Tag Archives: President

Corporate Sponsored Grassroots

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Rachel Maddow exposes the monied interests pretending to be "average Americans" who are fueling the outrage at these "town halls gone wild". First up, Recess Rally, sponsored by Michelle Malkin, Smart Girl Politics, Redstate, but also American Majority, and as Rachel points out, this group is hardly made up of average Americans even though they tout themselves as being a non-profit, non-partisan organization.

The people behind American Majority; Ned Ryun, former George W. Bush speech writer, Lonny Leitner, Regional Field Director for Bush/Cheney '04, Shari Weber, former Republican State Legislator, Matt Pinnell, a former Washington conservative lobbyist.

Rachel notes that American Majority is an offshoot of another Recess Rally sponsor, The Sam Adams Alliance. Their President, John Tsarpalas, former Executive Director of the Illinois State Republican party, their Director, Joseph Lehman, former Dow Chemicals engineer and president of the nation's largest conservative state level policy think tank.

Another sponsor of Recess Rally, Let Freedom Ring. Their founder, the money man behind the television ad exploiting 9-11 to promote the Iraq invasion. Another sponsor, the swift boaters.

Yet another sponsor, Americans for Prosperity, and their subsidiary Patients First. Americans for Prosperity's Director, Art Pope, who has the headquarters of the North Carolina Republican party named after him since he's given them so much money. Their Chairman, David Koch, the 19th richest man in the world who runs Koch Industries, which is the largest privately held oil company in the United States.

To talk about these town hall events as some organic outpouring of average American folks who have concerns about health care is to be willfully blind to what is really going on, which is professional P.R. operatives generating exploitative, manufactured, strategically deployed outrage in order to line their own pocket.

This is professional, corporate funded Republican staffed P.R., and it should be reported as such.




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Crazy Birther Claim #2

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Ok, so the birthers not only claim Obama was born in Kenya and not Hawaii, but they have an argument for even if he was born in the US.

His father, who did not live in the United States for more than a couple of years, was a subject/citizen of Kenya/Great Britain at the time of Barack’s birth and afterwards, AND further, as Barack himself admitted on his website during the 2008 campaign, Barack was therefore born SUBJECT TO THE GOVERNANCE OF GREAT BRITAIN.

The FACT that he was not born of TWO US CITIZEN PARENTS is all that matters. The question of his birth certificate is a distraction (a distraction fostered by Obama’s supporters?) that ought not to occupy our time and resources.

Except this is not so, and has already been debunked before.

Not only does it make no sense (if Britain changed the law so that anyone born in America was also a British Citizen, would no one be able to become President?  It's our laws that matter, not theirs.),  but Obama is not even the only/first President to only have 1 American parent.  There have been 7,  that's SEVEN, Presidents of the United States with 1 parent a US Citizen and the other a foreigner.

Thomas Jefferson
Andrew Jackson
James Buchanan
Chester A. Arthur
Woodrow Wilson
Herbert Hoover
Barack Obama

I'm sorry some people not only don't understand the law, but also can't do a little research.

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The Obama Tracker by NPR

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President Obama has kicked off his term by making key leadership appointments, carrying out an ambitious economic plan and laying the foundation for foreign and domestic policies. NPR's Obama Tracker charts significant events and developments in the new administration, and actions the president takes as he settles into the job. obamatracker1 The Obama Tracker by NPR The Obama Tracker

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The Unhappy Vindication of Peter Schiff

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Peter Schiff is the president of Euro Pacific Capital Inc. In past years he's made many appearances on cable news channels as an economy expert. His negative views of the U.S. economy in the past years have gotten him the nickname "Dr. Doom". What did he do to deserve this nickname? He correctly predicted the current recession, the causes, and how bad it's become. He has his own website at http://www.europac.net/ for those looking to seek his current views and predictions.  He is of course highly critical of the government's current policy of throwing money at the problem. Another website monitoring the current economy crisis is Economy in Crisis. While views may not be agreed upon, and people can be wrong, both are highly recommended reading for everyone.

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Not Tortured

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In all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar? According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured. Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of "long-time standing" that victims of Bush's torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely "enhanced interrogation." No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the "intelligence" we have procured from "interrogating" terror suspects. Feel safer? The Daily Dish

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