Mario Piperni dot Com

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this one is worth a gazillion words.  For all the crying, screaming and ranting by Republicans, conservatives and teabaggers, here’s the bottom line. The first Bush tax cut for the rich added 1.4 trillion to the deficit. His second tax cut for the rich added another 400 billion to the deficit.

In comparison, the health care bill passed by the Senate, will cut the deficit by over 100 billion.  These number are from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. So what does this tell us about teabaggers and conservatives going on about fiscal responsibility? Easy. It says they’re either completely clueless or completely full of crap.  In many cases, they’re both.

If there was a shred of honesty in these people and if their concern was genuine, then they would have been protesting back in 2001 or soon after.  They didn’t. Why? Because Fox News, Republicans, conservatives, Glenn Beck and FreedomWorks didn’t ask them to protest.  There was no need to.  The guy in the White House at the time was a Republican…and white.

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The nepotistic and delusional Liz Cheney continues the red-meat attacks at the Slash & Bash Obama Wingnut Festival (aka CPAC).

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It is stunning that the daughter of Dick Cheney would accuse anyone of being responsible for the death of Americans when her father is directly responsible for the death of thousands of American lives as well as the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives. As VP and de facto president, he sat in his bunker and ignored intelligence reports that an al Queda attack on U.S. soil was imminent. He then spearheaded a call to war against Iraq – a country which had nothing to do with 9/11. This resulted in the needless death of over 4000 American lives.  Liz Cheney’s father is a war criminal.

Liz Cheney encapsulates the conservative model of ignoring truth and facts and spewing revisionist history to an audience all too happy to suck it in with no attempt at critical thinking.

The following comment sums up my thoughts on Liz Cheney..

Please tell me Liz’s sister Mary Cheney is not a total neocon like her. Please tell me Mary every so often calls up her sister and says, “you know, you sounded like a fucking moron tonight. why would you say such nonsense?”

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Today’s the big day – the day when conservatives release their Mount Vernon Statement, their affirmation of conservative beliefs, values and principles. It states, in part…

We recommit ourselves to the ideas of the American Founding. Through the Constitution, the Founders created an enduring framework of limited government based on the rule of law. They sought to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government.

These principles define us as a country and inspire us as a people. They are responsible for a prosperous, just nation unlike any other in the world. They are our highest achievements, serving not only as powerful beacons to all who strive for freedom and seek self-government, but as warnings to tyrants and despots everywhere.

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The conservatism of the Declaration asserts self-evident truths based on the laws of nature and nature’s God. It defends life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It traces authority to the consent of the governed. It recognizes man’s self-interest but also his capacity for virtue.

There’s going to be a ton of stuff written about this statement but what much of it boils down to, can be deciphered from this comment from one of the drafters.

“Where in the Constitution is health care a mandate? The answer is nowhere — it’s nowhere in the Constitution [that] is health care a right.”

Right…and neither are a thousand other concepts such as Medicare which, by the way, Republicans are now defending after decades of fighting against it. Individual freedom is a wonderful concept to these people as long as it follows strict conservative dogma. As I read somewhere, they’re all for individual freedom unless one happens to be “gay, lesbian, or have a uterus.”

Eight years of constitutional abuses by the Bush administraton and not a peep from these people. That says it all about these hypocrites.
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Is it me or are we hearing the word “disconnect” more and more from wingnut pundits and politicians in reference to President Obama?  At times the word is replaced with “detached” as in “the President is detached from reality” or “the President said <whatever…> which shows a disconnect with <whatever…>.”  Anyone bothering to read anything Sarah Palin has said of late will have noticed that disconnect is Barbie’s latest favorite word.

“There is an obvious disconnect between President Obama and the White House, what they are doing to our economy and what they are doing in terms of not allowing Americans to feel as safe as we had felt. And [now] people [are] finally saying, “You know, this is not…blah, blah, blah.” -Palin Jan. 13

“In his address last night, the president once again revealed that there’s a fundamental disconnect between what the American people expect from their government, and what he wants to deliver.”  -Palin Jan. 28

There is no point in discussing the pure idiocy of having the most disconnected politician of the last decade insinuating that anyone, let alone the President, is disconnected from reality.  Her assertion on this point alone displays her disconnect with anything resembling truth.

And last night we had Sean Hannity saying this.

“”[Obama is] out of touch with what’s going on, on the streets of this country.”

“George Bush…did not play golf while this country was at war. … [H]e didn’t want the families of loved ones serving — or that may have lost a loved one — seeing him on a golf course. He seemed to be far more in touch.”

Right Sean…out of touch.
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In case you didn’t know…

…James O’Keefe never actually wore his ridiculous pimp costume into those ACORN offices on those doctored and illegally recorded video tapes, right? But, rather, he was filmed outside of the offices wearing his get-up, while appearing as the conservatively dressed boyfriend of a hooker trying to escape an abusive pimp when the cameras were rolling inside the offices. That’s just one of many deceptions O’Keefe carried out.

As one of two independent investigations of the incidents which clear ACORN of wrong-doing noted, this one by former MA Attorney General Scott Harshbarger [PDF]:

Although Mr. O’Keefe appeared in all videos dressed as a pimp, in fact, when he appeared at each and every office, he was dressed like a college student – in slacks and a button down shirt.

Typical behavior by a crack conservative “investigative journalist”.

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Radical conservative jerkoff James O’Keefe attempts to explain his actions at Sen. Mary Landrieu’s offices.

“As an investigative journalist, my goal is to expose corruption and lack of concern for citizens by government and other institutions, as I did last year when our investigations revealed the massive corruption and fraud perpetrated by ACORN. For decades, investigative journalists have used a variety of tactics to try to dig out and reveal the truth.”

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“I learned from a number of sources that many of Senator Landrieu’s constituents were having trouble getting through to her office to tell her that they didn’t want her taking millions of federal dollars in exchange for her vote on the healthcare bill. When asked about this, Senator Landrieu’s explanation was that, “Our lines have been jammed for weeks.” I decided to investigate why a representative of the people would be out of touch with her constituents for “weeks” because her phones were broken. In investigating this matter, we decided to visit Senator Landrieu’s district office – the people’s office – to ask the staff if their phones were working.”

Investigative journalist?  Funny. This twerp attempted to tamper with phones in a federal building.  The sooner his fifteen minutes is up and he’s sitting behind bars, the better off society will be.

And here’s a further thought…

But just imagine the years of outrage and endless repetition of the charges from the Rightwing media and their acolytes — folks like Crazy Andy — that would accompany four operatives allied with the Democratic Party, perpetrating a scheme to dress up as phony telephone company employees in order to access and manipulate the phone system in the office of a sitting Republican U.S. Senator.

Of course, it would be the Crime of the Century to the wingnuts, likely led by Breitbart, accompanied by cries of “What did Obama, Pelosi, Reid, ACORN, SEIU and Saul Alinsky know and when they did they know it?!” along with calls for resignations in disgrace because of it.

But when the “Liberal MSM” report on a very serious federal felony offense allegedly committed by four Republicans disguising themselves and attempting to interfere with the the phone system of a sitting Democratic U.S. Senator, well, that’s just another example of the outrageously “Liberal MSM,” at least according to Breitbart and O’Keefe’s latest attempted gambit.

Yep.

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David Axelrod sets the record straight on Obama’s handling of the deficit

First, Karl Rove being Karl Rove…

“They [Obama administration] raised discretionary spending by 24 percent from President George W. Bush’s last full-year budget and will run up more debt by October than Bush did in eight years. “

Shocking…except as Axelrod explains…

“Rove has some impressive campaign victories to his credit. But given the shape in which the last administration left this country, I’m not sure I would solicit his advice.”

“…the day the Bush administration took over from President Bill Clinton in 2001, America enjoyed a $236 billion budget surplus — with a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. When the Bush administration left office, it handed President Obama a $1.3 trillion deficit — and projected shortfalls of $8 trillion for the next decade. ”

To put the “breathtaking scope of this irresponsibility in perspective, the Bush administration’s swing from surpluses to deficits added more debt in its eight years than all the previous administrations in the history of our republic combined.”

Rove set the standard for arrogance and shamelessness during his tenure as head Bushie and it is still the benchmark by which Republicans measure themselves.  His current role as a Fox news analyst is most fitting for a man who has never met a lie too big to not tell.

Axelrod…

“There’s an old saying that everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts. The next time Karl Rove would like to offer us some advice, I’d urge him to take that to heart.”

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As I’ve noted before, I have a distinctly low tolerance for those who would deny science’s findings that man is a major player and cause of global warming.  Those who would deny this science on the basis of their politics are, in the words of one pundit, “the sort of low-hanging fruit that are best described as root vegetables.”

You know, the sort of low-hanging fruit that one finds on Fox News at just about any hour of the day…the ones who think they’re so very clever in bringing up global warming in the middle of a cold spell in winter.  The ones who still refuse to understand that weather and climate are not the same thing.

The ones like this bozo who just don’t get it (or more likely, don’t want to get it)…
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A snowfall on a frigid January morning falls into the classification of weather and is no more a negation of global warming as is a hot humid August day an indicator of rising temperatures.  Weather is now. Climate is simply weather over the long term and it is this which climatologists study.

For the record:

Weather is “the conditions in the atmosphere in a certain place during a certain time. Weather is always changing.”

Climate is “what the weather is generally like over long periods of time, such as years or decades in a particular area. A place that has little rainfall has a dry climate, and a place that has high temperatures has a hot climate.”

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Why are people on the right so horribly misinformed? Or to rephrase the question, why are there so many really stupid people on the right?  Well there’s a number of reasons we can explore but here’s one that just sort of jumps out at you: they tend to listen to people like Beck and this guy.

Rush Limbaugh:

“You remember, ladies and gentlemen, when Clinton won the presidency in 1992, in that election, he said something like, “The era of greed and selfishness is over.” He was talking about the eight years of prosperity, actually 12 years, well second-term Reagan and first-term Bush — only term Bush. Eight years of prosperity — “The era of greed and selfishness is over.” Now after eight years of prosperity under Bush 43, we are again seeing the seething hate for profits. And this is — the left never changes, it’s who they are. You’re never ever going to totally beat them back, that’s why you can’t give up any day.”

Anyone who can make that statement with a straight face and have a few million fools believe him, deserves all the money he can make.
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No one would ever accuse the Cato Intstiute, a libertarian think tank, of bowing to President Obama and his administration. They are no friends of Democrats or liberals.  So when Cato comes to the defense of Obama, it’s worth noting.

Two weeks ago, Foxnews.com posted this story…

President Obama has shattered the budget record for first-year presidents — spending nearly double what his predecessor did when he came into office and far exceeding the first-year tabs for any other U.S. president in history. In fiscal 2009 the federal government spent $3.52 trillion …That fiscal year covered the last three-and-a-half months of George W. Bush’s term and the first eight-and-a-half months of Obama’s.

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When Mr. Obama was sworn into office the federal deficit for this year stood at $422 billion. At the end of October, it stood at $1.42 trillion.

Daniel J. Mitchell of Cato, who wrote he felt nauseated by the Fox story, felt a need to set the record straight.

I’m a big fan of criticizing Obama’s profligacy, but it is inaccurate and/or dishonest to blame him for Bush’s mistakes. At the risk of repeating my earlier post, the 2009 fiscal year began on October 1, 2008, and the vast majority of the spending for that year was the result of Bush Administration policies. Yes, Obama did add to the waste with the so-called stimulus, the omnibus appropriation, the CHIP bill, and the cash-for-clunkers nonsense, but as the chart illustrates, these boondoggles only amounted to just a tiny percentage of the FY2009 total — about $140 billion out of a $3.5 trillion budget.

So if we do the math, President Obama is responsible for 4% of the 2009 federal budget. The other 96% is Bush’s handiwork. How strange that Fox did not mention any of that. It was left to the Cato Institute to set the record straight.

I like their analogy…

Obama’s FY2009 performance is like a relief pitcher who enters a game in the fourth inning trailing 19-0 and allows another run to score. The extra run is nothing to cheer about, of course, but fans should be far more angry with the starting pitcher.

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