Republicans Do Not Care About The Deficit. They Care About Cutting The Safety Net for Seniors and Children

Republicans Do Not Care About The Deficit. They Care About Cutting The Safety Net for Seniors and Children

OK, so why does everyone think the deficit is out of control and a threat to the existence of the republic? Good question. It's probably way too late to pull us out of the rabbit hole we've collectively dived into, but anyone reporting on this really owes it to their readers to explain the basic political dynamics at work. So why do Republicans and Democrats both think the deficit is a problem?

    Answer for Republicans: They don't think the deficit is a problem. If they did, they'd favor tax increases, Pentagon cuts, and Medicare cuts, since even the most dimwitted among them knows that cutting domestic discretionary spending won't make a dent in the deficit. But they favor none of these things.

    Rather, they think federal spending on liberal social programs is a problem, and yammering about the deficit is a good way to force cuts to these programs. And there's nothing wrong with this. It's good politics. Why waste a crisis, after all? But anyone reporting on this issue really needs to be honest about what's going on. Republicans want to cut social spending. The deficit is just a handy cudgel to make this happen.

    Answer for Democrats: I'm actually a little stumped here. I think most Democrats understand that the short-term deficit really isn't a problem, and they also understand (I hope) that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire and letting the economy recover will get us very close to eliminating the primary deficit (i.e., the deficit minus interest payments). If we do that, then publicly held debt as a percent of GDP stabilizes and the deficit problem becomes pretty manageable. The chart on the right from CBPP shows this graphically.

    In the longer term, Medicare growth is a problem — which is just another way of saying that healthcare spending in general is a problem. This needs to be addressed, but it needs to be addressed for its own sake, not just because it affects the federal deficit.

    So why have Democrats joined the deficit chorus? I'm not sure, really. I'd guess it's mainly just fear that they've been outflanked on the issue, and if they want to stay in office they have to yammer about it. But that's just a guess.

In any case, Republicans are wrong: we don't have a spending problem, we have an aging problem. As America ages, Social Security and Medicare are going to cost more, and unless you want to start killing off old people Soylent Green style there's no way to avoid this even if we do get a handle on rising healthcare costs. This in turn means we're going to need more revenue to care for the elderly. As Jon Cohn says today, "It's ridiculous to have a conversation about balancing the budget that won't even contemplate higher taxes."

A perpetually growing deficit will eventually drive up interest rates and slow economic growth, so it's something we should take seriously. But slashing social programs is exactly the opposite of taking it seriously. We need to let the Bush tax cuts expire, get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, keep working hard on reining in healthcare costs, and accept the fact that we're going to need to fund an aging population whether we like it or not. Do that, and all we'll need is modest discipline in the rest of the budget. The long-term deficit is a problem, but it's not a crisis

Perhaps the biggest piece of evidence that conservative Republicans only care about deficits as a political wedge is that they ran up historic deficits from 2001 to 2008 and did not rise one dollar in revenue to pay the deficit down. Mitt Romney has a deficit "reduction" plan, full of accounting gimmicks it will increase the deficit by at at least $3 trillion dollars while cutting the safety net and buying the newest toys for the military.

The Debt Increase Under Obama Is Largely A Result Of Bush-Era Policies

Trump on Romney: ‘He’d Buy Companies, He’d Close Companies, He’d Get Rid Of Jobs’

2012, Another Year and Another Conservative Republican Attempt to Destroy Medicare

2012, Another Year and Another Conservative Republican Attempt to Destroy Medicare

Are Republicans ready to be trusted with the reins of power?

If you’re thinking of answering this in the affirmative, you might want to pause long enough to learn what transpired on the third floor of the Capitol on Thursday. There, four prominent Republican lawmakers announced their proposal to abolish Medicare — “sunset” was their pseudo-verb — even for those currently on the program or nearing retirement.

In Medicare’s place would be a private plan that would raise the eligibility age and shift trillions of dollars worth of health-care coverage from the government to the elderly. “This will be the new Medicare,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the proposal’s author, announced.

For years, Republicans have insisted that they would not end Medicare as we know it and that any changes to the program would not affect those in or near retirement. In the span of 20 minutes Thursday, they jettisoned both promises.

“The president and Harry Reid have been licking their chops for over three years now waiting for Republicans to actually try to deal with the large problems like Medicare,” Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) told reporters. “So, this is the moment they’ve been waiting for.”

He’s right about that. Don’t expect Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Mitch McConnell or John Boehner to take up the cry; the party leadership isn’t about to line up for abolishing the popular entitlement program. The real question is whether party leaders would be able to repel this conservative movement to end Medicare if Republicans gain control of the White House and Congress, where conservatives already dominate the GOP caucuses.

The end-Medicare sponsors are key figures: DeMint is the godfather of the Tea Party, and he was joined by Paul and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), two conservative rising stars. Completing the foursome was Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), an influential thinker. Two other Republican senators, Richard Burr of North Carolina and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, have introduced a somewhat related plan to deal with Medicare, and Rep. Paul Ryan’s House Republican budget would also privatize Medicare, though on a slower timetable.

But DeMint and his colleagues think the time to end Medicare is now — with a cold-turkey conversion to a private program, effective in 2014. “I think if Americans actually find out the truth about what we’re doing, it will be a very big positive for Republicans in the fall,” DeMint forecast.

All the details aren’t out, but Paul says his plan would cut funding of Medicare by $1?trillion over 10 years and reduce Medicare’s liabilities by $16 trillion. It would do that by enrolling Medicare recipients in the health plan now used by federal workers. The government would pay 75 percent of the insurance premium on average but 30 percent or less for those who earned more than $100,000 a year. The eligibility age would gradually be raised to 70 from 65. If seniors can’t afford their share of the premium, they can apply for Medicaid, the health program for the poor.

Paul claimed his idea came from the Democrats’ 2004 presidential platform. But John Kerry wanted to extend the federal employee health plan to the general population, not to Medicare recipients. The 2004 platform vowed to “oppose privatizing Medicare.”

The CBPP has already run the numbers so this plan - a recycled version of Anti-American Paul Ryan (R-WI) plan and it would mean economic and health devastation to millions of Americans. So conservatives seem to hate America, seniors, the military and the disabled. What's  next apple pie and puppies.

What Did Sandra Fluke Say That Ignited Conservative Rush Limbaugh's Psycho Misogynist Attack

What Did Sandra Fluke Say That Ignited Conservative Rush Limbaugh's Psycho Misogynist Attack

Below is the text of Sandra Fluke's opening statement, who testified before a House Democratic panel in support of the HHS contraception mandate.


    My name is Sandra Fluke, and I’m a third-year student at Georgetown Law School. I’m also a past-president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice or LSRJ. And I’d like to acknowledge my fellow LSRJ members and allies and all of the student activists with us and thank them so much for being here today.

    (Applause)

    We, as Georgetown LSRJ, are here today because we’re so grateful that this regulation implements the non-partisan medical advice of the Institute of Medicine.

    I attend a Jesuit law school that does not provide contraceptive coverage in its student health plan. And just as we students have faced financial, emotional, and medical burdens as a result, employees at religiously-affiliated hospitals and institutions and universities across the country have suffered similar burdens.

    We are all grateful for the new regulation that will meet the critical health care needs of so many women.

    Simultaneously, the recently announced adjustment addresses any potential conflict with the religious identity of Catholic or Jesuit institutions.

    When I look around my campus, I see the faces of the women affected by this lack of contraceptive coverage.

    And especially in the last week, I have heard more and more of their stories. On a daily basis, I hear yet from another woman from Georgetown or from another school or who works for a religiously-affiliated employer, and they tell me that they have suffered financially and emotionally and medically because of this lack of coverage.

    And so, I’m here today to share their voices, and I want to thank you for allowing them – not me – to be heard.

    Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary. 40% of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggle financially as a result of this policy.

    One told us about how embarrassed and just powerless she felt when she was standing at the pharmacy counter and learned for the first time that contraception was not covered on her insurance and she had to turn and walk away because she couldn’t afford that prescription. Women like her have no choice but to go without contraception.

    Just last week, a married female student told me that she had to stop using contraception because she and her husband just couldn’t fit it into their budget anymore. Women employed in low-wage jobs without contraceptive coverage face the same choice.

    And some might respond that contraception is accessible in lots of other ways. Unfortunately, that’s just not true.

    Women’s health clinic provide a vital medical service, but as the Guttmacher Institute has definitely documented, these clinics are unable to meet the crushing demand for these services. Clinics are closing, and women are being forced to go without the medical care they need.

    How can Congress consider the [Rep. Jeff] Fortenberry (R-Neb.), [Sen. Marco] Rubio (R-Fla.) and [Sen. Roy] Blunt (R-Mo.) legislation to allow even more employers and institutions to refuse contraception coverage and then respond that the non-profit clinics should step up to take care of the resulting medical crisis, particularly when so many legislators are attempting to de-fund those very same clinics?

    These denial of contraceptive coverage impact real people.

    In the worst cases, women who need these medications for other medical conditions suffer very dire consequences.

    A friend of mine, for example, has polycystic ovarian syndrome, and she has to take prescription birth control to stop cysts from growing on her ovaries. Her prescription is technically covered by Georgetown’s insurance because it’s not intended to prevent pregnancy.

    Unfortunately, under many religious institutions and insurance plans, it wouldn’t be. There would be no exception for other medical needs. And under Sen. Blunt’s amendment, Sen. Rubio’s bill or Rep. Fortenberry’s bill there’s no requirement that such an exception be made for these medical needs.

    When this exception does exist, these exceptions don’t accomplish their well-intended goals because when you let university administrators or other employers rather than women and their doctors dictate whose medical needs are legitimate and whose are not, women’s health takes a back seat to a bureaucracy focused on policing her body.

    In 65% of the cases at our school, our female students were interrogated by insurance representatives and university medical staff about why they needed prescription and whether they were lying about their symptoms.

    For my friend and 20% of the women in her situation, she never got the insurance company to cover her prescription. Despite verifications of her illness from her doctor, her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted birth control to prevent pregnancy. She’s gay. So clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy for her.

    After months paying over $100 out-of-pocket, she just couldn’t afford her medication anymore, and she had to stop taking it.

    I learned about all of this when I walked out of a test and got a message from her that in the middle of the night in her final exam period she’d been in the emergency room. She’d been there all night in just terrible, excruciating pain. She wrote to me, ‘It was so painful I’d woke up thinking I’ve been shot.’

    Without her taking the birth control, a massive cyst the size of a tennis ball had grown on her ovary. She had to have surgery to remove her entire ovary as a result.

    On the morning I was originally scheduled to give this testimony, she was sitting in a doctor’s office, trying to cope with the consequences of this medical catastrophe.

    Since last year’s surgery, she’s been experiencing night sweats and weight gain and other symptoms of early menopause as a result of the removal of her ovary. She’s 32-years-old.

    As she put it, ‘If my body indeed does enter early menopause, no fertility specialist in the world will be able to help me have my own children. I will have no choice at giving my mother her desperately desired grandbabies simply because the insurance policy that I paid for, totally unsubsidized by my school, wouldn’t cover my prescription for birth control when I needed it.’

    Now, in addition to potentially facing the health complications that come with having menopause at such an early age – increased risk of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis – she may never be able to conceive a child.

    Some may say that my friend’s tragic story is rare. It’s not. I wish it were

    One woman told us doctors believe she has endometriosis, but that can’t be proven without surgery. So the insurance has not been willing to cover her medication – the contraception she needs to treat her endometriosis.
    Recently, another woman told me that she also has polycystic ovarian syndrome and she’s struggling to pay for her medication and is terrified to not have access to it.

    Due to the barriers erected by Georgetown’s policy, she hasn’t been reimbursed for her medications since last August.

    I sincerely pray that we don’t have to wait until she loses an ovary or is diagnosed with cancer before her needs and the needs of all of these women are taken seriously.

    Because this is the message that not requiring coverage of contraception sends: A woman’s reproductive health care isn’t a necessity, isn’t a priority.

    One woman told us that she knew birth control wasn’t covered on the insurance and she assumed that that’s how Georgetown’s insurance handle all of women’s reproductive and sexual health care. So when she was raped, she didn’t go to the doctor, even to be examined or tested for sexually transmitted infections, because she thought insurance wasn’t going to cover something like that – something that was related to a woman’s reproductive health.

    As one other student put it: ‘This policy communicates to female students that our school doesn’t understand our needs.’

    These are not feelings that male fellow student experience and they’re not burdens that male students must shoulder.

    In the media lately, some conservative Catholic organizations have been asking what did we expect when we enroll in a Catholic school?

    We can only answer that we expected women to be treated equally, to not have our school create untenable burdens that impede our academic success.

    We expected that our schools would live up to the Jesuit creed of ‘cura personalis‘ – to care for the whole person – by meeting all of our medical needs.

    We expected that when we told our universities of the problem this policy created for us as students, they would help us.

    We expected that when 94% of students oppose the policy the university would respect our choices regarding insurance students pay for – completely unsubsidized by the university.

    We did not expect that women would be told in the national media that we should have gone to school elsewhere.

    And even if that meant going to a less prestigious university, we refuse to pick between a quality education and our health. And we resent that in the 21st century, anyone think it’s acceptable to ask us to make this choice simply because we are women.

    Many of the women whose stories I’ve shared today are Catholic women. So ours is not a war against the church. It is a struggle for the access to the health care we need.

    The President of the Association of Jesuit Colleges has shared that Jesuit colleges and the universities appreciate the modifications to the rule announced recently. Religious concerns are addressed and women get the health care they need. And I sincerely hope that that is something we can all agree upon.


    Thank you very much. (all emphasis and highlights are mine)



Conservatives such as Limbaugh have tried to convince the public that Fluke and others had wanted the general public to pay for their contraceptives. That was a lie. A lie repeated incessantly by Limbaugh, conservative hate radio and across the internet. These women want the same full insurance coverage for their health needs that men get. As simple as that. Conservationism continues to be a cancer on democracy. You cannot have a fully functioning enlightened democratic republic when a third of the population - conservatives cannot distinguish facts from lies, or maliciously deceive the public in the name of their radical anti-American agenda.

2012 The Election Year in Which Plutocrats Officially Determine The Winner

2012 The Election Year in Which Plutocrats Officially Determine The Winner

Forget about the poor, the unemployed and the sinking middle class participating in the democratic process.

The race for the presidency is increasingly being bankrolled by "1 percenters" — those among the richest of Americans.

Year-end campaign finance reports show that many of the nation's wealthiest individuals and their companies have written huge checks to Republican and Democratic "super committees" that are exempt from the usual $5,000 campaign donation limits.

Texas businessman Harold Simmons and his Contran Corp. have donated $7.5 million to two GOP committees. Las Vegas hotel casino owner Sheldon Adelson and his family have poured more than $10 million into a so-called super political action committee backing Newt Gingrich. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg gave $100,000 to one of several committees aiding Obama.

Partly as a result of the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling that even corporations enjoy the right to free political speech, a 2002 congressional overhaul that was supposed to rid big money from national politics is fast becoming a distant memory. Not only are wealthy Americans serving as financial angels to presidential candidates, but companies also have begun to write multimillion-dollar checks, and some may be doing so secretly.

American Crossroads, a conservative super PAC founded by former Bush White House political guru Karl Rove, has raised $51 million to date, including $33 million garnered by a nonprofit arm that isn't required to disclose its donors. The groups have set a goal of collecting another $200 million to raise Republican prospects in next year's presidential and congressional elections.

Anthony Corrado, a campaign finance expert at Colby College in Maine, says high-dollar donors have gotten active earlier than ever this year and are playing a bigger role — and that may not be an accident.

"If you think about the way the president is beginning to frame the campaign, presenting this as a campaign of the 99 percent against the 1 percent, that in some ways is adding fuel to the fire to keep these donors involved," he said.

Corrado also noted that outside groups have had a disproportionate impact this year because so many candidates, including Gingrich, have lacked "presidential-level money."

Gingrich's campaign raised $9.8 million and closed the year with $2.1 million in cash and $1.2 million in debt. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas raised $13.3 million in the fourth quarter and ended the year with $1.9 million in cash, while former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's campaign raised $920,000 in the quarter and closed with $279,000 in cash.

"This has actually been a race where a large gift from an individual donor can fund an advertising campaign greater than a candidate's own campaign can muster," Corrado said of the super PACs' clout.

Restore Our Future, the super PAC raising unlimited donations to support Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney, brought in nearly $18 million last year — none from donors of under $200.

Donors to the pro-Romney group included a cross-section of conservative businessmen, top executives of the private equity firm Bain Capital that Romney founded and used to make his fortune, and other investment houses, including Goldman Sachs.

Four companies founded by Frank VanderSloot, Romney's national finance co-chairman who has held fundraisers at his Idaho Falls ranch during both of Romney's presidential runs, each gave $250,000 to the PAC. Melaleuca Inc. and its affiliates sell vitamins and household products nationwide.

Others who underwrote the shadow campaign committee included Dallas businessman Harlan Crow and his Crow Holdings, who donated $150,000; billionaire Bill Koch of West Palm Beach, Fla., who along with his Oxbow Carbon Corp. dropped $1 million; major Republican fundraiser Paul Singer, a principal in Elliott Management Corp., who also donated $1 million, and Sam Zell, former owner of the bankrupt Tribune Co., who gave $50,000.

In the first four GOP contests, the super PACs have spent much of their money serving as attack dogs, independently blitzing the airwaves with negative ads that seem in perfect sync with the candidates' campaigns. In addition, wealthy backers are acting as "bundlers," using their connections to raise tens of millions of dollars for President Barack Obama and Romney.

Tuesday night's unveiling of the identities of donors to super PACs came hours after polls closed in the key Florida primary, meaning that voters had no idea who bankrolled more than $10 million in broadcast ads by Restore Our Future.

"This level of disclosure isn't just inadequate. It's laughable," Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York told reporters. "The voters deserve to know the ugly truth of who is behind these super PACs."

Schumer said Tuesday's disclosures are "focusing the public's attention on the rotten state of campaign finance," noting that 70 percent of the $18 million raised by Rove's American Crossroads came from donors of $1 million or more.
Joined by Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Al Franken of Minnesota, Schumer called on Congress to at least pass legislation requiring better disclosure. He said that the Senate Rules Committee will take testimony later this month from people affiliated with super PACs, as well as donors.

In 2010, Senate Democrats twice came within one vote of passing a bill to require all groups engaging in political spending to reveal donors of $1,000 or more and to require top officers of outside groups, as well as their leading donors, to appear on camera in any television ads vouching their approval.

In winning the White House in 2008, Obama rode a tide of small donations as his campaign raised $662 million.

Corrado said that, in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, "what we're seeing in 2012 is a test of whether the development of broader financial participation in elections — the rise of small donors in elections — is going to continue to be encouraged, or if big money will once again become a central feature of the election."

If Romney wins the nomination, he predicted that his shadow super PAC would play a leading role in the general election.

Conservatives, with the help of a radically conservative Supreme Court decided that government by and for the people was an outdated concept. So conservatives who identify as the grassroots of their party can thank themselves if the candidates they like don't have a chance. 

Mitt Romney is The Face of Conservative Vulture Capitalism That Feeds Off Hard Working Americans

Mitt Romney is The Face of Conservative Vulture Capitalism That Feeds Off Hard Working Americans

ThinkProgress reported Wednesday that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has profited from thousands of Florida foreclosures through a Goldman Sachs investment fund. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R) blasted Romney on the trail today for those investments, and re-upped those attacks in tonight’s CNN debate.

Romney attempted to explain away the investments, saying he didn’t control them because they were part of a blind trust:

    GINGRICH: Governor Romney has investments in Goldman Sachs, which is today foreclosing on Floridians. So maybe Governor Romney, in the spirit of openness, should tell us how much money he’s made off of how many households that have been foreclosed by his investments.

    ROMNEY: First of all, my investments are not made by me. My investments for the last 10 years have been in a blind trust, managed by a trustee. Secondly, the investments they’ve made, we’ve learned about this as we made our financial disclosure, have been made in mutual funds and bonds. I don’t own stock in either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. There are bonds the investor has held through mutual funds. And Mr. Speaker, I know that sounds like an enormous revelation, but have you checked your own investments? You also have investments through mutual funds that also invest in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Watch it:

Notably, Romney never denied the charge that he made money off of foreclosures. Later in the debate, Romney was asked about the $3 million he kept in a Swiss bank account before it was closed in 2010. Again, Romney attempted to brush aside the question, saying, “I have a trustee” who manages a blind trust.

Romney’s reliance on blind trusts is interesting, considering it was he who called them “a ruse” when running against former Sen. Ted Kennedy (D) in 1994. And as ABC News noted, the trusts are “not so blind,” since they have been noted on his financial disclosure forms. The trusts are also maintained by Romney’s personal lawyer and don’t meet federal standards for elected officials. Romney’s original investments into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, meanwhile, were never in a blind trust.

Conservatives are always falsely claiming that Democrats are anti-capitalism ( conservatism is just another name for pathological liar), yet it is conservatives with their vulture capitalism, crony corporatism and worship of the financial elite that is weakening capitalism in the U.S. They can wrap their doubletalk in all the flags and Bibles they like, it still stinks.

Mitt Romney, Bain and Right-Wing Death Squads

Romney tapped El Salvador's wealthy families, including one linked to right-wing death squads 

A significant portion of the seed money that created Mitt Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital, was provided by wealthy oligarchs from El Salvador, including members of a family with a relative who allegedly financed rightist groups that used death squads during the country’s bloody civil war in the 1980s

Bain, the source of Romney’s fabulous personal wealth, has been the subject of recent attacks in the Republican primary over allegations that Romney and the firm behaved like, in Rick Perry’s words, “vulture capitalists.”One TV spot denounced Romney for relying on “foreign seed money from Latin America” but did not say where the money came from. In fact, Romney recruited as investors wealthy Central Americans who were seeking a safe haven for their capital during a tumultuous and violent period in the region.

Like so much about Bain, which is known for secrecy and has been dubbed a “black box,” all the names of the investors who put up the money for the initial fund in 1984 are not known. Much of what we do know was first reported by the Boston Globe in 1994 when Romney ran for U.S. Senate against Ted Kennedy.

In 1984, Romney had been tapped by his boss at Bain & Co, a consulting firm, to create a spin-off venture capital fund, Bain Capital.

A Costa Rica-born Bain official named Harry Strachan invited friends and former clients in Central America to a presentation about the fund with Romney in Miami. The group was impressed and “signed up for 20% of the fund,” according to Strachan’s memoir. That was about $6.5 million, according to the Globe. Bain partners themselves were putting up half the money, according to Strachan. Thus the Central American investors had contributed 40 percent of the outside capital.

Back in 1984, wealthy Salvadoran families were looking for safe investments as violence and upheaval engulfed the country. The war, which pitted leftist guerrillas against a right-wing government backed by the Reagan administration, ultimately left over 70,000 people dead in the tiny nation before a peace deal was brokered by the United Nations in 1992. The vast majority of violence, a UN truth commission later found, was committed by rightist death squads and the military, which received U.S. training and $6 billion in military and economic aid. The Reagan administration feared that El Salvador could become a foothold for Communists in Central America.

The notorious death squads were financed by members of the Salvadoran oligarchy and had close links to the country’s military. The death squads kidnapped, tortured, and killed suspected leftists in urban areas fueling an insurgency that retreated to rural areas and waged war on the government from the countryside. The war, which lasted 12 years, triggered an exodus that brought more than 1 million Salvadorans to the United States.

There is no evidence that any of Bain Capital’s original investors were involved in these sorts of activities. But the identities of some of the investors remain secret, and there are family names that raise questions.

Four members of the de Sola family were among the original Bain investors, or “limited partners” in the company, the Globe reported. Their relative and “one-time business partner,” Orlando de Sola, was an important figure in El Salvador. A well-known right-wing coffee grower with an (in his words) “authoritarian” vision for the country, de Sola spent time living in Miami but was also a founding member of the right-wing Arena party, lead by a U.S.-trained former intelligence officer named Roberto D’Aubuisson.

Craig Pyes, an investigative reporter then with the Albuquerque Journal, wrote a series on the rightist death squads based on extensive on-the-ground reporting in El Salvador in the early 1980s with Laurie Becklund of the Los Angeles Times, while the death squads were still active.

Pyes, who has since won two Pulitzer Prizes and is now a private investigator in California, says that no one has produced any proof that de Sola directly funded death squads.

“However,” Pyes says, “he was in the inner circle of the group around D’Aubuisson at the time that D’Aubuisson was well known to be involved in the death squads. De Sola’s name appears in a December 1983 FBI cable as one of 29 people suspected by State Department officials of furnishing funds and weapons to Salvadoran death squads.”

De Sola’s name also turned up in a notebook, seized from an aide to D’Aubuisson named Saravia, that detailed the finances of D’Aubuisson’s terrorist network, according to Pyes.

The Saravia notebook, reviewed by U.S. officials, listed weapons purchases, payments, and what appear to be descriptions of violent plots by rightists, including the assassination of El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero in 1980. Asked about the notebook by the New York Times in the late 1980s, de Sola denied that he had ever helped finance political violence. De Sola could not be reached for comment for this story.

Romney, for his part, who was much more accessible to the press in 1994, told the Globe that year that “we investigated the individuals’ integrity and looked for any obvious signs of illegal activity and problems in their background, and found none. We did not investigate in-laws and relatives.” He also said that Bain had checked the names of the Bain investors with the U.S. government. Given the policy of the Reagan administration at the time, though, it’s not clear going to the government would have been the most effective vetting mechanism.

It’s impossible to fully explore the backgrounds of the original Bain investors because we don’t know all their identities, including the names of the four members of the de Sola family mentioned by the Globe. Neither the Romney camp, Bain Capital, nor Strachan — the Bain executive who recruited the Central Americans — responded to requests for comment.

During his first presidential bid in 2007, Romney more than once touted the Central American investors in Bain while trying to woo Hispanic voters. 

Romney has learned from the Bush family, never leave your bloody fingerprints on anything. Romney and his apologists can always claim he was once or twice removed from actual murderous thugs so everything is just peachy.

Mitt Romney the “vulture capitalist” and the Rest of the Republican Clowns Who Have Presidential Fantasies

Mitt Romney the “vulture capitalist” and the Rest of the Republican Clowns Who Have Presidential Fantasies

“I say third place is a ticket to ride, ladies and gentleman! Hello, South Carolina!” Jon Huntsman shouted to a room of people in New Hampshire. He repeated the ticket-to-ride phrase a few times; assuming that there was some reason for it, beyond a fondness for the Beatles, one has to ask: Who is issuing these tickets, for what conceivable reason, and what is the fare? In Huntsman’s case, the stationmaster may have been relatively easy to spot: his father, whose money might make many things possible, was in the audience. But why spend it; why, at this point, keep going?

When the New Hampshire results came in, with Mitt Romney winning—he got about thirty-nine per cent of the vote—commentators offered two immediate, somewhat contradictory conclusions: the outcome could hardly be better for Romney, and nobody else was leaving the race. Everyone got a ticket to South Carolina. Perhaps New Hampshire’s transformative powers have been exaggerated, and the primary is now so early that most voters aren’t even awake yet. Or Romney’s victories may simply seem less compelling to his opponents than his liabilities; this week has brought a sustained, and arguably belated, interrogation of Romney’s history at Bain Capital. (Alex Koppelman has more on that.) Perhaps none of the not-Romneys want to leave before he’s got the worst of it.

There is a why-not quality to the attacks on Romney, from Newt Gingrich’s involvement in the airing of an anti-Bain documentary to Rick Perry’s characterization of Romney as a “vulture capitalist.” (“That almost sounds like Occupy Wall Street, not someone who is governing the state of Texas as a conservative,” Sean Hannity said to Perry.) One suspects that the “vulture capitalist” line resonates because it serves, for many, not only as a description of Romney’s career but of his personality. It captures something about him—the way he seems to embody the least attractive qualities of both the animal and the automaton. Listening to Romney, one sometimes feels trapped in a science-fiction story that has been written to explore the question of whether robots can lie, or be greedy.

And yet the possibility of a Mitt implosion doesn’t seem like enough of an explanation for why so many improbable candidates are still in it. Most generously, there may be sound, or at least plausible, ideological or tactical reasons to stay: Ron Paul can influence the Party platform, Huntsman can set himself up for 2016. (Last night, Huntsman got seventeen per cent of the vote.) There also seems to be a strong strain of irrationality, though. What we’ve learned after the first caucus and primary is that the casting of actual votes is not enough to dispel the fundamental oddness of this race. It is a contest in which the sitting governor of Texas has become a figure of ridicule, while a Congressman from Texas who has, for years, almost defined the term fringe, has become a collector of delegates: Ron Paul was the second-place finisher in New Hampshire, and a strong one, with about a quarter of the votes. Perry got about one per cent. According to exit polls, Paul was first among young voters.

Is what’s keeping at least some of the candidates in the race—or “the hunt,” as Huntsman called it—not the illusion of victory but the sheer joy of knocking things down? Grown men don’t have as many opportunities as they might to act like toddlers. This isn’t a train going to South Carolina or to anywhere in particular. It’s a set of careening bumper cars. The question, and not just for the Republican Party, is when it becomes a demolition derby. Also, one of the few points to emerge clearly in the debates this past weekend was that the candidates really don’t like each other. (Santorum, who ended up with nine per cent of the vote, would have done well to hide that a little better.) Grudges are great motivators.

Does any of that explain why almost all of the six remaining candidates sounded improbably pleased with how they’d done? Ron Paul was unfakeably gleeful. “I still have to chuckle when they describe you and me as dangerous,” he told his supporters, even though the sound he made was more like a happy cackle. He glowed; for a man who hates government, Paul managed, for a moment, to make politics look fun. And maybe it is fun; there are the balloons to consider, and the cold pizza, and the adulation. (That feeling passed as soon as Santorum began speaking.) Gingrich, with nine per cent of the vote, made politics sound beside the point. Before invoking Thomas Edison, he brought up an eminently practical question the candidates were asked in a debate over the weekend, about whether their vision of no government included doing away with a program that helped low-income people afford heating oil in the winter. He dismissed the premise—Washington thinking. Why not just create whole new energy sources? Gingrich talks as if he’s running for the job of alchemist in chief.

Or maybe Newt is just thinking about money. He wouldn’t be alone. Money, in this case, is a shorthand for a whole set of factors that keep candidates in: the money that they might make more easily for themselves, now that more people know who they are (speech-selling, book-writing, Fox News anchoring); and the money that, thanks to Super PACs, they don’t have to work particularly hard to raise.

Conservatives felt no shame at sending over 4,000 Americans to their deaths based on a pack of lies. Conservatives felt no shame at wrecking the economy. Conservative fell no shame in doing everything they can to keep the economy from recovering just to make Democrats look bad. So why feel shame in staying in a political race - in which PACs play a large role, but conservatives are taking millions from gullible Main Street conservatives - the same gullible rubes who also bought the lies about Iraq, think liberals somehow caused the economic collapse. OK wait a minute, maybe these rubes should keep sending their money to clowns who will just screw them over again. Politics has turned into some kind of sick game in which conservative Americans appear to like being treated like trash.

Meet America Hating Spend and Borrow Conservative Rick Santorum

Meet America Hating Spend and Borrow Conservative Rick Santorum

Conventional wisdom holds that former Senator Rick Santorum, co-winner of the Iowa caucus, is indisputably conservative enough for the Republican base. “Santorum fits the mold of a tried-and-true conservative who has rarely compromised,” writes Aaron Blake of the Washington Post.

In fact, Santorum is a throwback to the Bush era: a big-spending, big-government conservative. He has had the good fortune to have lost re-election in 2006 and not been around to vote in favor of TARP, but time and again he voted for costly schemes that expanded the national debt. Many of the attacks that damaged Newt Gingrich could have been made against Santorum if he had been polling well enough to invite them.

Santorum voted for Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind and the Iraq War. This is no way to shrink the government or balance the budget, especially when you simultaneously propose to cut taxes and increase defense spending.

Santorum’s own nephew put it best in his endorsement of Ron Paul. “If you want another big-government politician who supports the status quo to run our country, you should vote for my uncle, Rick Santorum.... My uncle’s interventionist policies, both domestic and foreign, stem from his irrational fear of freedom not working,” wrote John Garver, a college student. “When Republicans were spending so much money under President Bush, my uncle was right there along with them as a senator. The reason we have so much debt is not only because of Democrats, but also because of big-spending Republicans like my Uncle Rick.”

So if conservatives and Republicans were really moved to protest big government during the Bush years, then Santorum might have a problem. Luckily for Santorum, most conservatives only oppose deficit spending when it’s done by Democrats. As David Weigel reports for Slate from Iowa, “Tea Partiers did not demand much economic libertarianism from their GOP. Sixty-four percent of caucus-goers called themselves ‘Tea Party supporters,’ and 30 percent of them backed Rick Santorum—a social conservative who proudly defended his earmarks.”

Indeed, when Santorum started to rise in the polls last week Rick Perry hit him with an ad attacking his penchant for pork-barrel spending. It didn’t pierce Santorum’s bubble. Nor did Rand Paul’s dubbing Santorum a big government conservative on the campaign trail in Iowa.

Actual Tea Party activists and conservative opinion writers are aware of these contradictions. Jane Aitken, the founder of the New Hampshire Tea Party, endorsed Ron Paul on Tuesday. Aitken tells The Nation that Santorum’s big spending tendencies and his belligerent foreign policy concern her. “I don't like Santorum's record that much.... He's way too hawkish. We need to be vigilant over countries like Iran, but we must not appear to be the aggressors ever.”

James Poulos of the conservative Daily Caller writes, “The Bush years proved beyond question how difficult it is to cabin off ‘good’ interventions in the minute details of our moral lives from ‘bad’ interventions in our finances, our health care, our education, and other similarly sweeping areas.” David Boaz of the libertarian Cato Institute complains that in 2006 Santorum campaigned on earmarks he delivered for Pennsylvania and articulated a big government ideology. “[Santorum] declared himself against individualism, against libertarianism, against ‘this whole idea of personal autonomy…this idea that people should be left alone.’?”

But will critiques of Santorum from the well-informed activists and opinion-makers infiltrate the mass of Republican voters? Their reassessment of Jon Huntsman never caught on with rank-and-file conservatives. When it comes to average voters, the GOP may still be the unprincipled party of George W. Bush.

It must be one of te most mentally taxing occupations in the world being a rabid conservative. They have to juggle all those contradictions, lies, and not lehast of all the fact that allowed to run rampant conservatism would end the United States of America and our democratic republican form of government.

Rupert Murdoch's Anti-American Fox News Declared War on Blue Collar and Middle-Class Workers in 2011

Rupert Murdoch's Anti-American Fox News Declared War on Blue Collar and Middle-Class Workers in 2011

In 2011, as President Obama and congressional Democrats pushed for increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans, Fox ramped up its defense of the rich while accusing Obama of attempting to incite a class war. Along the way, Fox relentlessly attacked poor and unemployed Americans, union workers who fought back against attempts by Republicans to strip their right to collectively bargain, and the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has been highlighting increasing income inequality in America. Here, Media Matters looks back at Fox's year of class warfare.

"We Should Be Supporting" The "Mega-Wealthy": Fox Fiercely Defended The Rich

Throughout 2011, Fox figures obsessively defended the wealthy against any possible tax increases proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats -- even claiming that the rich should pay less in taxes while the poor should pay more. Some Fox figures claimed that "most Americans say" that "patriotism is paying less taxes," while others claimed that those making $200,000 a year are not rich and that increasing their taxes would be unfair.

Laura Ingraham Complained That Raising The Tax Rate For The Wealthy Is "Demoniz[ing] The Rich." On the April 12 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham referred to a plan to raise the taxes of the wealthiest Americans as a plan that "demoni[zes] the rich." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/12/11, via Media Matters]

Fox Regular Jonathan Hoenig on Cashin' In: "Wealthy Earners Should Pay Even Less. The Poor Should Pay Much More" In Taxes. On the March 5 edition of Fox News' Cashin' In, Fox News regular Jonathan Hoenig said: "Wealthy earners should pay even less. The poor should pay much more" in taxes. [Fox News, Cashin' In, 3/5/11, via Media Matters]

Peter Johnson Jr.: "Most Americans Say" That "Patriotism Is Paying Less Taxes." On the April 18 edition of Fox & Friends, Fox News legal analyst Peter Johnson Jr. said: "What we have on this tax day is a White House that says, 'If you don't pay more taxes, then you're not being patriotic.' There's a lot of other Americans, and most Americans, who say the opposite: that patriotism is paying less taxes." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/18/11, via Media Matters]

Kilmeade On Taxes: "We Should Be Supporting" The "Mega-Wealthy," Not "Punish[ing] Them." On the July 22 edition of Fox & Friends, guest Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), said that "we can't ... continue to cut taxes for the mega-wealthy in this country when we have a debt and deficit problem." Co-host Brian Kilmeade replied: "The mega-wealthy are paying the majority of taxes for the entire nation, and they're the ones who are going to bring us out of this. You would think, rather than punish them, we should be supporting them." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 7/22/11]

Fox Continued To Claim That $200,000 Per Year Income Is Not Rich. On the April 21 edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Gretchen Carlson suggested that people making $200,000 a year in income are not rich, saying of Obama's plan to let tax cuts for the wealthy expire: "It's not just billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg who may pay more taxes. ... It's the people making $200,000 and above. There's a huge disparity between that and the billionaires." Carlson's comment followed many similar remarks Fox News anchors made in 2010, when they repeatedly claimed someone making $200,000 or $250,000 per year is "not rich." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/21/11, via Media Matters]

Fox Used "Misleading" Statistic To Claim The Number Of Millionaires Is Decreasing And That Obama's "Plan To Redistribute The Wealth Is Working." On the August 18 edition of Fox & Friends, Fox Business host Stuart Varney used a Wall Street Journal editorial to claim that "[t]he number of millionaires, of people making the million dollars a year, [is] down very, very sharply." The August 20 edition of Fox & Friends Saturday echoed this claim and suggested it showed that Obama's "plan to redistribute the wealth is working."

    In Fact, Economists, Experts Called WSJ Editorial "Misleading" For Using A "Narrower Measure Of Worth." Economists and experts contacted by Media Matters said the Journal's definition of "millionaire" was "misleading" because it was based on households' income, rather than using the more traditional measure of wealth or investible assets. Both the Tax Policy Center and the Center for Economic and Policy Research have pointed out that in fact the wealth of the wealthiest Americans has increased dramatically in the past few decades. [Media Matters, 8/18/11; Fox News, Fox & Friends Saturday, 8/20/11, via Media Matters]

Poor and unemployed Americans were not spared from vicious attacks from Fox in 2011. Fox figures suggested that unemployed Americans are lazy, while the poor were scolded for not being suitably "ashamed" for their poverty and for lacking a "richness in spirit." Fox also seized on a Heritage Foundation report about the ownership of appliances among the poor to downplay the hardships faced by Americans in poverty.


John Stossel: People Affected By Government Shutdown "Shouldn't Be Getting Those Handouts Anyway." On the April 6 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto, while talking about a possible government shutdown, Fox Business host John Stossel claimed that "most of us" wouldn't notice a shutdown and that those "who would notice shouldn't be getting those handouts anyway." [Fox News, Your World with Neil Cavuto, 4/6/11, via Media Matters]

Ben Stein Claimed That "A Lot Of" The Unemployed "Would Not Prefer To Go To Work." On the April 30 broadcast of Fox News' Cavuto on Business, Stein said that "a lot of" unemployed Americans "would not prefer to go to work." [Fox Business, Cavuto on Business, 4/30/11, via Media Matters]

Fox Business Scolded Poor People For Not Being "Ashamed" Enough By Their Poverty. During the May 19 edition of Fox Business' Varney & Co., Varney attacked anti-poverty programs as evidence that the U.S. now has an "entitlement mentality." Fox contributor Charles Payne then scolded people in poverty for not being "embarrassed" about needing public assistance:

This attitude goes all the way back to the radical Calvinists who believed that any bad luck that came your way was completely your fault. Get run over bu an oxcart and can't plow your fields, oh well that means God must mean for you and your family to suffer or even starve to death. These are not the egalitarian principles on which the U.S. was founded. We are not supposed to see the masses of people, our fellow citizens as just so much disposable trash the way Medieval kings and modern conservatives and their propagandists at Fox see the American people.

Newt Gingrich on his first wife - "She's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President. And besides, she has cancer."

Newt Gingrich on his first wife - "She's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President. And besides, she has cancer."

The news that Newt Gingrich will receive $4 million from Rupert Murdoch's publishing house must have been greeted with dismay by his former wife, Jacqueline, down in Carroll County, Ga. Newt had pulled a fast one. It was only nine months ago that she consented to the congressman's request for an amendment to their divorce decree that bars her from claiming additional funds due to an increase in his earnings.

Not to be too harsh on Newt, it must be terribly difficult balancing pro-family values with a commitment to a Darwinian survival of the fittest in the marketplace. Newt the congressman-author is a winner in life's sweepstakes, Jacqueline the schoolteacher-mother is a loser, and that must be the way God and/or Adam Smith intended it.

She had free will. Nobody forced her to marry someone eight years younger. The man is supposed to marry someone younger, and Newt corrected that the second time around after divorcing Jacqueline in 1980 for "irreconcilable differences," which he said had been the case through the 1970s, despite counseling.

But did he have to be so mean about it? As reported by L.H. Carter, his campaign treasurer, Newt said of Jacqueline: "She's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President. And besides, she has cancer." Hard to believe, although according to the New Yorker, his wife did tell the congregation of her Baptist church: "The devil has taken his heart." Maybe she was referring to his being so miserly in the matter of child support and alimony, but as Newt points out, we do have a safety net of private charity, and the congregants chipped in to help pay the utility bills.

The man has chutzpah. In his 1974 campaign, he ran on the slogan, "Newt's family is like your family." A sad but perhaps accurate commentary on life in suburban Georgia. In 1978, he ran an ad blasting his opponent, Virginia Shapard, saying, "If elected, Virginia will move to Washington, but her husband and her children will remain in Griffin." Under Gingrich's photo, it said: "When elected, Newt will keep his family together."

And he did, until he filed for divorce 16 months later. His wife told the court she wanted to stay married although she had "ample grounds" for divorce herself. But she complained bitterly that he failed to support the family. As her petition stated:

"Despite repeated notices . . . plaintiff has failed and refused to voluntarily provide reasonable support sufficient to include payment of usual and normal living expenses, including drugs, water, sewage, garbage, gas, electric and telephone service for defendant and the minor children. As a result, many of such accounts are two or three months past due with notices of intent to cut off service . . . . "

Picky, picky. True, Newt was not broke, he was a sitting congressman with a substantial salary, but he had to maintain another residence in Washington and was about to remarry. How many garbage bills could he be expected to pay?

Newt argued that the mother of his two children could always go back to teaching, demonstrating his respect for women in the workforce. But the judge disagreed and ordered Newt to pay the utility bills, as well as $400 a month in child support and $1,300 in alimony. He also ordered that if Newt's income ever rose over $100,000 a year, the court could modify payment.

Fast-forward 12 years to 1993 and back to court, where Jacqueline Gingrich pleaded that Newt had failed to obey the divorce decree from the day it was issued. She asked that "this court issue an order directing the sheriff of Carroll County, state of Georgia, to arrest and seize the defendant and incarcerate him in the common jail until said individual complies fully and completely with this court's final judgment."

Shocking?Not really. When you pull back the curtain on the party that bills itself as the party of "family values" this is typical of the stuff America finds. How does the conservative movement get away with being such self-righteous hypocrites? because conservatism is not a movement based on facts, costs versus benefits, reality, governing for the common good, it is more like a cult based on beliefs. Conservatives are believers in people, or worms such as Newt. Ever tried arguing with a true believer.

Republicans Come Out of the Closet, They Just Don't Like Anyone Having Sex, Unless its With Them

Republicans Come Out of the Closet, They Just Don't Like Anyone Having Sex, Unless its With Them

The Republicans ban women from having sex (except with them)

In 2011 America's right wing, and especially the Christian right wing, at last let slip what their problem is with contraception and abortion: it's not squeamishness, morality or a fondness for hanging outside Planned Parenthood clinics toting misspelt placards – they just don't like women having sex. At all. As Amanda Marcotte wrote this week, in 2011 the anti-choice movement "stopped trying so hard to manage mainstream perceptions of themselves as somehow just great lovers of fetal life, and are coming out with their anti-sex agenda". This was borne out in their frankly unhinged attacks on Planned Parenthood, the HPV vaccine, insurance coverage of contraception and, as I discussed last week, the puritanical mood they created that encouraged President Obama to restrict access to Plan B, or the morning-after pill, none of which have much to do with abortion and everything to do with women's temerity to have sex.

Thus, in 2012 the Republicans propose the female anti-sex bill, in which women are expressly forbidden from having sex with anyone other than the occasional lecherous politician who happens to hurl himself, bodily, sweatily, in her lucky, lucky path.

Newt Gingrich becomes the face of the family values party

And here's one Republican politician who definitely doesn't mind women having sex, as long as it's with him. And there does seem to be a surprising number of candidates for the job, considering he looks like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters, and his name is Newt.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure – of meeting him, I mean, of course, of meeting him – here is a crash course in the Republican party's current presidential front runner. This champion of family values cheated on his second wife with a woman 22 years younger than him at precisely the same time he was attempting to impeach Clinton for – and maybe you saw this part coming – cheating on his wife with a woman 22 years younger than him.

Gingrich claimed that his actions stemmed from "how passionately I felt about this country" and, truly, nothing says "patriotism" more clearly than taking your pants off and banging a congressional aide – as long as you're Newt Gingrich, of course. He declined to attend the wedding of his lesbian half-sister, Candace Gingrich-Jones, having referred to gay marriage as "a temporary aberration" and, really, there is no one better placed to sound off on the sanctity of the institution of marriage than Newt Gingrich. Sadly, space prevents me from getting too deeply into other subtleties of Newt's character – that he condemned Freddie Mac for its part in the housing collapse while omitting to mention that he had received $1.6m from them as a consultant, say – but let's just say that he is the perfect summation of all the ticklish and self-serving contradictions one now expects of a party that argues for tax breaks for the rich while pretending to be a friend of the working man. Newt for 2012!

Conservatives constantly betray their small government platform. Name one segment of private or personal life in which conservatives have not tried to get government to regulate, spy on or dictate about. OK, conservatives are sure the individual right for any America to dump their toxic waste on other Americans is in the Constitution. Conservatives are also sure that just about everyone - women, people of color, non-right-wing Christians, people with disabilities and everyone who exercises has fewer rights than they do.

Just 5 of The Most Anti-American Acts Committed by Conservative Republicans in 2011

Just 5 of The Most Anti-American Acts Committed by Conservative Republicans in 2011

Call them nontroversies, poutrages or pseudo-scandals. Since the 2008 elections, the conservative media have peddled a seemingly endless series of trumped-up non-stories, pitched as scandals rivaling Watergate, to their loyal rubes in an attempt to paint liberals, the media, scientists, Democrats and Obama – and other enemies of the Wingnut State – as perfidious, dishonest or downright treasonous.

A few of them have borne some remote resemblance to reality, but many of their pseudo-scandals featured no more substance than the bizarre right-wing emails your crazy uncle credulously forwards around to friends and family. Yet, with a dedicated conservative media headed by Fox News, many have been mainstreamed on the right, with some spurring calls for investigation by the GOP-led House. Those calls, in turn, then become stories for Fox News and other conservative outlets -- it's a feedback loop full of crazy.

2. And They're Taking Over the Conservative Movement

Staying on the theme, we get to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the biggest wingnut gab-fest of the year. This year was special because, according to the fever swamps, we learned that CPAC's organizers were in the bag not only for Islamic extremists – they're everywhere, after all – but also the gays, because a gay Republican group called GOProud was allowed to attend this year's shindig.

Roy Edroso braved the wingnut blogs to bring us the tale of how jihadists infiltrated this important event.

    The accusations of jihad-friendliness were spurred by the presence at CPAC of Arab Indian-American former Bush Administration official Suhail Khan, whom some rightbloggers claim is a member of the militant Muslim Brotherhood -- a charge Khan has denied, which denial Frank Gaffney dismisses as "a bit of taqiyya (lying for the faith)."

    Khan took part in a CPAC panel called "The Importance of Faith and Religious Liberty." "Islamic Rights Promoted At CPAC," Judicial Watch warned the nation. "Muslim Brotherhood supporters and sympathizers promoted Islamic tolerance."'

    Two ardent anti-Muslim rightbloggers with their own CPAC panels were outraged. Pam Geller said the whole event had been "corrupted and compromised by the Muslim Brotherhood... look at the panels, they're either clueless or complicit." David Horowitz of NewsRealBlog told his CPAC auditors Khan was "sponsored by his longtime patron Grover Norquist," implying the former Bush official was in on the whole dirty Islamicist deal.

    A flyer denouncing "Grover Khan" was circulated at CPAC; suggesting this two-headed beast was trying to "boil the Conservative frog slowly" so "he'll stay in the pot till he's cooked."

3. Muffin-Gate

In 2009, the Department of Justice sponsored a conference in a swanky Washington DC hotel that charged $14.29 per attendee for a breakfast of fresh fruit, coffee and muffins, and “rental fees for the workshop space and conference rooms." That's not exactly an exorbitant fee, but in September, when the DOJ's inspector general issued a report – later corrected – suggesting that the department had paid $16 per muffin, “Muffin-gate” was born, a symbol of wasteful government spending that the right latched onto like … well, like a right-winger latches onto a faux scandal involving the Obama administration.

In what may be the most “meta” conspiracy theory of the year, Fox's Steve Doocey suggested that the only reason the network's endless parade of half-cooked scandals never caught on was the mainstream media's hopeless liberal bias. But when Huffington Post's Sam Stein looked at the media's coverage of Muffin-gate, he found that of 223 news stories that mentioned the “$16 muffins” from September 20-28, only 37 attempted to correct the record.

4. Mussolini Also Leaned on Ford

In 2011, Ford ran an ad featuring a customer saying that he'd chosen not to buy a car from one of the company's bailed-out Detroit competitors because, “I was going to buy from a manufacturer that’s standing on their own: win, lose, or draw.” The company planned on airing the ad for four weeks, and did just that – not much of a story.

But then a Detroit News opinion columnist, citing no sources whatsoever, wrote that, “Ford pulled the ad after individuals inside the White House questioned whether the copy was publicly denigrating the controversial bailout policy.” Ford denied the charge, repeatedly, but as you might imagine, a right-wing meme that will probably be with us forever was born.

7. Zombie ACORN Lives (And It's Running Occupy Wall Street)

Matthew Vadum, author of Subversion, Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, can't seem to accept a great conservative victory. Years after the right, using some wildly dishonest selective editing, destroyed ACORN, Vadum insists that the community group is still alive and well and draining federal funds.

But leave it to Fox to combine ACORN-phobia with its endless attempts to smear the Occupy Wall Street movement. In a series of “reports,” Fox's Jana Winter, relying on unnamed “inside sources,” insisted that ACORN – which she claimed has been reincarnated as New York Communities for Change (NYCC) -- had been behind the whole thing from the start.

She detailed how they'd planned it out for months before the first occupation began and shredded documents to cover up their role. The interesting thing, NYCC organizers say, is that while there is often some kernel of truth behind such myths, in this case the whole story was completely false, from beginning to end.

But that didn't prevent Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., from calling for a congressional investigation.

Dave Weigel, who accused Fox of “trying to pass on a stupid story to some rubes,” offers more detail here.

8. Planned Parenthood Subsidizes its Abortion Mills with Sex Trafficking!

Less successful than right-wing provocateur James O'Keefe's takedown of ACORN was an attempt by his ertswhile protege, Lila Rose, to catch Planned Parenthood in a similarly nefarious sting.

Here's what happened: right-wingers visited Planned Parenthood offices in 11 states, said they were running a sex-trafficking ring, complete with undocumented immigrants (icing on the cake), and asked about getting health-care services for their prostitutes.

Planned Parenthood immediately informed federal authorities, and that should have been the end of the story – a failed sting.

But that's just reality, which has a well-known liberal bias. The fact that the organization immediately dropped a dime on the “sex trafficking ring” didn't phase the Fox News crew from playing up the story for all it was worth.

  Rememberthe movie LiarLiar with Jim Carrey where he was forced to tell the truth. If conservative Republicans ever came under such a spell....we'd have something between silence and lots of mumbling. Modern conservationism is all about singing the praises of slack-jawed imbecility and shrill urban myths. They can't stop and have an honest debate because than the public would realize the gift conservatives keep giving the Untied States of America is bullsh*t wrapped in red, white and blue and than having the nerve to mumble something about Jesus. One has to wonder if any conservative has ever read the Sermon of the Mount.

Sleaze Bag Conservative Hypocrite of the Week - Ohio Gov. John Kasich

Sleaze Bag Conservative Hypocrite of the Week - Ohio Gov. John Kasich - Ohio Gov. John Kasich Is ‘Very Pleased’ That The Auto Rescue He Originally Opposed Saved The Auto Industry

In 2009, the Obama administration fought the tide of Republican disapproval and decided to rescue General Motors and Chrysler. Millions in paid back loans and thousands of additional jobs later, GM and Chrysler are on track to sell 14 million cars, the “fastest pace in more than two years.”

The American auto recovery is simultaneously spurring an about-face among GOP naysayers. Once calling on America to “let Detroit go bankrupt,” GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney recently claimed that the rescue was his idea first. Now, another Republican is following suit: Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R).

When first asked about financial aid for the auto industry in 2008, Kasich dismissed the idea, saying, “If they’re not going to be viable, we shouldn’t throw good money after bad.” Asked for his feelings now that the rescue is showing success, Kasich said he is “very pleased” that the Americans have the jobs he originally opposed saving:

    Rick Snyder, Kasich’s fellow Republican governor in Michigan, has said that government invention helped save Chrysler and General Motors – and he warned GOP presidential candidates against criticizing the bailout.

    Kasich would not go that far.

    “What’s done is done,” he said. “We have a strengthening auto industry in Ohio. And I am very pleased about it. I am pleased for the families of workers who have jobs.”

The auto funds have been vital to saving and creating jobs in Ohio. One Chrysler plant in Toledo, Ohio was able to add 1,100 new jobs this fall. More than merely pleased, Kasich attempted to take credit for the added jobs — a fact that did not escape Ohio workers.

When asked about Romney’s similar position on the auto rescue, Kasich offered, “I think there isn’t a single person that I know that didn’t want to have a strong auto industry in America…Its just a matter of how you get there.” When asked whether he agreed with Romney’s way of “getting there” via bankruptcy, he simply said, “I just don’t have any interest in even commenting on that.”

How is it that anti-American half-wits such as Republican Gov. John Kasich get elected to public office. Public office is supposed to be about looking out for the interests and common good of the American people, not a few of his sleazy pals in cigar smoke filled back rooms. Maybe its the smoke that causes conservatives to filter everything through their deep hatred of America's working families and contempt for anyone who makes less than $200k a year.

Rupert Murdoch's Anti-American Fox News Outrageous Claim - "Brainwashed" People Think Fox Isn't "Fair And Balanced And Everybody Else Is"

Rupert Murdoch's Anti-American Fox News Outrageous Claim - "Brainwashed" People Think Fox Isn't "Fair And Balanced And Everybody Else Is"

Yesterday on Imus in the Morning, Imus and his guest, America's Newsroom co-anchor Martha MacCallum, rehashed the usual argument Fox employees trot out when they want to insulate the network's supposed "journalists" (like MacCallum) from accusations of partisanship -- that there exists a firm line between the network's "news" and "opinion" programming.

During the discussion, Imus praised MacCallum and her co-host Bill Hemmer, saying that there is "no editorializing at all" on their show. While attacking the partisanship of other networks, MacCallum said, "a lot of people are sort of brainwashed into believing that line of thinking that we're not fair and balanced, and everybody else is."

MacCallum explained that "during the daytime, we try to shoot as straight we possibly can. Everybody is a human being -- there's going to be times when your feelings about something enter a discussion."

MacCallum's claim echoed comments made by Bill Hemmer last year, when he told TVNewser that the opinions of Fox's right-wing primetime hosts don't carry over into America's Newsroom because "our broadcast, with Martha MacCallum and me, we shoot it down the middle."

Setting aside the larger problems with Fox's supposedly unimpeachable "news hours" -- complicated by things like having a Washington managing editor that orders network journalists to routinely cast doubt on climate science -- America's Newsroom often resembles Fox's "opinion" shows. While MacCallum suggests her and Hemmer's "feelings about something" only occasionally enter the discussion, they both have a record of echoing GOP talking points, and MacCallum has even flatly endorsed conservative policies.

For a characteristic example, after the release of President Obama's jobs plan in September, MacCallum kicked off Fox's "news" attacks on the plan, echoing the immediate GOP spin. During an interview with Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ), MacCallum trotted out the familiar, misleading talking point that the first stimulus plan "didn't work" and asked "why should everyone be convinced that this time it will work."

 MacCallum's "feelings about something" are often far more overt.

Last November, when covering Social Security reform, MacCallum stated that "we need to raise the age at which you can get" Social Security and also suggested Obama should come out and say, "let's consider investment accounts for younger people." More recently, she's been defending Rick Perry's assertion that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme."

MacCallum has told viewers that, like the old "Just Say No" to drugs pins, "we should have...Just Say No to more spending" pins. She has also compared America to a "drunk who finally hits bottom" in regards to budget deficits.

In July, MacCallum lamented America's pesky social safety net, without which we'd be in a "much better, stronger fiscal position" to "handle those things like the two wars."

Before MacCallum joined America's Newsroom, she was host of The Live Desk. During an interview in March 2009 with Rep. Michele Bachmann, Bachmann said that Obama's proposals constitute a "lurch toward socialism," to which MacCallum responded, "I think you're absolutely right about that."

What's more, "straight" news reporter MacCallum has frequently filled in on Fox's opinion shows. She guest-hosted for On the Record with Greta Van Susteren earlier this week, and has co-hosted Fox & Friends. It's hard to assert an inviolate division between "news" and "opinion" when you cross it with such ease.

Of course, cohost Bill Hemmer is not much better, and the problems with America's Newsroom as a straight news show predate MacCallum's move to the program.

Back in 2009, when Fox News was devoting much of their programming -- of both the "news" and "opinion" varieties -- to promoting the fledgling tea party movement, America's Newsroom was no exception.

Here's Bill Hemmer interviewing a tea party leader on April 7, 2009. Hemmer (and on-screen text) plugged the tea parties that were planned for April 15, and directed viewers to the America's Newsroom website, where "you can log on and see if there's an event in your area coming any time soon." ( reprinted here for educational purposes)

 Fox has proved itself to be nothing more than a propagnda outlet for rabid extremism, right-wing spin, conservative lies, gossip mongering, hateful insinuations, Anti-Americanism, rabid nationalism, an outlet for the weird theories and beliefs of screwballs and cranks. Someone might be brainwashed, but it is not those Americans who still care about the truth.