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15 Aug 2009 14:18

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U.S.: Feel the deluge of health care political ads? There’s a reason why

  • $57 million on political ads, most of it in the last 45 days source

15 Aug 2009 13:16

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Politics: Yes or no? Rep. John Culberson spins hard on “Hardball”

  • Both sides look bad here to some degree – there’s smoke coming out of the ears of “Hardball’s” Lawrence O’Donnell, while Rep. John Culberson does everything he can to avoid saying “yes” or “no” to questions which circle around whether Medicare and Social Security are socialism, and how he can support them when he doesn’t support health care. It gets ugly, even for a political debate on “Hardball.”source

14 Aug 2009 10:43

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Politics, U.S.: On death panels and bold-faced lies spread about health care

  • I guess what surprised me is the ferocity, it’s much stronger than I expected. It’s people who are ideologically opposed to Mr. Obama, and this is the opportunity to weaken the president.
  • AARP executive vice president John Rother • Which supports changing the health care plan, on attacks the plan has received, including suggestions of a “death panel” by Sarah Palin, a claim which is completely false but has much more traction than it should. The claims have much in common with the claims used to kill the health care movement in 1994. One conservative commentator from that era who flipped sides, David Brock, put it best: “In the 90s, every misrepresentation under the sun was made about the Clinton plan and there was no real capacity to push back. Now, there is that capacity.” • source

12 Aug 2009 23:41

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Biz, Politics: The campaign to kill Glenn Beck’s advertisers is kinda working

  • Former advertisers
    1. State Farm
    2. Lawyers.com
    3. Procter & Gamble
    4. Progressive
    5. S.C. Johnson
    6. GEICO
    7. Men’s Wearhouse
    8. Sargento
    Beck’s advertiser list has been cut significantly after an orchestrated campaign to attack the Fox News talk-show yakker for comments like those in the video above. And it’s had an effect. Thanks to left-leaning organizations like Media Matters taking Beck to task for racist and/or below-the-belt attacks on Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, these advertisers are now out.source

12 Aug 2009 21:19

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Politics: Crazy town hall moment of the day: Rosa Parks + ripped poster

  • The video
  • The recap A black woman is sitting at a town hall hosted by Claire McCaskill yesterday. A reporter, whose interest has been piqued, checks out her Rosa Parks poster. Some guy sees the poster, steals it from the woman, and rips it up. Guess who gets booed and taken outside? Obvious question: How is this not racism? At some point, you have to watch these videos and shake your head. This is democracy? This isn’t people just being jerks? source

12 Aug 2009 21:09

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U.S.: To call this year’s deficit freaking huge is to understate

  • $1.8 trillion the size of the deficit that the government has this year source

11 Aug 2009 10:42

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U.S.: Most of New Jersey doesn’t want their state to be like “The Sopranos”

  • 93% of Jersey thinks corruption’s a problem; the rest is in on it source
 

09 Aug 2009 12:05

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Politics: Granola-eating hippies ask: Could the U.S. go fascist?

  • Fascism only grows in the disturbed soil of a mature democracy in crisis.
  • Sara Robinson of the Campaign for America’s Future • In a column on Alternet discussing whether fascism could happen in the U.S. someday, particularly in the wake of harsh protests during the Obama administration in recent weeks. Robinson notes that “it’s always rooted in the promise of restoring lost national pride by resurrecting the culture’s traditional myths and values.” We personally think both sides of this debate need to take a chill pill, go to a bar and drink a cool PBR. • source

07 Aug 2009 16:26

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Politics: Political polls based on scientific facts? Usually a bad idea.

  • 51% of Democrats think that America and Africa were once part of the same continent, a proven scientific fact that shouldn’t be the basis of a poll question source

06 Aug 2009 20:26

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U.S.: Example No. 1 of GOP Obama fury: The Sonia Sotomayor vote

  • 31 Senators voted against her, all of them Republicans source