Have you heard about...? (Politics edition)

[VDB]

Check out the top story and headline on fn.com right now:




So typical.

Russia's annual defense spending is about $60B. If they add $770 over 10 years, that would up the annual average to $130.

The U.S. will spend around $700B this year on defense (although total military-related spending is closer to $1+ trillion). If the automatic cuts kick in, that's about $500B over 10 years, or $50 per.

In other words, we are still on track to spend at least five times as much as Russia on defense, but according to Fox News, Obama wants to "slash" the military so severely Putin should be here to fly a fighter jet up your ass any day now.

[Hicks]

LOL

Maybe Fox didn't get the memo but Russia doesn't even make the list of top 5 military threats to the US anymore.

[VDB]

Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar hasn't actually lived in Indiana since 1977.

[kellerb]

Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar hasn't actually lived in Indiana since 1977.

And yet he's our best politician.

[VDB]

Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar hasn't actually lived in Indiana since 1977.

And yet he's our best politician.

Coincidence?

[kellerb]

Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar hasn't actually lived in Indiana since 1977.

And yet he's our best politician.

Coincidence?

Well, we started pouring the stupid directly into a water supply a few years after he left.

[VDB]

This is hilarious. (I read Fox News so you don't have to.)

Alinsky-tied group awarded $56 million federal loan for health insurance project

A Saul Alinsky-tied group has been awarded a $56 million federal loan to start up a nonprofit health insurance company -- one of several organizations across the country this week tapped to launch a new network of insurers under the sponsorship of the federal health care overhaul.

The Wisconsin group, Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative, was awarded the funding on Tuesday. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the group is expected to provide coverage statewide within five years after starting on a smaller scale in early 2014.

But Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson questioned the group's credentials -- given its affiliation and lack of experience in the insurance field.

"The indisputable fact is that Common Ground was an outgrowth of the Alinsky operation in Chicago," Wilson said. "We're not giving money to a group with experience in health care issues or in setting up exchanges. ... We're handing the money to people who have been trained by arguably the single most expert individual on community organizing in the last 100 years."

Common Ground, a Milwaukee group that dates back to 2004, is an affiliate of the Alinsky-founded Industrial Areas Foundation.

Alinsky, who died in 1972, is regarded as the godfather of community organizing but has also emerged as a bogeyman of the right. Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has weaved Alinsky's name into his campaign message, repeatedly hammering President Obama as an "Alinsky radical." Like Alinsky, Obama traces his political and activist beginnings to the Chicago world of community organizing.

...

Could that "bogeyman" line have been any more disingenuous? The entire existence of this article, its headline and first several paragraphs and inclusion on the front page of FN.com fuels the popular belief on the right that this mysterious, 40-years-dead dude is legitimately a nefarious force who puppets Obama from the grave. And then buried down in the sixth paragraph, the author goes "hmmm, isn't this curious, conservatives seem to have some strange beef with this guy." Hysterical!

Also, other than making reference to Alinsky as a "community organizer" (sounds vaguely leftist, and at any rate we know it's bad because it's something Obama did) and mentioning that Gingrich doesn't like him, the article fails to explain how Alinsky was a bad and dangerous guy or why this federal loan is at all a newsworthy event.

[sls.stormyrider]

the middle continues to drop out.
too bad, Snow is one of the few sane ones left

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/us/after-many-tough-choices-the-choice-to-quit.html?_r=1&hp

WASHINGTON — The looming Senate vote on a Republican plan to give employers the right to withdraw health care coverage based on religious and moral convictions put Senator Olympia J. Snowe in a tough but familiar position: weighing her own views as a Republican centrist against pressure from fellow Republicans to support the party position.

Olympia Snowe Won't Seek Re-election (February 29, 2012)

A longtime advocate of increasing access to health care and one of a dwindling number of Republican backers of abortion rights, Ms. Snowe believed that the language was too broad and could have unintended consequences. At the same time, an embattled Republican colleague, Senator Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts, had publicly backed it, and a "no" vote from Ms. Snowe, of Maine, could isolate him as he sought to fend off anger in his heavily Democratic state.

It was the type of difficult choice that led to her surprise announcement on Tuesday to give up on the Senate, and it reflected growing uneasiness among Republican moderates with the return to a focus on social issues and with demands for party purity in the Republican electorate.

"Everybody's got to rethink how we approach legislating and governance in the United States Senate," Ms. Snowe said in an interview on Wednesday. She shook her head at how "we've miniaturized the process in the United States Senate," no longer allowing lawmakers to shape or change legislation and turning every vote into a take-it-or-leave-it showdown intended to embarrass the opposition.

The vote set for Thursday, framed as a choice between contraceptive coverage and religious freedom, was not the reason Ms. Snowe made her announcement, she said. Her retirement decision was bigger than any one vote. But people familiar with her thinking say the re-emergence of such hot-button social issues helped nudge her to the exit.

Georgia Chomas, a cousin of the senator who described herself as more like a sister, said social conservatives and Tea Party activists in Maine were hounding her at home, while party leaders in Washington had her hemmed in and steered the legislative agenda away from the matters she cared about.

"There was a constant, constant struggle to accommodate everyone, and a lot of pressure on her from the extreme right," Ms. Chomas said from her real estate office in Auburn, Me. "And she just can't go there."

Mike Castle, a former moderate Republican House member from Delaware and a friend of Ms. Snowe and her husband, expressed a similar view.

"All of a sudden we're talking about abortion. We're talking about contraception. We're talking about social issues that were not that big a deal," said Mr. Castle, who lost his 2010 Senate bid to a Tea Party insurgency during the primary.

"Senator Snowe wants to focus on bringing down the deficit and getting the economy on track, and that's where the priorities should be," said Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, another moderate who served with Ms. Snowe in the Senate before leaving the Republican Party.

With the announcement by Ms. Snowe, the political center has all but given way in Congress, with both Republicans and Democrats who fashioned themselves as common-sense moderates stepping down or being booted out.

Abortion-rights groups say that only one Republican senator who strongly supports abortion rights, Susan Collins of Maine, will remain in 2013. Mr. Brown and Senator Mark Steven Kirk, Republican of Illinois, consider themselves pro-abortion rights, and Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, has a mixed record on abortion issues.

Groups that seek to elect Republicans who favor abortion rights still exist, but they struggle.

"When you're looking at the impact of all this, it should be of great concern to the United States of America," said Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a conservative Democrat up for re-election.

Ben Nelson of Nebraska, the senator often considered the most conservative Democrat, and Ms. Snowe, seen as the most liberal Republican, will both be gone next year, as will Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, an independent who left a Democratic Party that would not tolerate his pro-Iraq war stand. They follow a parade of centrists out the Senate doors in recent years, including the Democrats Blanche Lincoln and Evan Bayh; a Republican-turned-Democrat, Arlen Specter; and two Republicans-turned-independents, James M. Jeffords and Mr. Chafee.

Without such dealmakers, it is anyone's guess how major decisions on the tax code, budget deficit and entitlement changes will be made next year, regardless of the victors in the November election.

"I'll be interested in how all this is resolved, but I'm going to be reading about it in the paper in a duck blind," Mr. Nelson said.

Christie Whitman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey and Environmental Protection Agency administrator, pointed to social issues as the core problem in the polarization of American politics.

As anger over the state of politics increases apathy, "only the most rabid partisans vote," so political strategists steer campaigns to issues that turn them on, said Ms. Whitman, who supports abortion rights. For Republicans, those are often social issues like abortion, gay marriage and contraception. But the rise of a new strain of fiscal conservatism has also led to moralistic portrayals of votes on spending and the debt limit. And when issues are framed around morality, compromise becomes very difficult.

"You can't compromise with someone who's amoral," she said.

The return of social issues has put the dwindling center of both parties in a vise. Senator Manchin said he planned to vote for the health care amendment, written by Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, to allow employers to withdraw health care coverage based on conscience or religion. But he has found himself crosswise with his state's Right to Life organization because he opposed cutting off all federal funding to Planned Parenthood, since he was satisfied that none of those funds went to abortion services.

"Is there pressure? Sure, there's pressure from all sides," Mr. Manchin said.

Ms. Snowe may have just grown fed up. At raucous Republican caucuses in February, her name was greeted with jeers from some Tea Party activists. Republicans had seized control of the governor's mansion and the State Legislature in 2010, but for the most ardent conservatives, it was not enough, Ms. Chomas said. Ms. Snowe had turned 65. Ms. Chomas's mother, who was like a mother to Ms. Snowe, had died, followed by the mother of Ms. Snowe's husband, John R. McKernan Jr., and the mother of her late husband, Peter Snowe.

"I understand her legacy," said Ms. Chomas. "I just want her to be happy, and happy has been gone for a while."

[nab]

the middle continues to drop out.

Too bad indeed. 

[runawayjimbo]

I'd imagine there's no love lost here, but Andrew Breitbart died last night.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/73493.html

Andrew Breitbart dead at 43

Crusading conservative journalist and activist Andrew Breitbart died suddenly early Thursday morning in Los Angeles at the age of 43.

"Andrew passed away unexpectedly from natural causes shortly after midnight this morning," Big Journalism author Larry Solov wrote on Big Journalism, one of Breitbart's websites. "We have lost a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a dear friend, a patriot and a happy warrior."

Breitbart was walking near his house in the Brentwood neighborhood shortly after midnight Thursday when he collapsed, his father-in-law Orson Bean said, according to the Associated Press. Fox host Sean Hannity said Friday morning that Breitbart had heart problems about a year ago.

...

[VDB]

Never knew Brietbard personally, of course, so I can only comment on what I've seen on TV. He always came across as a brash, aggressive ideologue who went for shock value as much as anything else.

[runawayjimbo]

Never knew Brietbard personally, of course, so I can only comment on what I've seen on TV. He always came across as a brash, aggressive ideologue who went for shock value as much as anything else.

I think that's definitely the persona he was going for. From what I've read, he seemed to revel in the "How uncomfortable can I make people feel?" role. But by all accounts, from both left and right, he was a guy with whom people truly enjoyed interacting. I heard him on XM a couple of times and when he wasn't trying to be a shock pundit, he was very interesting and definitely hilarious talking about pretty much any subject.

I don't agree with everything he did or believed, but I think the key point that's often looked over because of his brashness is that he helped enhance our lives by changing the way information flows. He was instrumental in the getting both Drudge and HuffPo off the ground (I didn't know that about HuffPo until yesterday). Sites like Real Clear Politics or Daily Kos or AlterNet are as prominent today because of people like him. He didn't create "new media", but he sure as hell helped it flourish.

People like talk about how important it is to remove the rigid, establishment-dominated barriers to spreading ideas and give power back to the people in shaping the political and cultural debate. Breitbart actually made that happen. So, I won't miss the shamefully edited "documentaries." I won't miss the condescending arrogance he often put forth. But I will miss the fact that a true champion of free speech and a pioneer of the sharing of information is gone.

RIP

[twatts]

Never knew Brietbard personally, of course, so I can only comment on what I've seen on TV. He always came across as a brash, aggressive ideologue who went for shock value as much as anything else.

I think that's definitely the persona he was going for. From what I've read, he seemed to revel in the "How uncomfortable can I make people feel?" role. But by all accounts, from both left and right, he was a guy with whom people truly enjoyed interacting. I heard him on XM a couple of times and when he wasn't trying to be a shock pundit, he was very interesting and definitely hilarious talking about pretty much any subject.

I don't agree with everything he did or believed, but I think the key point that's often looked over because of his brashness is that he helped enhance our lives by changing the way information flows. He was instrumental in the getting both Drudge and HuffPo off the ground (I didn't know that about HuffPo until yesterday). Sites like Real Clear Politics or Daily Kos or AlterNet are as prominent today because of people like him. He didn't create "new media", but he sure as hell helped it flourish.

People like talk about how important it is to remove the rigid, establishment-dominated barriers to spreading ideas and give power back to the people in shaping the political and cultural debate. Breitbart actually made that happen. So, I won't miss the shamefully edited "documentaries." I won't miss the condescending arrogance he often put forth. But I will miss the fact that a true champion of free speech and a pioneer of the sharing of information is gone.

RIP

I bet if we had a chance, we would ahve found his politics a lot more centrist than he espoused...  I think he was a hawker and sold right wing media, but didn't necessarily believe in his product...  I think you can see that in how he helped launch internet media outlets on both sides of the aisle... 

Props to the man. 

Terry

[Poster Nutbag]

It seems we have a new conspiracy theory in the mix.. LoL!!

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/people-who-think-president-obama-killed-andrew-bre

[birdman]

So I see they moved the next G8 meeting from Chicago to Camp David. Funny that the "irrelevant" OWS movement has forced these world leaders into meeting at a military base.