Rachel Maddow calls out Rand Paul for his utter bull@#$% at Howard University - April 10, 2013

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@RuthMarcus, Villagers and the evolution of media bull@#$%...

My distaste for Ruth Marcus goes back a while. So I guess I shouldn't have been completely surprised when yet again decided to act as the Chief Villager for a Newspaper run by nothing but Villagers when she wrote her latest (cough-cough) column.

After listing through some of the nasty comments House GOPers were tweeting as the President was speaking to them about reaching a Budget Deal, she quoted the President calmly assessing the situation with George Stephanopoulos:

Obama: “You know — I think whatever I’m for, it’s very hard for a Republican to also be for. I think they always have to be a little bit — you know, maintain some distance.”

One would think after all the Filibustering and insults (some of them actually racist) that have been hurled at this President from the start of his administration, a columnist might react with shock and surprise that the sitting President managed to keep his cool.

Instead, Ruth Marcus offered this:

The president has made this point before, and maybe he’s right. Yet this analysis leaves him in a distinctly unpresidential posture — not leaning in, but holding back.

Excuse me, but...I did not think it was anatomically possible for one's head to get that far up one's...--never mind.

I don't know how to tell Journalists this, because...I really thought they would have covered it in Journalism school, but...it's not your job to balance the argument.

I know you think that's your job. But let's be clear about what your job really is.

Your job is to present both sides of a story...

Your job is not necessarily to lend them equal weight, particularly when they don't deserve it.

Again, you don't elevate both sides into equality.  We don't need you to do that.  In fact, it's a really bad idea if you do do that.

If you're a columnist, as Ruth Marcus is, this is even more tricky.  Why?  Because, a columnist offers nothing but opinion.  They don't do any actual reporting.  They don't go digging around for facts anymore...they've been excused from that particular activity.  In fact, they are paid a substantial salary to say only what they think.  Even if what they think has no basis in reality, as Ruth Marcus clearly demonstrated today.

One would think that some measure of journalistic integrity would matter in a circumstance like this, but again...you'd be wrong.  The Washington Post is more than capable of publishing utter complete bull@#$% so long as it fills column inches.  After all they employ Jennifer Rubin, Marc Thiessen, Robert Samuelson, Richard Cohen...and Ruth Marcus.

(Hey, at least Ezra Klein -- and I know me some Liberals who hate him for some reason -- no idea why -- does actual work to preparing his pieces.)

One would think it would matter to the folks at the Washington Post that their own readers can smell this line of crap a mile off, but we don't matter of the folks at the Washington Post.  Ruth Marcus has proved...once again...that the Villagers are talking only to other Villagers.

Which could explain why most newspapers are in trouble.

We need Newspapers and Magazines and Media in general, advocating for their audience, and not entertaining their damn selves.

For example...if someone...say like the President...presents something that is backed in fact, and his opposition presents something that is cloaked in bull@#$%...we kinda need Media to call out the bull@#$%.

But they're not.

They used to.  But they're not.

I mean it happens...sometimes, but it sure as hell didn't happen today with Ruth Marcus.

Let me quote something a columnist said not too long ago:

Excuse me, but can these people not count to 60? Have they somehow failed to notice that Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have not exactly been playing nice? That while the left laments Obama's minor deviations from party orthodoxy, the right has been portraying him, with some success, as an out-of-control socialist?

That was from August 10, 2010. My goodness who wrote such a prescient piece?

C'mon, this is easy. This was Ruth Marcus...in a piece backing Robert Gibbs when he called out the Professional Left.

So what happened?

Apparently, Ruth Marcus...still employed by the Washington Post...has lost the ability...to count.

Ruth Marcus got lazy.  She and the paper needed column inches to fill, and bull@#$% magically transpired.

When you say the President isn't showing leadership after showing in just a few short paragraphs that there's no one who's willing to be lead, we do wonder why the President is to blame, and not the Congress.  And if you can't make that elementary of a call, it calls into question your ability to observe things...or any thing, for that matter.

I mean, I don't meant to tell Ruth Marcus in particular how to do her job, but I figured someone ought to.

Chris Matthews wonders what happened to the Republican Party of the 1960s (VIDEO)

I keep saying it, saying it and saying it. The Republican Party's last hope...as in last hope to continue existing as a Party is to dump the John Birch Society retreads (aka, the Tea Party) and grasp onto their proud heritage from the Eisenhowers of the world. For the GOP to survive, the Eisenhower Wing has to lead.

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Meanwhile, one of the Eisenhower Wing's potential leaders has dumped the party to become a Democrat...and more than likely, the Governor of Florida once again.

GOP, consider this your final warning...

Coming off John McCain's rather rambunctious Town Hall, we now have this:

Immigration reform’s chances in the House are looking bleaker after one of the top Republicans tasked with shepherding a bill to passage ruled out a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), chair of the Judiciary Committee that will mark up any House legislation on the issue, told NPR this week that he will not support a bill that eventually grants citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in America.

“People have a pathway to citizenship right now: It’s to abide by the immigration laws, and if they have a family relationship, if they have a job skill that allows them to do that, they can obtain citizenship,” Goodlatte said. “But simply someone who broke the law, came here, [to] say, ‘I’ll give you citizenship now,’ that I don’t think is going to happen.”

Okay, for one thing...before you panic too much over this: don't. This doucebag Bob Goodlatte is not the only person in charge of Immigration reform. He's just in charge of it in the House. There is this thing called the Senate, which will have a pathway to Citizenship, and there will be a Conference Committee, so my guess is it gets stuck back in there somehow.

But in the end, it goes back to what I said before.

Republicans, this is your final warning.

This is your last chance...by which I mean, your last chance to survive as a party.

Believe it or not, as Democrats, the purely craven political calculation here (i.e., if we were thinking like you) is to have this bill fail, and have your fingerprints all over it.

That's the best case scenario for us. You kill Comprehensive Immigration Reform, and leave an entire emerging (and young) majority of Latinos in Democratic Hands for generations to come, and you Republicans become the 21 Century Version of the Whig Party.

And it's this close to happening.

Fortunately, we Democrats give a @#$% about Governing...so we might ultimately save you from yourselves.

But it's time for Latinos to flex their muscles yet again. It's time for you to participate in the other, less fun side of electoral politics...the flooding of phone calls to various Congressional Offices.

I've heard it from the President, I've heard it from Latino Groups: a pathway to Citizenship is a must.

Well, time to let 'em know it's a dealbreaker...LOUDLY.

Something to keep an eye on...

@senjohnmccain again feels compelled to remind Sun Lakes crowd "we can't send them all back." #immigration
— BrahmResnik (@brahmresnik) February 19, 2013

TPM has more on the story, but if you're a Republican, you are sweating bullets right now.

Think about it.  If you are a GOP Pol, you know your future, in fact the entire future of the party comes down to how well you behave on Immigration reform.  With more and more Latinos coming of age, and more and more of your own base dying off, the trend appears that starting with the 2016 Presidential Election, the old Republican Party will not see power for a generation.

Yeah, that bad.

The solution is simple, come up with a massive Immigration Reform plan.  Behave well.  Show the Latino/Hispanic population of this country that you don't hate them.  And for a majority of the GOP Caucus in the House and Senate, that's absolutely true.  They don't hate Latinos/Hispanics.

Problem is, the base of the Party does.  They genuinely hate Latinos and Hispanics, and want to see the lot of them,  legal or no, bounced from the country.  Heck, they probably want to see speaking Spanish turned into some kind of felony.

This Town Hall was on a border state, which has been reliably Republican.  It has a massively unpopular (and massively unconstitutional) Immigration Bill that's unpopular everywhere...except among the people of that Town Hall.

The people of Arizona, moreso the Republicans of Arizona know that they're staring into the eyes of death (of their party).  They know that young Latinos will not rest until the white, racist, anti-Immigrant GOP is burned to the ground, and yet this is how they react??

I want to see how McCain reacts when he gets back to town, but in my mind, knowing how ultimately spineless McCain is, the odds of us getting comprehensive Immigration reform this year or any time before 2014 just took a hit.

Bad news for our friends and neighbors, but very good news if you're a Democrat.  The Republicans are going to destroy themselves and hand you power as they do it.

Charles Grassley...one of the dimmer bulbs in the Senate (VIDEO)

...bullshitting his way through his job, yet again.

Good-for-nothing Sen. Ron Johnson's awful-terrible-no-good week... (VIDEO)

Wisconsin, you should be embarrassed.  Not at him, but yourselves for allowing this clown anywhere near a major legislature, State or Federal.

First, Hillary smacked him around:



And then John Kerry followed up today:

You just can't fix this level of stupid...

Okay, the Republicans are having their retreat today in Williamsburg, Virginia.  They're had a discussion on how to have successful communications with Minorities and Women today at 10:15am.

And...where did they have this discussion??

Gawker?  You tell 'em.  I just can't...

[W]hat better place to talk about making inroads with oppressed groups than in a room named after a famous Williamsburg plantation, located in the tony Kingsmill Resort, which itself is on the site of another plantation? The GOP has heard your complaints, blacks and Latinos and women, and they're going to try to suss it out while sitting atop dead slave bones.

If the Romney camp's so secure in their "victory", why go to the race card? (VIDEO)

Pretty much every Black person in America, upon hearing this, will draw the same conclusion I just did. (Also, every white racist is going to hear the same dog whistle as well...only they'll applaud with approval.)

We know the code, guys.

We've been listening to you for 300 years. Our very survival has depended on it.

TPM: "Thank Goodness Somebody Is Finally Getting Tough On Big Bird" (VIDEO)

The first Obama Ad after the debate... (VIDEO)

Not the greatest, not the worst...but here's your problem if you're Mitt Romney: you lied so much last night, there's a lot more to come.

Mitt Romney lied to America's face last night. Liberals fail to notice.

If there’s one thing I can’t stand about being a Liberal myself, is that it puts me in the company of other Liberals.

Mainly, it puts me in the company of the kind of chicken@#$% Liberals, who think they know it all...yet somehow magically manage to keep losing us elections.

Yet somehow, those seem to be the only kind of Liberals that are allowed to speak on matters, or allowed to be pundits on Television.

Basically, the headline I've gotten from Liberals and Obama Supporters is "Yeah, Romney lied to our collective faces, but he did it so well.  Therefore, I gotta give him debate."

Seriously?

I may be the only Liberal in America who thinks Barack Obama won last night (okay, that's not fair...one of the few).

Why?

Well, first off I didn’t watch the Debate on CNN, or MSNBC...and Lord knows I didn’t watch it on Fox. I watched it on C-SPAN, a technique I picked up from beloved radio goddess, Randi Rhodes.

You watch C-SPAN only one thing happens, you see the event.  You don't get spin, telling you what to think about what you just saw.  You don't get pre-spin, telling you what to think about what haven't seen yet.  You just get the event.

To me Debate Strategy is all about missions. The Candidates come in with a mission, something they want the tape to show the next day. Here's what the Press won't tell you, because they want you watching the debates.  Candidates always succeed at accomplishing their mission.  Almost always.  Very rarely do they fail.

The only question is whose mission is the better campaign strategy over the long haul.

Romney’s mission was to go on the attack, be more aggressive and get in the face of the President. Well, mission accomplished. Then again, he had to do that.  Everyone knew he was going to do that.

The President’s mission was to look...well...Presidential. Mission accomplished as well.

But the President had a second mission as well. He wanted to get Mitt Romney on tape shape-shifting. He wanted him flip-flopping one of his “severely conservative” positions. I think the President thought it was going to take all night to get him to do that.

Instead it happened in the first answer of the night, when Mitt Romney ditched his Tax Plan, right there on Live Television.

The Pundits saw a President who “didn’t want to be there” last night. I saw a President, with his jaw-dropping after Mitt gave his first answer, and all but looking at the camera and saying: “Uhhh, did you get that? Is that on tape? Are we good?”

Josh Marshall over at TPM put it another way:

Romney’s focus though came at the cost of a few key things. 

He basically tossed aside his own tax plan or said he would if his numbers didn’t add up. But then he insisted that he could find enough loopholes to close to afford a $5 trillion tax cut for upper income earners. These are more numbers on the table. That’s really what most of the debate was about — budget numbers. Romney insisted with a straight face that up was down.

The Obama team isn’t going to try to get into a fight about whether their guy was on his game. There’s no point. (This is what I meant a couple days ago when I said Obama is not a great debater. Not a great night. But I’ve never seen him great at debating.) What I fully expect, what they’ll do if they’re smart is go full court press on Romney’s numbers and press for details about his budget plan.

The numbers simply don’t add up. Over a few news cycles that can build up really fast. He says he’ll push massive upper income tax cuts and those have to come at the cost of much higher deficits or big tax hikes for middle income people. His campaign agenda is based on a massive deception.

That’s the vulnerability Romney brings out of this debate. And it may be bigger than people realize.

My fellow Liberals can twist themselves into all the knots they want. Romney @#$%ed up tonight, severely.

He has promised across the board Tax Cuts of 20%. These will cost us $5 Trillion dollars. He can deny it all he wants, but those are just facts.

He’s promised to reduce the deficit with spending cuts, spending cuts he won’t specify.

And he went back on ALL of that last night, onstage. He said his tax cuts won’t hurt the deficit, and later promised he won’t enact them if they do. He said he won’t touch Defense Spending, as well as calling any notion of a $2 Trillion defense spending hike a lie. He also said he won’t touch Education spending, saying that the states should do more...and promising that the Federal Government will help if needed.

He was saying these things sometimes within the same answer.

Oh, and he out and out lied about his Health Care Plan covering pre-exisiting conditions.  His own surrogate, the legendary Eric Fehrnstrom said Governor Romney's plan wouldn't do that.

As my Father, who was watching the same C-SPAN feed I was, texted me: if we keep having debates, Romney won’t be left with anything to cut.

The President did not lose last night. It’s hard to lose a debate when the other guy is lying to America’s face, and doing so...so blatantly that its hard to believe.

The only way the President loses this debate is if we don’t see ads in the next 48 hours showing Mitt Romney from the debate contradicting the Mitt Romney from the campaign trail. The only way the President loses this debate is if he doesn’t remind America, with both Ads and on the stump just how badly Mitt Romney lied to their face.

Just watch, because it's coming.

The only way the President loses this election is if Liberals keep whining, and talk themselves out of a victory.  Unfortunately, that can still happen.

UPDATE: 10:29am Pacific Time: Guess what? Obama has his first ad out.  That only took what? Twelve hours?

So, what did Massachusetts Legislators think about Mitt Romney's time as a Governor? (VIDEO)

"Oh, sweet Jesus..." (VIDEO)

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"I didn't ask you a question..." (VIDEO)

Cheryl, a teacher from Colorado, describes a roundtable she participated in with Mitt Romney.

Needless to say, it did not go well.

Mitt Romney talking out of both sides of this mouth...again (VIDEO)

"Maybe instead of attacking others on taxes. Romney should come clean on his." (VIDEO)

Chaos on Bullshit Mountain (VIDEO)

Part 1:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Part 2:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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The complete Mitt Romney "47 Percent" Video...Part 2.

The complete Mitt Romney "47 Percent" Video...Part 1.