Pirates and Presidential HistoGraaaraphs

click on this picture to see the full graph




Looks good, eh? but then again...






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Of Tea Bags and Meatsticks

In the last 25 years, no sound in American politics has thundered louder than the smirking, conspicuous, complicit silence of the meatsticks on the Right during the Age of Bush as their Dear Leader presided over a historically unprecedented string of impeachment-grade lies, treason, failure, breathtaking stupidity, corruption, catastrophe and outright theft, all wrapped up in an open, snarling contempt for the United States Constitution.

driftglass





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10 Republican Lies for Tax Day

via C&L:

The truth may set you free, but not if you're a Republican and the subject is taxes. After all, 95% of American families as promised received a tax cut from the Obama stimulus package. And while three-quarters of Americans support President Obama's proposal to roll back the Bush tax cuts for those earning over $250,000 to their Clinton-era levels, it turns out that affluent voters, too, chose Barack Obama over John McCain. Making matters worse, a Gallup poll Monday revealed that Americans' "views of income taxes among most positive since 1956."

So as their furious followers head off to their April 15th orgy of tea-bagging, the leadership of the GOP and its amen corner in the right-wing media have instead turned to tall tales on taxes.

Here, then, are 10 Republican Tax Day lies:

1. President Obama will raise taxes on small businesses.
2. The estate tax devastates small businesses and family farms.
3. 40% of Americans pay no taxes.
4. Tax cuts always increase revenue.
5. The GOP is the party of fiscal discipline.
6. Ronald Reagan was the greatest tax cutter of all time.
7. FDR caused the Great Depression, or at least made it worse.
8. Obama's cap-and-trade plan will cost each American family $3,100 a year.
9. Obama's tax proposals will undermine charitable giving.
10. The rich pay too much in taxes already.

For the details behind each of the GOP's Tax Day deceits, continue reading.




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Working Class Hero - John Lennon

Happy Tax Day !

From Driftglass...Yes, Spring is in the air my friends.

Spring, 1994.

As Mr. Outside Rush Limbaugh and and Mr. Inside Newt Gingrich return once again to the business of getting rich chumming the political waters with the bloodiest gobbets of crazy they can find...

As 30 million pig people begin stretching their minority Party tantrum muscles anew, get up on their hind legs and learn to scream "Gummint! Destroy! Gummint! Destroy!" again after eight straight years of lockstep, synchronized chants of "How dare you question the Dear Leader!" ..

As bile-laced AM radio frequencies burst at the seams once again with hysterical, unhinged conspiracy babble, roared out in blunt, declarative "Democrats are Commies", "AmeriCorps could morph into "re-education camps", "Obama is the Anti-Christ" sentences...and received as Operating System Upgrade gospel by the ignorant armies of the Right...

As a centrist President elected to clean up Republican failures is once again immediately painted as History's Greatest Villain who must be stopped at all costs almost before his feet touch the ground...

As the fragile brains of right-wing gun nuts being snapping like twigs under the weight of their mindless fear multiplied by their stupid (Check out this terrific analysis of the subject by David Neiwert over at Crooks & Liars):

David Weigel of the Washington Independent was out at a gun show in Tennessee this last weekend. If you haven't gotten a look, you should.

It's real real familiar for me. Deja vu from 1994, when I was regularly attending militia meetings, all over again: The president-bashing. The gun fetishizing. The paranoia. The unstated old bigotry. And sometimes, all of them would come together at once.

......we welcome back the 1990s in all its bloated glory.

Because for Republicans, the last eight years never happened (From Andrew Sullivan, which, I know, I'm shocked too, but if we are to credibly administer ass-kickings when he's wrong, we must acknowledge when gets one right.)

The remarkable thing about today's partisan Republicans is their capacity to forget instantly and entirely anything that went on for the past eight years. And so suddenly we are rushing toward socialism, even though by far the biggest jumps in state power and debt occurred under a president they worshiped and worked hard to re-elect.

There were no tea-parties to protest the $32 trillion Medicare prescription drug benefit. There was no Randian rumbling as Bush took over local schools. There was no defense of the Constitution as Bush and Cheney secretly suspended the fourth and first amendments.

But put a moderate Democrat in office tackling a historic collapse in demand - and spending must be frozen! Reading the partisan right blogs, this ability to disappear the past is striking, and it helps explain base GOP loathing of Obama

But this time around the track there are some important differences.

This time we have the eight years of 1,000-decibel insanity ginned up over fake scandals capped off with impeachment over trivia that was the Clinton Administration behind us.

This time we can look back and see what categorically does not work.

Playing nice? Doesn't work.

Trying to find compromise? Doesn't work.

Ignoring them? They only get louder.

Appeals to reason? Bwahahahaha! Are you fucking kidding me?

Appeals to the good of the country? Republicans don't give a shit about this country. They give a shit about their country: the The Caucasian Free State Of Jesusland. And to whatever extent the actual America and its actual constitution and history and plurailty and complexity frustrates and impedes to the implementation of New Confederacy of their dreams, that is the extent to which they will always despise the real America.

get more here...1990's 2.0



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"The Official George W. Bush Librarium"

Click here for the mouse over magnification of this bittersweet hilarious interactive librarium.

SPIT/CHOKE WARNING! *swallow all liquids before viewing!*

From the authors of the New York Times bestseller Goodnight Bush.




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