"Democalypse 2012 - The New New Low Edition"

This originally aired on 15 August 2012, but I didn't see it until last night. If you missed it, please enjoy five minutes of IOKIYAR. (After a pre-roll commercial, but whaddya gonna do?)

(alt. video link)

Deep Thought

Why isn't The Liberal Media spending all their time THIS election talking about which candidate they'd rather have a beer with?

Voter Fraud!!!1!

 OMG IT'S TRUE!!!1! 

Probably won't last very long, but ...

... it was fun to do, anyway. Even if they didn't show my last name.

(embiggen)

Here's the (probably inappropriately named) permalink.   [Update a few hours later] Yep. Gone. Shoutout to the #wingnuts for their love of free speech!]

When a robot hires spokespeople, this is what you get

I'd like to say this is dry wit, but considering the source …

“Sheriff Babeu has stepped down from his volunteer position with the campaign so he can focus on the allegations against him,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul told TPM. “We support his decision.”

... not to mention the backstory …

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu — who became the face of Arizona border security nationally after he started stridently opposing illegal immigration — threatened his Mexican ex-lover with deportation when the man refused to promise never to disclose their years-long relationship, the former boyfriend and his lawyer tell New Times.

(h/t: Megaword Man)

[Added] Here (via) is thirty seconds of sordid video, featuring Babeu:

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Triptych of the the Day

The Biased Librul Media seems to have forgotten the title, which, as any RealAmerican™ will tell you, must be
The Disgrace of Bill Clinton

(pic. source)

That Al Franken is a pretty smart guy, isn't he?

Remember the email from Sen. Franken that I re-posted yesterday? Remember how he said this, among other things?

The sky is blue. The world is round. Two plus two equals four. These are truths. Here's another one: Net neutrality isn't a government takeover of anything -- in fact, it protects the Internet from a corporate takeover.

And what do we learn in today's news?

Why, that it's perfectly fine if the government takes over the Internet, provided by "the government" we mean "the GOP and their corporate donors!" (Especially when they're afraid of competition!)

IOKIYAR. IOKIYAR. Always and forevermore, IOKIYAR.

(x-posted)

Exorcise this

@Will_Bunch:

If his train-wreck Obama rebuttal speech didn't kill Jindal's political future, wife charity scam might http://nyti.ms/hqtpZD

Let's have a look.

Louisiana’s biggest corporate players, many with long agendas before the state government, are restricted in making campaign contributions to Gov. Bobby Jindal. But they can give whatever they like to the foundation set up by his wife months after he took office.

AT&T, which needed Mr. Jindal, a Republican, to sign off on legislation allowing the company to sell cable television services without having to negotiate with individual parishes, has pledged at least $250,000 to the Supriya Jindal Foundation for Louisiana’s Children.

Marathon Oil, which last year won approval from the Jindal administration to increase the amount of oil it can refine at its Louisiana plant, also committed to a $250,000 donation. And the military contractor Northrop Grumman, which got state officials to help set up an airplane maintenance facility at a former Air Force base, promised $10,000 to the charity.

The foundation has collected nearly $1 million in previously unreported pledges from major oil companies, insurers and other corporations in Louisiana with high-stakes regulatory issues, according to a review by The New York Times.

[...]

Dow Chemical, which has pledged $100,000 to the foundation, is the largest petrochemical company in Louisiana and has had numerous interactions with state officials during the Jindal administration, including an investigation into a July 2009 spill at its St. Charles Parish plant that forced the evacuation of area homes. The state in December 2009 proposed fining the company and its Union Carbide subsidiary for allowing the release of a toxic pollutant and failing to quickly notify state authorities of the leak, but so far no fine has been assessed.

Alon USA, an Israeli oil company that has pledged $250,000 to the Jindal Foundation, last year sought permit changes that would allow it to discharge more pollutants at its Krotz Springs refinery. In 2009, state environmental officials also eased requirements for the company to check for spills of oil, ammonia or other contaminants in waterways to twice a month, instead of twice a week, records show.

[...]

Several of the charity’s major donors are large state contractors, like Acadian Ambulance, or D&J Construction, which alone has received $67.6 million in contracts since 2009, mostly for highways, said a separate report on the foundation being issued this week by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Both companies have pledged at least $10,000 to the foundation.

The story is laced with sputtering denials from everyone you might expect.

(x-posted)

More fallout from the Anonymous hack of HBGary

Dems push for Congressional investigation of HBGary Federal

Embattled HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr quit his job yesterday as the prospect of a Congressional investigation loomed. A dozen Democrats in Congress asked various Republican committee chairs to launch probes of HBGary Federal's idea for a "reconnaissance cell" targeting pro-union organizers.

HBGary Federal was hacked last month by Anonymous after Aaron Barr believed he had unmasked much of the group's leadership—and Barr's entire cache of corporate e-mails was made public. Those messages revealed that Barr had joined up with two other security firms, Palantir and Berico, to pitch the powerhouse DC law firm of Hunton & Williams on an idea to go after union-backed websites who opposed the US Chamber of Commerce. The scheme, if adopted, would have cost the Chamber up to $2 million a month.

The three companies called themselves Team Themis, and instead of providing simple "business intelligence," they had a few other ideas …

The rest.

(previously)

Somehow, I don't think wingnuts will be blogging about "Chicago-style thuggery" this time

Remember that story about HBGary, the "security" firm that got pwned by Anonymous? Was worth it for the lulz at the time, but now it also looks like some disturbing information is coming to light as a consequence.

JAB calls attention ("You have to get up pretty early in the morning to make the Mafia look like pikers…") to a ThinkProgress post, which begins as follows:

Earlier today, ThinkProgress published an exclusive report that the law firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a right-wing trade association representing big business, is working with set of “private security” companies and lobbying firms to undermine their political opponents, including ThinkProgress. According to e-mails obtained by ThinkProgress, the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams. Attorneys for the firm solicited a set of private security firms — HBGary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis) — to develop a sabotage campaign against progressive groups and labor unions, including ThinkProgress, the labor coalition Change to Win, SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com.

New emails reveal that the private spy company investigated the families and children of the Chamber’s political opponents. The apparent spearhead of this project was Aaron Barr, an executive at HBGary. Barr circulated numerous emails and documents detailing information about political opponents’ children, spouses, and personal lives.

Of course, this is not nearly as sinister as the imaginary stuff Obama does, amirite?

The quoted link, among other things, points to some work done by Marcy Wheeler. She's got copies of some of the documents related to the US Chamber of Commerce's spying plans.

The ThinkProgress posts also describe other dirty tricks and disinformation campaigns that are or were being planned, that had the intent of smearing watchdog and other progressive groups. I'd say it's worth your time to spend a few minutes reading them, and perhaps also this post from Josh Harkinson at MoJo, but then I'm a liberal, so therefore I hate America, democracy, your freedoms, &c.

[Added] Hey, look! An actually decent story with some interesting tidbits (16 year old girl! lol) from the MSM: Byron Acohido at USA Today. (Don't be put off by the headline, as I almost was.) Also, Glennzilla has a typically thorough post up, which he describes as "just the summary." The more details the better in a case like this, I say. It appears that Glenn was on the list of targets.

[Added2] I should say that I don't know for sure that ThinkProgress is relying exclusively on info from the Anonymous hack. Glennzilla's post suggests they might have had other sources.

[Added3] So far, the silence is deafening from Wingnuttia.

[Added4] Soon, the emails will be made available to all, Anonymous says.

Not that we didn't already think Jennifer Rubin was a hack ...

... but this is just inexcusable.

As low as the WaPo has been known to go, I'm still surprised they're letting her get away with it.

All together now ... IOKIYAR!

(previously)

(pic. source | x-posted)

New Jersey Fat Cats Given Second Helpings

The headline:

Christie: N.J. to invest $260M in stalled casino project

Tax-payer funded bailouts!!!1!

And this part (emph. added) is especially rich:

[New Jersey Governor Chris] Christie made the announcement at a ceremony at the unfinished Revel site to sign legislation turning over control of this struggling gambling mecca's casino district to the state …

Socialism!!!1!

A classic IOKIYAR moment if there ever was one.

It'll be interesting to see if the Christie fanboys try to explain how this is Totally Different, or if he'll be summarily labeled a RINO and booted off the list of RealConservative Rockstars.

[Added] Twin catches a bunch of other incongruities.

(h/t: Twin | x-posted | pic. source)

Line of the Day: 2011-01-25

When you see surveillance videos of some creep mugging an elderly person in an elevator or apartment lobby, the universal reaction is outrage. But when the fat cats and the ideologues want to hack away at the lifeline of Social Security, they are treated somehow as respectable, even enlightened members of the society.
    -- Bob Herbert

Tales of Your New Old Republican Majority

If there was ever something that deserved to be filed under News of the Unsurprising, it's this, but still, it's worth noting for the record.

Bush White House Broke Elections Law, Report Says

WASHINGTON — The Bush White House, particularly before the 2006 midterm elections, routinely violated a federal law that prohibits use of federal tax dollars to pay for political activities by creating a “political boiler room” that coordinated Republican campaign activities nationwide, a report issued Monday by an independent federal agency concludes.

The report by the Office of Special Counsel finds that the Bush administration’s Office of Political Affairs — overseen by Karl Rove — served almost as an extension of the Republican National Committee, developing a “target list” of Congressional races, organizing dozens of briefings for political appointees to press them to work for party candidates, and sending cabinet officials out to help these campaigns.

The report, based on about 100,000 pages of documents and interviews with 80 Bush administration officials in an investigation of more than three years, documented how these political activities accelerated before the 2006 midterm elections.

This included helping coordinate fund-raising by Republican candidates and pressing Bush administration political appointees to help with Republican voter-turnout pitches, particularly in the 72 hours leading up to the election ...

[...]

The report found that during the Bush administration, senior staff members at the Office of Political Affairs violated the Hatch Act by organizing 75 political briefings from 2001 to 2007 for Republican appointees at top federal agencies in an effort to enlist them to help Republicans get elected to Congress.

[...]

The investigators also found evidence that the Bush White House improperly classified travel by senior officials as official government business, “when it was, in fact, political,” and the costs associated with this travel were never reimbursed.

Another one for the book.

(h/t: Jack Stuef | x-posted | pic. source | pic. source)

Impeachable offense?

Barack Obama failed to report wife's income, watchdog says

Michelle Obama earned over $680,000 from a liberal think tank over 5 years, a group says. But the President did not include it on financial disclosure forms.

Sounds fishy, doesn't it?

(h/t: LGF | x-posted)

Perspective

Here's one of many interesting points in "Lightning Round: The Continuing Unpopularity of the Republican Party is Excellent News for Republicans" (an in-joke I never get tired of), posted by Mori Dinauer:

• Speaking of health-care reform, Jonathan Chait use the latest conservative attack on Obama's fiscal policies -- that he's honest about ugly budget numbers -- to point out the hypocrisy of the GOP's commitment to "fiscal responsibility:" "George W. Bush and the Republicans created a new health care entitlement in 2003 that was completely unfinanced. Not a dime was paid for. The Democrats have decided to completely finance every cent of health care reform, and they're taking a hundred times more flack for fiscal irresponsibility than the Republicans ever did."

Jon's whole post is worth a read, especially if you have yet to grasp fully what we mean by IOKIYAR.

P.S. On an unrelated note, but certainly a related theme, Mori also points to a report -- and this'll shock you -- that Glenn Beck is either lying or clueless. This time, the giant baby is whining about net neutrality, and he's about as wrong as he can be.

The Hits Keep Coming

Bad as Bobby Jindal's post-Obama response speech was, it looks like it's just gotten worse. His big story? About standing shoulder-to-shoulder with that sheriff against the horrible liberal Washington bureaucrats (from the Bush Administration, but never mind that!)? Turns out Jindal was lying.

Eric Boehlert wonders if this means, according to Villager rules, Section Al Gore, that he's now disqualified from being president. Of course we know the answer to that: IOKIYAR!

Wish I'd Thought of That

An email to Andrew Sullivan:

Someone should make the point that the theory on which Daschle did not pay taxes on an extraordinary non-salary benefit provided by his employer (car and driver) is exactly the theory on which Palin did not pay taxes on an extraordinary benefit (free air travel for her children, and 60 dollar per day per diem payments for use of her own house).

Palin never paid back taxes but simply produced a squirrelly letter from her lawyers saying that someone could believe in good faith that taxes were not owed on the travel or per diems she received, so her failure to report those items as income was excusable.

Dude, haven't you heard the word? IOKIYAR!

Time for another exciting edition of IOKIYAR!

$14,000+ for makeup for him? $150,000+ in new clothes for her?

Not elitist.

IOKIYAR! (one in never-ending series)

Jonathan Stein:

John Edwards cheated on his wife. The media found out about it. John Edwards will not be attending the Democratic convention.

Rudy Giuliani used public funds to cheat on his wife and used city agencies to cover his tracks. The media found out about it. Rudy Giuliani will be delivering the keynote at the Republican convention.

(h/t: Steve Benen)