right wingers

Here comes today's outrage from the right wingers. During a lead in, in which Chuck Todd thought the cameras were off, he get's caught flipping that notorious middle finger.

This was captured by the wingnut site NewsBusters and has this added commentary:

Will there be repercussions for Todd? Stay tuned.

Even on the YouTube NewsBusters posted you have a bunch of wingnuts calling for Todd to be fired and now Fox has picked up on it.

But certainly a Republican would NEVER do something like this - would they?

OOPS! I guess they would! But certainly that was just an off day and Bush would NEVER do that again - right?

Well damn, would you look at that! And yet when these incidents happened the right didn't go into defending Bush. You know why? BECAUSE NO ONE CARED!!!

I just love how these people can't find anything real to be outraged over so they have to go into the manufactured outrage over things that mean nothing.

"We are tired of watching as year after year candidates offer up detailed health care plans with great fanfare and promise only to see them crushed under the weight of Washington politics and drug and insurance lobbying once the campaign is over." Candidate Obama

Here is the video of candidate Obama saying this, with big thanks to Lee Stranahan for finding it

I may have voted for the man and even supported him during the campaign, but his actions throughout this health care debate have been inexcusable and I never pledged undying allegiance to the man. As matter of fact since I did support candidate Obama I have worked harder to hold him to a higher standard than someone people I never did support. To me that is what it means to be a Democrat, a liberal and an American. As I said the other day, some of the Obama supporters out there are starting to remind me of the right wingers who supported Bush at every twist and turn as he broke his campaign promises, only to turn around and blast him the day he left office.

That is how much a new healthcare proposal would cost – one that would cover 97% of the country:

The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The AP obtained a copy.

We can expect the right wingers to balk at that prices, but lets put it into perspective. Basically this cost would be about 1/3 of the we pay per year to fight our two wars. It would also be around 1/10th of our annual defense budget, and the Republicans never complain that we spend too much on defense.

The bill also puts some of the burden on employers, but not that much:

Additionally, the revised proposal calls for a $750 annual fee on employers for each full-time worker not offered coverage through their job. The fee would be set at $375 for part-time workers. Companies with fewer than 25 employees would be exempt. The fee was forecast to generate $52 billion over 10 years, money the government would use to help provide subsidies to those who cannot afford insurance.

There’s only one of two reasons an employer wouldn’t offer coverage – either they are greedy or the insurance companies are just too damn expensive. This bill will help alleviate the later by giving the insurance companies some real competition, another thing the Republicans will complain about.

Following the shooting at the Holocaust Museum this week the right has been in defense mode. They are trying everything to pain James Von Brunn as some lefty or just a plain old loon. The problem with that is he isn’t.

Just like in lefty liberal land there are extremes of right wing/neo-con land. James Von Brunn would far surpass even people like Rush Limbaugh on the right, just like Stalin would far surpass Dennis Kucinich on the left. Hence the names “right wing extremists” and “left wing extremists”. Both sides have people that just go too far.

I wanted to give this little lesson in political science to address this:

Weird, huh? What possible grievance could a Jew-hating 9/11 Truther who ranted about Bill O’Reilly and “neocons” have against a magazine owned by Rupert Murdoch and edited by Bill Kristol? Maybe he detected a leftward drift in the Standard’s editorial slant lately? You know how irascible those “right-wingers” can be, especially when they’re fed a steady diet of Fox News. Which, um, Von Brunn hated.

I guess he’s from the conservative-hating wing of conservatism. Big tent!

I have not seen one liberal blog or talking head say that Von Brunn is from the Republican or conservative movement. Instead they are addressing Von Brunn for  what he is – a far right extremist.

But this also goes back to the DHS report. At no point did that report say “Republicans” or “Conservatives”. It addressed far-right extremists like Von Brunn. But it was people like Michelle Malkin and Rush Limbaugh who decided to classify themselves as far-right extremists, not the left or the DHS report.

Andrew Sullivan takes Malkin to task on her alarmist tone over the DHS report:

Why, one wonders, would Michelle Malkin read a DHS report on fringe, far-right extremism that could lead to violence or Oklahoma-style domestic terrorism and think ... they're talking about her?

Rightwing nut-jobs have been the number one purveyor of domestic terrorism in this country. Rather it be the abortion clinic bombers or Timothy McVeigh, there is no arguing that the right will take to violence much quicker than the left.

The actions of the right is also messing with operations in our capital:

Local reports indicate that the practice of mailing actual tea bags to legislators has repeatedly raised security concerns, and sometimes forced the evacuation of congressional offices in anthrax-like scares.

Brian Sperry, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service, told the Salt Lake (Utah) Tribune that tea bags in the mail "cause us some concern. ... They could pose a problem if the tea bag is mailed in a regular envelope instead of a padded bag."

These tea bags are coming from the same party that spawned Chad Castagana, the right wing follower of people like Malkin and Coulter who resorted to sending fake anthrax letters to notable liberals. Of course their only mention of him was to deny any involvement.

I get so tired of hearing right wingers say that people in foreclosure should loose their homes because they “got in over their heads”. It’s a typical right wing ploy of “blaming the victim”. A couple week ago I posted about our soldiers facing foreclosure, simply because they had the audacity to go and fight in a war. How dare they!. Now here is another look at what could cause a person to lose their home:

When Patricia Waelti walks through the back yard of her old two-story home on Mitchell Road in Wilmington, she sees the face of her late husband Terry.

"This is our home,” Waelti said. “This is where we were going to grow old together.”

Foreclosure is tearing apart more lives than ever before, as the economic crisis becomes more widespread and far reaching than many imagined.

Waelti’s Clinton County home is one of 1,600 foreclosed properties across the Tri-State.

She said when the money from her husband’s life insurance policy started to run out, she started falling behind on her mortgage payments.

Waelti said she asked the bank to renegotiate but they refused and eventually foreclosed.

In February, her home was auctioned off at a Sheriff sale at the Clinton County Courthouse.

These people didn’t get in over their heads. They didn’t try to play “keep up with the Jones’”. No – they just went out and bought a house that they could afford. Then tragedy hit, and instead of the bank trying to work with the widow, they ignored her. But it gets better (worse):

The same bank that ended up foreclosing on Waelti’s home also ended up buying it back for $60,000 less than the appraised value.

The next couple of days will be nothing but festivities for most, but for some it will be work. I’m not talking about right wingers who fear the end of days by the swearing in of Barack Obama as our 44th President, but I am talking about actual members of Obama’s new administration:

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Vans will be poised at the Capitol to take a few top aides of Barack Obama's to their new offices at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. as soon as he is sworn in, transition aides told Politico.

About 20 senior officials have had their paperwork cleared to enter the White House complex on Tuesday. Some will attend a traditional lunch with the new president in the Capitol, then get to work while the inaugural parade is under way.

The quick start on Tuesday is indicative of the months of planning that Obama’s transition team has put into preparing for his opening days in office.

Officials say on Wednesday, which is being referred to as “Day 1,” he is scheduled to meet with his economic team to discuss the latest calibration of his stimulus package, which is likely to be about $900 billion by the time it reaches his desk, probably in mid-February.

So we see more change coming. When Bush took office he decided to enjoy his first eight months at the ranch and golfing, while ignoring pesky little memos like “Bin Laden determined to attack”. Instead we have a President who realizes he is entering the biggest job in the world, and he is prepared to tackle it head on. That is change we can believe in.

I thought the Republicans were for all this tort reform and getting rid of frivolous lawsuits. Well then why are so many right wingers suing, trying to claim Obama isn’t a citizen?