' calculations, saved or created roughly 650,000 jobs. A more recent Gallup survey had 45 percent of Americans believing that current government regulation of business and industry was too great - a 10-year high. Never mind that it was the lack of regulation that got us into our current economic predicament. Regulation is so last year. In the ingenious film "Memento,'' the protagonist had lost his capacity to remember anything. It now seems as if we live in a memento nation - a place where we too instantly forget what's happened to us.

It wasn't always this way. When Herbert Hoover and his fellow Republicans dithered while Americans sunk into an economic slough in the early 1930s, they were rewarded with a generation of Democratic hegemony, and Hoover's name was eternally blackened. Similarly, when Lyndon Johnson presided over both domestic racial chaos and a military cataclysm in Vietnam, he was rewarded with the Nixon presidency. Only Watergate spared the Democrats further electoral indignities.

These punishments were not only right; they were essential to the functioning of a democracy because they reinforced accountability. If you screw up, you lose, which is exactly how it should be.

Accountability, however, is predicated on remembering who did the screwing up and what the screwing up was. That's why there's a problem when a society suddenly forgets what failed in the past - say Hoover's unwillingness to stimulate the economy or Bush's unwillingness to police Wall Street. The philosopher George Santayana famously said that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. We have been living Santayana's dictum.

But if memory loss is the problem, the deeper issue is why we seem to have suddenly lost our memory. In looking for an answer to why we have national amnesia, one might look first to the concept of memory itself. A common memory is the consequence of shared experiences and information. Americans suffered the Great Depression together. They maintained a vivid memory of that pain, a collective memory, from personal experience but also from reading the same newspapers, listening to the same radio programs, watching the same movies. In short, memory was created not only personally but culturally.

Likewise, Americans certainly disagreed about the war in Vietnam, but they watched the same images of the war on television and read the same AP dispatches. We were a nation united by information and memory.

Things have certainly changed, so much so that the United States is something of a misnomer. The institutions that helped forge collective memories have long been in decline. Movies, newspapers, and mass circulation magazines are all gasping. Broadcast television has been usurped by cable television and the Internet, which provide a plethora of images and ideas but which are far more likely to divide us than to unite us, giving us each the images and spin we prefer. Put simply, Americans probably share less now than at any time since the rise of the mass media early in the last century, including shared memories.

What is more, the loss of collective memory has been accelerated by the speed with which we receive information. Both cable news and the Internet place a high premium on "churn'' - on providing a new story or new scoop every few minutes.

Whether this is a function of our own growing impatience or a cause of that impatience is difficult to say, but cable television and the Internet contribute to a national Attention Deficit Disorder. They disrupt continuity, break the chain of cause and effect, detach memory from action, and heighten the moment at the expense of history and the bigger picture that history provides.

In "Memento,'' the hero, unable to remember anything, is compelled to live moment by moment, without the past ever informing the present. The here and now obliterates the there and then.

We operate similarly. We not only live in a society increasingly without memory; we live in a society in which the present is unmoored, making anything that happens right now far more important than anything that has happened before. Hence, if the economy hasn't recovered, it must be President Obama's fault since he is currently president. Or if Congress hasn't enacted health reform yet, it must be the fault of the Democrats since they are the ones in majority, the history of health reform notwithstanding. Or if deficits are growing, it must mean we should stop stimulating the economy since deficits are the issue of the moment. The present moment is everything.

However much this obsession with the here and now destroys accountability, there is an additional danger to a society that lives in the moment. When our actions and opinions are no longer grounded in a larger context, we are also much more susceptible to slogans and clichés that take the place of experience and memory. Government is bad, deficits are bad, military deliberations are bad. If you repeat these mantras endlessly, the memories of government efficacy, productive deficit spending, and the catastrophes of not deliberating over military strategy all disappear. Slogans replace sense.

Santayana probably wouldn't be surprised by a society that hasn't learned from its past. That was, after all, the point of his quotation. But one wonders what he would make of a society that can't even remember its past - a society that thinks every problem suddenly springs up anew and has no memory to tell it how it used to cope. That society is déjà vu all over again. And that society is ours.

by Neal Gabler. Reprinted for educational purposes.