Obviously this clip got slurped up by TPM because of the blatant hypocrisy in asking for earmarks, and then saying you're voting against the bill because it contains earmarks, but there's a subtler point worth highlighting as well.

Look at this exchange:

"But you favor earmarks is what you're saying," Hemmer said.

"I do not," Cornyn insisted. "I think we need an earmark moratorium -- which I voted for -- for two years, until we fix this broken system."

At the risk of overstating it, Cornyn is unwittingly repudiating the foundation of conservative ideology with his argument.

He's saying that individual responsibility, won't keep him from doing (purportedly) unethical things for his own self-interest unless there's government regulation keeping him honest.

In other words, not only is "legislating morality" possible, it's the only way to make sociopaths like him behave properly.

>> ^blankfist:

First, I don't know the optimal market cost for driving on roads. No one does except the government

Then why are you questioning it? My point is, how do you know it's "too much"? Yeah, there's only one end-user provider, but private companies do all the actual work of building and maintaining roads.

Why not go ask some of them how much it costs to maintain a road?

California publishes how much they spend on it, if the two costs are wildly different, you've got the makings of a huge story to go to the press with.

>> ^blankfist:
When the gasoline tax was proposed that's what it was said to be for. Of course government changed its mind and dumped all that money into a general fund, but that's what it was designed for: to pay for roads.

Actually, in googling I saw that California is still playing by your rules on this one. Sure, if they pass a law they can waive the earmarking of those funds, but like I said, it's not a Constitutional thing that keeps the firewall in place.

If it falls short of what the cost is to maintain the roads, would you support a tax increase to close the budget gap?

>> ^blankfist:
Imagine how many people drive on the roads every day. Do the numbers. That's a helluva lotta revenue. Surely that could cover costs of laying asphalt. That aside, the roads out here are crap by and large. Potholes everywhere. It must be that the billions the government receives isn't enough. Go figure.
Ever occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, some of that money is being siphoned off or spent inefficiently or spent on inflated costs or used to pay inflated salaries or any number of other things than efficiently on the maintenance of roads?

How many miles of roadways are there in California? How many square feet of surface that the DOT has responsibility for? Have you ever considered that maybe you're getting an awesome deal?

And of course, it's quite likely that someone, somewhere in the government is stealing from it. But the same is true of any organization.

If you have some universal fix for purging all corruption from humanity, please, enlighten us.

>> ^blankfist:
Lastly, I don't think I should have to start an advocacy group to lessen the tax or fines levied against me.

Of course you don't, it's the same story with you every time. You think everything government does should be perfect and free, and you shouldn't have to lift a finger -- even to complain -- to fix it when it fails to live up to your impossible expectations.

It's your government. If you don't want to participate in making it better, don't expect the rest of society to cry for you because your mail gets bent.

@NetRunner, I'm not Republican. You seem to forget that. Bush was a terrible statist president. So is Obama. To me, they're almost identical.

Now that we cleared that up, I won't let you get off by answering a question with a question. So, again, why hasn't your Democratic corporatist president, Obama, done away with farm subsidies?

He seems to hold your beliefs almost exactly, right? So why hasn't he ended farm subsidies? Why hasn't he ended the war? He promised to bring troops home within 16 months, did he not? What ever happened to 'Sunlight before Signing'? What happened to his "net spending cut"? Is he not planning on increasing spending by $400 billion a year? What about his ban on earmarks? Et cetera, et cetera.

Is he just another politician after all? Not really the change we can believe in, huh? I guess that stings a little now, huh?

It's weird how many white people will intellectualize this issue, and discuss it as an abstract.

It's just racism. That is all that it is.

It was very clearly racism when on Morning Joe, none of the panel could keep their eyes off of Harold Ford.

Rand Paul is a racist, and so is his father. So was William Buckley, the "Grandfather" of the conservative movement. It's not difficult to discover. Lew Rockwell has all the old Ron Paul papers. They're ugly. Most of them are also homophobic, as well as misogynistic. All are clearly classist.

They are all quite hypocritical as well.

For instance, while Rand Paul claims he's a libertarian (when it suits him), he also believes in the drug war and the death penalty. He thinks that abortion is not a states issue. He also believes in subsidizing the coal industry, and %50 of his patients are Medicare recipients and is against any cuts in Medicare funding. So, basically he's just a wingnut racist Republican liar.

His father, the "World's Most Famous Libertarian" lobbied for $96.1million in Federal earmarks last year. But he doesn't want to spend a dime on giving Rosa Parks a medal? Yeah, that's not racism at all, it's just coincidental.

I don't think that it is quite as cut and dry as Maddow makes it seem here. The republicans may have been against the stimulus, but then it happened. All those tax dollars that they didn't want to see get spent DID, or at least they got earmarked for the purpose of the stimulus.

At that point, as a legislator, I suppose that one could say "NO! That is dirty money, and my state will have none of it!" But, that wouldn't really serve a practical purpose, and it would be political suicide.


Lets say you pool together with 9 friends to buy lottery tickets. Some of the group want any winnings to be split evenly 10 ways. Some want the individual holder of the ticket to get 50% of the winnings, and to split the other half among the remaining 9 members of the group. There is some debate about which method to agree to, and you decide that you like the second system where you would get 50% of the money if your ticket wins or 4.5% if another member's ticket wins. However, you are in the minority -- 6 people in the group prefer an even divide. Rather than scrapping the whole idea, your faction bows to the majority and goes along with the even divide plan.

The lottery rolls around, and one of your 9 friends has a winning ticket. You step up and ask for your 10% of the winnings, but your friend calls you a dirty, cheating hypocrite because before, you said that you would prefer the method whereby you would only be walking away with 4.5% of the winnings. Would you roll over, say "my bad", and take the lower amount even though you eventually agreed to the even divide plan? I doubt it.


I think that some of the specific examples that Maddow cites here actually are rather hypocritical stances taken by these republicans. But it is not hypocritical at ALL for a legislator who disagreed with the idea of the stimulus to ask for and demonstrate how stimulus funds can be used in their state. Their constituents paid the taxes that created the funds, just like the taxpayers in blue states. Trying to make the best out of a program, plan, or situation that you find to be flawed doesn't make you a hypocrite, it makes you practical.

I should note that I'm not personally particularly strongly pro or anti-stimulus, or pro or anti republican or democrat. I think the republicans have been making a lot of bone-headed moves recently that are extremely worthy of criticism, but this instance of "republican hypocrisy" is by no means anywhere near the forefront.

>> ^alizarin:
When they say a health care bill will cost x billion dollars how do they come up with that figure? I'm pretty sure I'm right in my assumption that that figure leaves out the amount not spent privately on health care and insurance and that it leaves out the programs that would automatically be reduced or removed once we had a decent system. So the X billion dollars should be a very big negative number if you're being intellectually honest.


You're essentially dead on. There's no attempt in the CBO reports to gauge the non-government cost impacts of any of the health care bills.

He does mention that it would reduce the deficit, though people like Foxx say that just means it's a "stealth" tax increase.

I also think the costs listed for our wars are lowball ones, and don't include things like veterans benefits, or our basic defense spending that wasn't specifically earmarked for the war. It also doesn't mention that there were no tax increases to pay for the war -- it was pure deficit spending, with no long-run value to the American people that I can discern.

Health care, on the other hand, will be a huge long-run benefit to us, and will reduce our deficit. Seems like win/win/win, even if you insist on looking at it in purely fiscal terms.

Willem Dafoe's a$$ always seems to get put on display in all the movies he's in. But I can understand that, he has a nice a$$ (even if this is coming from a str8 guy). Besides, we can all tell who will be the primary viewer of this film: women.

This film has all the earmarks of a horror-film-made-for-women. First, there is the a$$ shots of Willem Defoe. Second, there is the sex scenes-mixed-with-violence-and-horror. [I don't know ANY man who likes these kinds of scenes in horror films. Male horror film viewers like raw fear and blood & gore. I know of no men who like the sex + violence motif. I do know female horror film fans who do, though.] Then, there is the 1-on-1 nature of the relationship theme rather than the group-of-people-getting-killed-one-by-one thing that typifies most horror films and appeals mostly to male viewers. There is also the fact that the primary source of horror comes from the two characters inflicting it on each other. Definitely a female-appealing theme since it is relationship-centered more than situationally-centered. There is also the fact the couple is married. Slasher-killer horror films made for general audiences do not have married couples or if they do, they are among several such couples. In any case male viewers don't care about married couples being in the films and probably prefer they not be. Male horror film viewers are usually single and like it that way and don't really want to see married couples on film, since marriage is so... not them. Finally, the P/R around it is "gynocentric". Take a look: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jul/16/antichrist-lars-von-trier-feminism
You don't see other horror movies getting reviewed by a whole spate of feminists, do you? And these reviews are far from condemning. In fact they are practically one ad after another for it.

My analysis here is that the director/author had a stroke of marketing genius as well as inspiration, whether it arose from a serious bout of depression or not. This looks very much like it was made for a female audience characterized by women who like the horror genre (but don't want to admit it), and/or who like to watch situations that demonize men while seeing women in powerful but vulnerable (ie, victim) positions. It's perfect. It will make tons of money and probably cost very little to make. This guy will retire on it.

Freaking genius.

^ For a person who lies and twists the truth as easily as you do, I am the last person in the world you should call ignorant.

I've already caught you in several exagerations and out-right lies.

It comes naturally to you, I suppose.

The Foreign Ministry unveiled a new plan this week: Paying talkbackers to post pro-Israel responses on websites worldwide. A total of NIS 600,000 (roughly $150,000) will be earmarked to the establishment of an “Internet warfare” squad.

So, how's the pay?

You claim that Saddam was killing millions of Kurds during the no-fly zone period. Prove it.

You don't give a shit about the Kurds, and that is plain for everyone to see.

You are only using their lives to justify your racial hatred and shameless glee that so many "Arabs" are now dead.

From the Alaskan Gov's website:

Selected Accomplishments of the Palin Administration

General

Transferred more control of public issues to the local level Natural Resources
Created the Petroleum Systems Integrity Office to oversee responsible development
Held the line for Alaskans on Point Thomson that encouraged drilling
Restructured the state’s oil taxes to create a clear and equitable valuation formula for our oil and gas
Initiated and implemented the largest energy project in the world through the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act
Removed government from the dairy business and put it back into private-sector hands

Ethics

Ushered in ethics reform
Cleaned up previously accepted unethical actions affecting development

Fiscal Notes

Slowed the rate of government growth
Worked with the Legislature to place billions of dollars in savings
Vetoed hundreds of millions of dollars in capital budget line items
Reduced Alaska’s dependence on federal earmarks by nearly 85%
Eliminated state-funded personal luxuries like the jet, the chef, and junkets
Refused a pay raise, along with the Lieutenant Governor

Education

Provided unprecedented support for education initiatives Public Safety
Filled long-vacant public safety positions over the last year

Corrections

Broke ground on the new state prison

Fish and Game

Maintained biologically-sound wildlife management for abundance Environment
Established first sub-Cabinet on climate change

Legal

State’s rights protected in two recent victories handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court

The 100-Day Assault on America

by Larry Elder

Has it really been 100 days?

Aided by an eagerly compliant Democratic-controlled Congress, a sycophantic media, and a bunch of squishy Republicans, President Obama has taken the country on a radical, mind-boggling leap into collectivism.

Obama -- to use one of his favorite expressions -- doubled down, no, tripled and quadrupled down on Bush's "stimulus" and "rescue" packages, spending trillions of dollars to "bail out" financial institutions, too-big-to-fail businesses, and even deficit-running states. Obama promises to use taxpayer money to rescue "responsible homeowners" -- whatever that means -- from foreclosure, thus artificially propping up prices that shut out renters who would love to buy now-much-cheaper houses.

Obama proposes spending billions (or trillions?) more on "creating or saving" -- whatever that means -- 4 million, 3.5 million or 2.5 million jobs. Pick a number. Given the government's vast business expertise, Obama proposes spending gobs of money to "invest" in green jobs. And he's just warming up. He wants taxpayers to guarantee, presumably to all who request it, a "world-class education" -- whatever that means.

Firmly in charge of much of the domestic car industry, Obama effectively fired the CEO of General Motors. He threatens to fire still more executives in the parts of the financial services industry currently under the management, direction or control of Uncle Sam -- that eminent, well-regarded banker.

Obama blames the financial crisis on "greed" and the "lack of regulatory oversight." Funny thing about greed. Celebrated investor-turned-Obama-supporter/adviser Warren Buffett says, "Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful." Apparently, some practice good greed, while others engage in greedy greed.

As for regulation, the SEC already heavily regulates most of the troubled financial institutions. The world's largest insurer, AIG, operated under heavy regulation. The government-sponsored entities Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae -- blamed for irresponsibly buying, packaging and selling bad mortgages -- are regulated by a government agency, called the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. Its sole responsibility is to oversee those two agencies. OFHEO, shortly before the government takeover of Freddie and Fannie, gave them two thumbs up.

Did the President, after campaigning against pork and earmarks, really sign bills that include both? Yes. Will the President's new budget really triple and quadruple the annual deficit? Yes. Will the President's budget really double the national debt within a few years and then increase still more beyond that? Yes. Do the President and members of Congress, many of whom never operated so much as a T-shirt concession booth, really believe that they can "modernize" health care, thus "saving" taxpayers buckets of money? Yes.

America traditionally represents the greatest possibility of someone's going from nothing to something. Why? In theory, if not practice, the government stays out of the way and lets individuals take risks and reap rewards or accept the consequences of failure. We call this capitalism -- or, at least, we used to.

Today's global downturn reflects too much borrowing and too much lending. But would borrowers and lenders -- at least in America -- have engaged in the same kind of behavior but for artificially low interest rates under the Federal Reserve System? Would borrowers and lenders have acted as precipitously but for the existence of Fannie and Freddie, which bought up their mortgages? Would banks have so readily lent money to those who clearly could not repay it but for the Community Reinvestment Act? That law pressured banks into relaxing their normal lending standards to help low-income borrowers.

Now let's turn to Job No. 1 -- national security. We no longer call the War on Terror the "War on Terror." We no longer call Islamofascist enemy detainees "enemy detainees." The President embarked on an I'm-not-Bush and we're-sorry-for-being-arrogant international tour. To the receptive, admiring G-20 nations, the President flogged America, calling us domineering and overbearing. What did the swooning leaders give in return? Virtually nothing. He wanted more assistance in fighting the war in Afghanistan. The NATO members offered more advisers and trainers, all, mind you, out of harm's way and only on a temporary basis.

The President offered a new relationship with Iran, provided Iranians "unclenched their fist." The President even sent a shout-out video to the Iranians on one of their holidays. What did he get in return? Iran promised to continue its march toward the development of a nuclear weapon and called Israel the "most cruel and racist regime."

Obama offered North Korea a kinder, gentler foreign policy. What did he get in return? The North Koreans, in violation of a United Nations resolution, attempted to launch a long-range missile. The President condemned the act. The United Nations Security Council convened an emergency session. What happened? Nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. North Korea kicked out the U.N.'s nuclear inspectors and announced the resumption of its nuclear weapons program. And North Korea, along with Iran, arrested and imprisoned American journalists.

On the other hand, Washingtonian magazine graced us with a spiffy, Photoshopped cover of a fit and toned swimsuit-wearing President Obama. So all is not lost.

At least he looks good.

>> ^rougy:
>> ^BansheeX:
My, aren't we young and gullible.

You just made the ignore list, fuckwad.
Say hello to Quantumushroom. I'm sure you'll find you have a lot in common.
And keep pretending that you're the only person in the world who pays taxes, or that all of your taxes are wasted on "entitlements" and foolish research.
It's really the only leg you have to stand on.


Quantumushroom is an inflammatory neo-con who parrots hypocritical fiscal criticisms and pro-interventionist nonsense. What has he criticized Democrats on that Bush didn't DO when he was in office? Other than a few social issues, nothing, yet he defends the (socialist) neo-conservative party to the last.

Question is, why do you want to force others to finance things they believe are inefficient and don't want to participate in? Public schools and retirement schemes would theoretically be very easy things have opt-outs for. It's not illegal to sell education services apart from the government, or manage your own earnings for retirement. I'd prefer not to waste my time trying to convince you how Social Security and Medicare are unsustainable ponzi schemes, you've already convinced yourself of the impossible. Yet you are adamant at forcing me to participate in them with you despite my preference (after an enormous amount of research) not to devote part of my earnings there. All YOU should be concerned about, is you and those like you who believe it will work between you. Whether I believe I can save and invest my money more efficiently than the social security system shouldn't make any difference to its proponents. And the same logic goes for this fucking sea slug. A politician could come to your door with any damn reason to want money, and you'd give it to them, we already know that. But you don't own what others have or earn, so stop trying to vote in a learned minority who has doubts.

Have you even been paying attention to the stimulus packages? These people do not fucking care about you, buy a clue. If they cared about waste, Obama would have used his veto pen umpteen times already instead of verbally admonishing earmarks and the undeserved bonuses begotten by giving billions of stolen money to idiots who drove their companies into the ground. If they cared, they wouldn't brazenly state it out loud that you don't:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEfICUoWKBw

So now we have Obama's Stalinist thug government targeting individuals, for no greater reason than to deflect and misdirect taxocrats' failed porkulus bill. These bonuses are a drop in the ocean compared to their thieving "earmarks".

While you fret over these bonuses do you realize that AIG has given BILLIONS to other banks, including foreign banks?

It is time for the greed, the scamming, and the self destructive behavior to END.

^ Agreed. Congress should be dismantled.

nowhere does obama say he wants to eliminate all earmarks.

obama also makes a good point that earmarks are a tiny fraction of the budget.

i am 100% sure obama wants to save serious money, so he will be instead focussing on slashing military spending and ignoring the defence lobby...

>> ^Doc_M:
This is nicely informative but shouldn't be in "lies." It is also a nice sound-bit collection that doesn't represent reality in even a simplified reality. It is a nice warm fuzzy for leftist group-think.


First, it belongs in the channel "lies" because regardless of your opinion, it's discussing either a lie by Obama, or a lie by conservatives claiming Obama promised something he didn't.

Second, you have simply lost all ties to reality if you think this isn't something being pushed by conservatives incorrectly.

McCain promised to eliminated all earmarks, and veto every beer bill with them in it, not Obama. Obama said it was a bad practice, and was committed to reform, but never said that it would be his top/only priority to eliminate them entirely.

If you have video of Obama promising to eliminate all earmarks entirely, post it. I'll upvote it.

>> ^10040:
The Cavuto technique, Go to commercial as soon as you get pwned.


Ya no kidding dude. It is funny how television politics work.

I don't know anything about earmarks really, just what I context together from all these news shows. What is it exactly? To me it sounds like assigning to use general money for projects. Like you have x dollars allotted, then you earmark to to set it for real use. Is that about it? Cause if that is what it is, earmarks a really are a non-issue for spending...the money is already spent. Anyone have deeper knowledge into this?