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Tortured Logic

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Conservatives are trying to promote the idea that former president Bush deserves some, if not most, of the credit for finding Osama bin Laden, and that torture provided the information that helped find him.

For example, Representative Steve King (R-IA) wrote “Wonder what President Obama thinks of water boarding now?” and the Tea Party Express tweeted “We hope all those who attacked the CIA interrogations of detained terrorists will now apologize and shut up – you were wrong!” Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld is even trying to give the lion’s share of the credit to policies that he himself put in place during the Bush administration.

But if you look closely at what they are saying, you can tell that they are bending the truth. Even Rumsfeld hedges by saying that the crucial intelligence “very well could have been partly a result of the interviews that took place at Guantánamo.” In other words, he doesn’t know.

And in fact, once the full story was published, officials admitted that the critical piece of information that Rumsfeld, King, and the others were referring to — the nickname of one of bin Laden’s trusted couriers — was NOT revealed during water boarding or other harsh interrogation. It was revealed during standard questioning. I repeat: Standard questioning gave us information that water boarding did not.

So to make this perfectly clear, water boarding is torture, and torture is illegal. We have hanged enemies for using water boarding for interrogation. And there is still absolutely no evidence that water boarding yielded any information that could not have been gotten though legal interrogation.

Conservatives can bluster all they want and claim that these techniques work, but it is just as likely that torture was the reason why Bush was not able to find bin Laden, while Obama was able to find and kill him. After all, Obama closed the black-ops prisons where those terrorists were tortured.

However, I would be perfectly happy to give the Bush administration complete credit now for finding bin Laden, but on one condition: that the Bush administration takes full credit for the financial collapse and financial meltdown that Obama is still pulling us out of.

UPDATE:

© Joel Pett

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Texas Yacht Not

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

A few days ago I posted an article about how local politicians are claiming they have to give tax breaks to rich people or else the wealthy will move somewhere else — despite the fact that more than one study has shown that this is completely false. Well, here’s an even crazier example.

The Texas state budget is running a $27 billion deficit and Republicans are proposing massive cuts to education, nursing homes, and other government services. But that isn’t stopping them from giving a big tax break to — I’m not making this up — yacht owners.

Republicans say they have to put a cap on sales taxes paid by yacht owners because if they don’t, potential yacht owners will travel to Florida, which already has a similar sales tax cap. Seriously. They claim that yacht owners will move to Florida to avoid paying sales taxes on their yachts (even though the above-mentioned studies showed that rich people didn’t move for lower income tax rates, which is a much bigger bite).

As one Democratic representative put it “With all due respect, sometimes I’m not sure what planet my Republican colleagues live on.”

What will those Texas Republicans do if Florida decides to subsidize caviar?

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As the Arab World Turns

Tuesday, May 3, 2011


© Matt Wuerker

An article by Robert Fisk makes a good point:

the mass revolutions in the Arab world over the past four months mean that al-Qa’ida was already politically dead. Bin Laden told the world – indeed, he told me personally – that he wanted to destroy the pro-Western regimes in the Arab world, the dictatorships of the Mubaraks and the Ben Alis. He wanted to create a new Islamic Caliphate. But these past few months, millions of Arab Muslims rose up and were prepared for their own martyrdom – not for Islam but for freedom and liberty and democracy. Bin Laden didn’t get rid of the tyrants. The people did. And they didn’t want a caliph.

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Late Night Political Humor

Monday, May 2, 2011

“President Obama released his long-form birth certificate yesterday. So we found the birth certificate. Now it’s on to bin Laden.” – David Letterman [now that was prescient!]

“President Obama finally showed his birth certificate and it turns out he was born in Hawaii, of all places.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“President Obama released his birth certificate today, proving once and for all that he was born in the United States. Yep, the certificate clearly shows that he was born on the all-American street of Kalanianaole Highway at the Kapiolani Hospital in Oahu.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Today President Obama released his long-form birth certificate, proving once and for all he was born in this country. But you know, it never ends. Now Republican leaders are saying they want to see the placenta.” – Jay Leno

“Next up, we ought to say we don’t believe he’s a man and refuse to let it go until he releases his penis.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“After releasing the birth certificate today, he said ‘There’s work to be done, there are real problems in this country, and we don’t have time for this silliness.’ Then he and Michelle got on a plane and flew to Chicago to tape an episode of Oprah.” – Jay Leno

“These people could have personally witnessed him being born out of an apple pie, in the middle of a Kansas wheat field, while Toby Keith sang the National Anthem – and they’d still think he was a Kenyan Muslim.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“It’s a beautifully, lovely spring day. It was so nice down in Washington that President Obama was out on the White House lawn making a kite out of his birth certificate.” –David Letterman

“The good news is, President Obama was born in America. The bad news is, so was Donald Trump.” – Jay Leno

“Fifty percent of Americans think Donald Trump would make a terrible president. The other 50 percent think he would make an awful president.” – David Letterman

“I’m surprised Donald Trump isn’t investigating whether Hawaii is an official state. A lot of vowels over there and not enough consonants.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Donald Trump said he still wants to look more closely at Obama’s birth certificate to make sure that it’s real. Incidentally, President Obama said the same exact thing about Donald Trump’s hair.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Did you see Donald Trump today? He said, ‘I’m very proud of myself because I accomplished something no one else was able to accomplish.’ So basically Trump is taking credit for President Obama proving that everything Trump has been saying for the last year is a bunch of crap.” – Jay Leno

“Sarah Palin has written two books, her daughter Bristol has a book coming out – and now Levi Johnston is writing one too. Who would’ve ever guessed that America’s greatest literary dynasty would come out of an igloo?” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Levi Johnston is now writing a book about the Palin family. He’s not writing it himself. He’s using a ghost moron.” – Jay Leno

“Levi and the publisher already have a title worked out for the book. It’s called ‘I Need Money’ by Levi Johnston.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“The man who invented the teleprompter has died at the age of 91. When President Obama heard the news, he was speechless.” – Jay Leno

“It’s the 75th anniversary of the introduction of Social Security checks. For the younger viewers who don’t know what a Social Security check is, you’ll never see one in your lifetime, so don’t worry about it.” – Jay Leno

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Reactions to the death of Osama bin Laden

Monday, May 2, 2011

Ranker has a fascinating article on internet reactions to the announcement by President Obama that Osama bin Laden had been located and killed.

Number one on their list was Fox News getting it terribly wrong:

If that weren’t bad enough, they did it again:

But they weren’t the only news organization with that particular fail:

There are a bunch of others — I’ll include two more that made me laugh just to give you a taste:

UPDATE: Potential Republican presidential candidates react to bin Laden’s death.

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The President’s Speech

Sunday, May 1, 2011

The the White House Correspondents’ dinner, Obama roasts himself, his birth certificate, Trump, Michelle, Biden, and Hollywood. Very funny.

Here’s the roast from Seth Meyers — Obama was funnier! But you should at least watch when Meyers skewers Trump (at 11:55) — the best part is when the camera shows Trump in the audience, definitely not laughing.

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Late Night Political Humor

Sunday, May 1, 2011

“Donald Trump is now attacking President Obama’s grades, suggesting that he was a poor student. First it was the birth certificate, and now the grades. Trump won’t be happy until he proves that Obama doesn’t exist.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“It was just revealed that Donald Trump hasn’t voted in primary elections in over 20 years. Or in simpler terms, Trump hasn’t voted in primary elections in over three wives.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Donald Trump says President Obama plays too much golf. Trump was playing golf during the interview. Trump says the President should be at work, like negotiating a peace treaty between Gary Busey and Meatloaf.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“A new poll shows that President Obama’s approval rating is down to 41 percent. A lot of people that voted for him now say they liked him a lot better when he was a Democrat.” – Jay Leno

“House Speaker John Boehner said that President Obama needs to grow up. And then he burst into tears.” – Jay Leno

“The United States is sending its most powerful drone to Libya. That’s a long trip for Joe Biden.” – Jay Leno

“The Libyan government says Moammar Gadhafi is still in ‘high spirits,’ even though his compound was destroyed this week. Most people would be devastated, but here’s the thing — he’s insane.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson has announced that he will run for president in 2012. His campaign slogan: ‘Even I’ve never heard of me.'” – Jay Leno

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Proof

Sunday, May 1, 2011


© Mike Luckovich

I have never heard of a sitting president having to prove he is an American. This nonsense has got to stop. I don’t care if it is motivated by racism or just dislike of his policies. If we don’t stop the personal attacks and stick to the real issues and challenges facing this country, we are all going to lose what it means to be an American.

UPDATE:


© Tom Tomorrow

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How did Obama get into those Ivy League Schools?

Sunday, May 1, 2011

If you look over the evidence, you do have to wonder how he got into all those Ivy League schools:

The dean looked over Barack’s transcript and college boards and then suggested in a kindly way that he apply to some less competitive colleges in addition to Columbia.

There were no class rankings at his high school, but Barack never made honor roll even one term, unlike 110 boys in his class.

His SAT scores were 566 for the verbal part and 640 for math. Those were far below the median scores for students admitted to his class at Columbia: 668 verbal and 718 math.

At Columbia, Barack Obama distinguished himself primarily as a hard partier, and he managed to be detained by police twice during his university years: once for stealing a Christmas wreath as a fraternity prank and once for trying to tear down the goalposts during a football game at Princeton.

Obama’s transcript at Columbia shows that he was a solid C student. Although a history major, he sampled widely in the social sciences and did poorly in political science and economics while achieving some of his best grades (the equivalent of a B+) in philosophy and anthropology. The transcript indicates that in Obama’s freshman year, the only year for which rankings were available, he was in the twenty-first percentile of his class—meaning that four-fifths of the students were above him. Yet at the same time that he was earning Cs at Columbia, Obama displayed a formidable intelligence in another way. At his induction into the Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE) fraternity, he and others were asked to name all fifty-four pledges in the room. Most were were able to name only five or six. When it was Obama’s turn, he named every single one. Later he rose to become president of DKE, and he was also tapped into Skull and Bones, an elite secret society to which his father had also belonged.

And then he somehow got into Harvard for graduate school.

Oops, wait a minute, there’s been a mistake. Please replace “high school” with “Andover”, replace “Columbia” with “Yale”, and replace “Barack Obama” with “George W. Bush”.

Now I think we do know how he got into those Ivy League schools.

[Huge hat tip to PresidentProfiles.com for the original biographical material, and to Dayriffer.com for pointing out the hypocrisy of people (cough, Trump, Tea Party) who question Obama’s education.]

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Cats Explain Voting System Reform

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Many states have already had votes to reform our “winner take all” voting system for elections (also called “first past the post“) into “instant runoff” (also called “alternative vote” or “preferential voting”). Some countries and even some local governments in the US already use instant runoff voting.

Afraid to vote for third party candidates? Feel like your country is going to the dogs? Confused about the differences between the two voting systems? This video is from England, but does a good job of explaining how the two systems work. It also makes a very subtle dig at the royal family.

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Biting Irony

Saturday, April 30, 2011


© Mike Luckovich

See this.

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Making Excuses for the Rich

Saturday, April 30, 2011

One of my pet peeves is local governments who give huge tax breaks to corporations to entice them to locate a factory or office locally. The excuse is always given that it creates jobs, but that is often a cruel joke. First of all, it doesn’t create any jobs, it just moves them from one place to another. Even worse, giving tax breaks to Wal-mart may create Wal-mart jobs, but it destroys other jobs from the small businesses who close because somehow they can’t compete with a huge multinational corporation that is also getting massive tax breaks. In the end, the local government kills their own revenue sources and the local community suffers.

So I am distressed that the same flawed logic is being applied not just to big corporations, but to rich people themselves. For example, New Jersey governor Chris Christie recently vetoed a state tax on the wealthy, saying:

You’re not going to fix this tax situation by continuing to load more and more taxes onto people who have both the ability to leave the state and the inclination to leave the state if they feel as if they are being treated unfairly.

And governors in New York and Maryland also have killed extra taxes on the wealthy, citing similar concerns that if you tax rich people, they will move to somewhere else where the taxes are lower.

Bullshit!

Two new studies show that there is little or no evidence that rich people leave high-tax states. One study tracked 18 years of migration in New England states and found that (not surprisingly) tax levels factored very little if at all into rich people’s choice of where to live. According to the study:

There are many reasons households do not flee from a state when taxes are increased, including the fact that they value the public services financed by taxes, the cost of relocating to a different state (both financially and psychologically) is quite high, and the potential gains from moving are often small. The main reasons for moving to a different state are employment, family-related matters, and education. Taxes account for little of the migration from New England.

The second study was actually done in Christie’s state of New Jersey. In 1994, New Jersey increased taxes on income over $500,000 by 2.6% (which gave them one of the highest tax rates on the wealthy in the country). The study compared people who made just under $500,000 (and so were not affected by the new tax) with people who made more and so were affected by the tax. The result? Both groups moved away from New Jersey at the same rates, so there was no evidence that higher taxes caused anyone to move.

So where did this dumb idea come from? Why are we using a false excuse to cut taxes on the rich?

Well, one explanation is based on Arthur Laffer, the economist who came up with the infamous Laffer curve that was used to try to prove that if you raise taxes, then people work less, which in turn will lower tax revenue. Conversely, the theory went, if you lower taxes (as we have done, repeatedly) people will work more, and — as Reagan claimed — tax revenue will actually go up. Well, unsurprisingly it never quite worked out that way. Laffer also claimed that he left California and moved to Tennessee because they had no income tax, so maybe that anecdotal evidence is where this dumb idea came from.

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Speaking out of both sides of your flip-flops

Friday, April 29, 2011

On Monday, House Speaker John Boehner said that oil companies are “gonna pay their fair share in taxes and they should” and that the industry did not “need to have the oil depletion allowances” they currently receive.

But that just incensed the corporate-owned wing-nuts who screamed that any reduction in corporate subsidies — including the $4 billion in tax breaks received by the oil companies — is a “tax increase”. In other words, the Republicans have bravely made their stand in favor of corporate welfare.

So it is no surprise that on Thursday Boehner wouldn’t even allow a vote to occur on ending oil company subsidies. Remember, these are subsidies that even the oil industry admits they don’t need.

At a time when our ridiculous dependence on oil threatens our national security, our environment, and our economy, we don’t need to be subsidizing that dependence with our taxes. All those people who claim to believe in free markets need to put their money where their mouths are and oppose these subsidies. And second, we need to immediately put the brakes on rampant speculation, not just in oil, but in all commodity markets. We need to get back to free markets that obey the laws of supply and demand.

UPDATE: A good explanation of how speculators are responsible for high oil prices (as well as high food prices). The supply of oil is at an all-time high, and demand is down, but the price just continues to rise. The media is going to try to convince you that high prices are a result of unrest in the middle east, but that’s not the real reason.

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A Slippery Slope By Any Other Name

Friday, April 29, 2011


© Tom Tomorrow

Tom Tomorrow points out how we are sliding down this incline. First our stated goal was to protect civilians and we definitely, absolutely weren’t there to remove Qaddafi from power. Then we started saying that we would have to keep bombing until Qaddafi left, but that we would not put any boots on the ground to accomplish that. Then we admitted that the CIA has had boots on the ground from the beginning. And now there are open calls for an expanded military involvement, ignoring the fact that we have no idea what would happen or who would replace Qaddafi if his government failed. Here we go again!

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Late Night Political Humor

Friday, April 29, 2011

“The Federal Trade Commission says for the 11th year in a row the biggest consumer complaint is identity theft. Which led President Obama to say, “That’s why you should never show ANYONE your birth certificate.” – Jay Leno

“The White House Easter egg roll was held yesterday. It was a great opportunity for kids from all over the country to come to the White House and look for the president’s birth certificate.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Every time a kid found an egg, Michelle Obama would make them trade it in for a low cholesterol Egg Beater. They had about 6,000 eggs, and you know who decorated them? Ex-cons. It’s nice to see the White House reaching out to former members of Congress.” – Jay Leno

“President Obama hosted the annual White House Easter Egg Roll. It was a little awkward though. Donald Trump showed up and demanded to see each egg’s birth certificate.” – Jimmy Fallon

“They have to put Trump on every program, spewing his crazy ideas, because his poll numbers are so high. And his poll numbers are so high because they put him on every program, spewing his crazy ideas.” – Jon Stewart

“Donald Trump says he’s President Obama’s worst nightmare. That’s not true. Having to make a decision is Obama’s worst nightmare.” – Jay Leno

“In the survey of happiest countries, Denmark, Sweden and Finland were the top three. U.S. came in 12th. Imagine how far our ranking will fall if we ever hear the words ‘President Trump.'” – Craig Ferguson

“New York just passed a law that allows same-sex conjugal visits for prisoners. Isn’t that pretty much what prison is?” – Jimmy Fallon

“New Jersey had a governor, married, who decided he was a homosexual, and he was having so much fun being a homosexual that he didn’t want to be governor any more, and now he wants to become a Catholic priest. I’m just going to leave the punchline up to you.” – David Letterman

“There is a nationwide shortage of drugs for Attention Deficit Disorder. The FDA says they’re not sure how it happened. I guess somebody wasn’t paying attention.” – Jay Leno

“A study found Americans spend $1.2 trillion every year on stuff they don’t need. Or as Republicans call it, health care.” – Jimmy Fallon

“WikiLeaks has information about the people that were incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay. Many of them were charged with terrorism and conspiracy, and one person was actually charged with shoplifting a necklace.” – David Letterman

“A lot of people are worried about the safety of America’s nuclear power plants. It’s important to remember that we’ve never had a full meltdown. We came close with Charlie Sheen, though.” – Jay Leno

“St. Louis International Airport was hit directly by a tornado. They determined that tornadoes are no longer a danger, and now we can go back to being endangered by sleeping air traffic controllers.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“A man just tried to hijack a plane, and he had two demands. He wanted them to take him to Libya, and he wanted an extra pillow. Fortunately it didn’t happen. Thank God all the air traffic controllers were asleep.” – David Letterman

“Hey, who’s excited about the Royal Wedding? I’m conflicted. I can’t figure out whether I don’t care or whether I couldn’t care less. I think we’re all more excited about the royal divorce.” – David Letterman

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